Finding Doctor Who – Peter Purves explores recovered episodes of The Dalek Master Plan

In March 2026 it was announced that two episodes of the 1960s Doctor Who story The Daleks' Master Plan, which were previously missing, had been found by the charity Film is Fabulous!. Ahead of these episodes being released on iPlayer, BBC Archives spoke to Peter Purves, who played the Doctor's companion Steven Taylor, about the story, the missing episodes of Doctor Who and the tantalising glimpses they'd left behind in the archive.

"There were many things found by Film is Fabulous!, and it seems that the one that's caught the most interest to anyone are the Doctor Who episodes. I'd lost hope that any would be found. Maybe the interest caused by the fact that this was discovered may persuade one or two other collectors to say, 'I wonder, I might have some of that. Oh, I think I might have seen that'."

"When Mark Ayres [audio producer] came to me in about 1999 and suggested that we do the audios and add a commentary to cover the visuals, that was my first real delving back into Doctor Who. I'd forgotten about it, mostly. And many of the episodes, I thought, 'oh gosh, I forgot I'd done that.' Some of them, I had no recollection of whatsoever. But to have that recovery of the soundtracks of something which I seriously had forgotten about really was fascinating."

"There were 108 missing in total [in 2009], of which thirty-something were mine. I did forty six episodes. They have found thirteen more since we did that. They'd found the one episode of mine which was from Galaxy Four. But the fact that we've got two out of nowhere is really tremendous."

"I got letters on Blue Peter and I was amazed that people recognised me from that. I don't see why they shouldn't have recognised me, but I was surprised. It was quite nice to talk about. Six years after we actually made it and it still existed. What happened to it in the meantime?

Now, it's sixty years almost to the day when we first did The Daleks' Master Plan. But here we are still talking about something which was very popular children's entertainment from the mid-1960s. And it's the story of the day."

"Dougie [director Douglas Camfield] did some wonderful direction on the Daleks' Master Plan. And that third episode [Devil's Planet], I think, shows it very well. He wasn't interested in anything peripheral. Everything that was important happened on the close part of the screen. The Daleks occupied the entire screen and the camera moved amongst them. He liked to get into the scene. He was a very clever director."

"Working with Bill [William Hartnell] was always very pleasurable. He wanted to get it right. He made his mistakes. It didn't happen often, but it did happen occasionally. Luckily, we all concentrated very hard because we were all in the same boat. This recording was what was going out. So whatever we did, if we did something wrong, that was going out. So you didn't want that to happen."

"Jean Marsh. Lovely lady. Everyone thought that she would be continuing in the program as the new companion. But, of course, she had other work to do, so she became dust [spoiler for episode 12]. But she was great to work with and she was so funny. When Peter Butterworth came back for his episodes, together with Bill and Jean, we had a few laughs. I can remember Jean being almost ordered out of the studio by John Wiles [Doctor Who producer] because we were in hysterics at something that had happened."

"It was a good serial to do, lots of action in it. Good story. I was very happy to be in it. I'm very happy Film is Fabulous! have turned up these episodes. And I can't wait to see one, two and three together so we'll see them in order and that's just lovely."