From the people who brought you Flight Through Entirety.

Saturday 9 October 1965

Mission to the Unknown

Solace and Succour

Taranium Core, Episode 5
Sunday 13 September 2026

In an isolated episode on a distant, inhospitable planet, the Daleks are fomenting an intergalactic conspiracy to overthrow the Solar System. And for arcane budgetary reasons, the Doctor isn’t there to stop them.

On 9 October 2019, exactly 54 years after the first broadcast of Mission to the Unknown, a recreation of the episode was released on YouTube. It had been created by staff, graduates and students of the University of Central Lancashire, using Derek Martinus’s original camera script as well as extant photographic reference material and the surviving soundtrack.

To accompany the recreation, the BBC also released a documentary create by friend-of-the-podcast Josh Snares, including behind-the-scenes footage, interviews with the cast and crew of the recreation, and interviews with Peter Purves (Steven) and Edward de Souza (the original Marc Cory).

The dark concertina-head delegate with scary white triangular eyes is called Sentreal, and he reminds Adam of McDuff, the blue-headed concertina character from the upsettingly named Australian children’s television programme from the 1990s called Johnson and Friends. You can watch the entire run of the series on YouTube. So off you go.

Nathan mentions that his first encounter with The Daleks’ Master Plan was the MP3-CD release from 2001, which he listened to on his beloved and compellingly cheap iPod shuffle (first generation), an adorable and completely impractical flash-memory-based iPod released in 2005, available in 512 MB and 1 GB variations.

Fans of Melvin’s appearances on 500 Year Diary will also enjoy his recent appearance on the Trap One podcast, discussing the recent vinyl LP release of The Rescue.

Follow us

Nathan is on Bluesky at @nathanbottomley.com, Adam is @adamrichard.com.au, Melvin is @melvinpena.bsky.social, and James is @ohjamessellwood.bsky.social. The 500 Year Diary theme was composed by Cameron Lam.

500 Year Diary shares a social media presence with Flight Through Entirety, which means you can follow us on Bluesky and Mastodon, as well as on X and Facebook. Our website is at 500yeardiary.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll invite you to a weeks-long conference where we don’t provide any snacks.

And more

You can find links to all of the podcasts we’re involved in on our podcasts page. But here’s where we’re up to right now.

As always, Adam Richard Has a Theory on his daily Doctor Who podcast of the same name. Right now, he’s talking about Colony in Space, but recent topics include cosplay, the Disney Plus era of Doctor Who and an imagined version of the lost 2026 Doctor Who Christmas Special starring Billie Piper.

Just yesterday, on Startling Barbara Bain, we started our coverage of the justly maligned second season of Space: 1999 by watching its opening episode The Metamorph, featuring the return of Brian Blessed and Catherine Schell to the series, the departure of Victor, Paul and David, that lovely Main Mission set, and the slightest sense that this was more than just a preposterous and dumb space opera. Only 23 episodes left to go!

A new triptych has just started on The Three Handed Game called Back to the Bassinet. Episode 1 is Something Nasty in the Nursery — Brendan, Steven and Richard are reunited with a bunch of sitcom actors from their childhoods (or from Richard’s childhood, at least), while Steed and Mrs Peel investigate some leaky civil servants.

On the 200th episode of Untitled Star Trek Project, Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford watched an episode in the acclaimed final season of Star Trek: Picard called Imposters, featuring a reunion between Picard, Riker and former Maquis defector Ro Laren.

Taranium Core, Episode 5: Solace and Succour (Mission to the Unknown)

Recorded on Sunday 21 June 2026 · Download (61.3 MB)
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Transcript