1.19: Mission to the Unknown

In which we get our first Doctor-lite episode, and Marc Cory has a very bad day at work.

Broadcast: October 1965

Watched: July 2019

Brilliant. Another episode that makes a lot more sense in context than it does when viewed as an oddity in the standard story table. It actually works really well as a story in its own right, while also trailing Master Plan and doing a load of world-building on the way. 

I like that in the future we are using tape recorders again. I am not convinced Nation knows what a galaxy is. 

Anyway. An episode that leaves Dr Who bigger than it found it, and I’m always a sucker for those. 

…and those are all the notes I have: it’s a very odd “story”, this, just one 25 minute episode, featuring none of the regulars, unless you count the Daleks. It’s thus been the cause of decades of circular arguments about whether this is really a story in its own right or just a trailer to The Daleks’ Master Plan, the 12-episode epic that kicks off five weeks later. A good modern parallel is Night of the Doctor: it is a story in its own right, but it’s short and limited and makes much more sense when seen as part of something bigger. Effectively, it’s story-as-trailer.

Another, even odder thing about this one: there’s a semi-official remake, so that even though the episode is missing you can watch a live action copy on the official Doctor Who YouTube channel (don’t forget to subscribe!). Although this was a project by some students, it’s been given a veneer of respectability by the presence of Nick Briggs as the voice of the Daleks, the commentary by Edward de Souza, the original Marc Cory, and so on.

The trailer, which attempts new series levels of excitement for something involving convincingly iffy 60s-style special effects and people lumbering around in silly costumes, is brilliant. Although the best bit is definitely the dramatic sting over the caption, “In association with the University of Central Lancashire.”

Sadly, UCLan can’t remake the other 96 missing episodes in the same way, because that would require recasting William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton and so forth. But it is sort of delightful than you can now make TV to the quality of 1960s Doctor Who as a student project.