Saturday 13 November 1965

The Daleks' Master Plan

Choreography of the Daleks

Taranium Core, Episode 6
Sunday 20 September 2026

This week, we rashly decide to steal the Daleks’ favourite thing and run away, only to find ourselves pursued through time and space for three months, during which time we visit Z Cars, the cricket, a volcano planet or something, and some of BBC Television Centre’s most lavish jungle sets. Toby Hadoke joins us to help us thwart The Daleks’ Master Plan.

Notes and links

On 13 March 2026, it was announced that two missing episodes of The Daleks’ Master Plan had been found by an organisation called Film is Fabulous! among a film collector’s “ramshackle” collection. These were Episode 1, The Nightmare Begins and Episode 3, Devil’s Planet. They were released on iPlayer at Easter.

If you’re a fan of a certain age, you will probably remember the 1983 publication of Peter Haining’s Doctor Who: A Celebration — Two Decades Through Time and Space, which was our first exposure to fan opinion about rare or missing Doctor Who stories. So here’s the first critical response to The Daleks’ Master Plan that most of us encountered: “Quite simply the longest Doctor Who story ever recorded and also one of the best, although it is doubtful if director Douglas Camfield thought so at the time with the tremendous script and production problems doing the story of this length engendered.”

Peter Black was the Daily Mail’s TV critic for more than 20 years, from 1952 to 1997. On Monday 15 February 1965, the Mail published his review of The Web Planet, which included this assessment of the regular characters: “The heroes are the dullest quartet in fiction… the attraction is the ancient one of watching people who are dafter than yourself.”

Toby mentions his earlier take on this story, expressed in Running Through Corridors, Volume 1 (2010), a book consisting of a daily email correspondence between Toby and Rob Shearman as they commit to watching Doctor Who through in order, one episode at a time. It’s a charming book, with something positive to say about even the most obscure or unloved episodes.

Fans of discussions of missing Doctor Who episodes will also enjoy the work of Gavin Rymill (@themindrobber on X), who uses visual reference material, soundtracks and AI to recreate scenes from the missing episodes, as well as Tim’s Doctor Who: The Missing Episodes Podcast, where he talks about the phenomenon of missing episodes and reviews the episodes themselves.

Flight Through Entirety discussed The Daleks’ Master Plan in Episode 7: How Would You Address a God?, released on Sunday 31 August 2014.

Follow us

Nathan is on Bluesky at @nathanbottomley.com, Toby is @tobyhadoke.bsky.social, and Simon is @simonmoore.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 tell you an interminable shaggy dog story about the airline losing our luggage at Cairo airport while you’re trying to watch the Blakes 7 episode Star One.

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.

Last week, 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!

After their triumphant 200th episode of Untitled Star Trek Project, Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford took this week off. Which gives you the chance to listen to some of our hot takes on episodes of Strange New Worlds before the season finale this coming Thursday.

Recorded on Saturday 4 July 2026 · Download Choreography of the Daleks (105.4 MB)
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Transcript for Choreography of the Daleks