An animated version of lost Doctor Who adventure The Power Of The Daleks will be released exactly 50 years after its one and only showing on the BBC.
There are no known complete recordings of the six-part story from 1966, which featured the first Time Lord regeneration when Patrick Troughton took over from original Doctor Who actor William Hartnell.
However, BBC Worldwide confirmed it had commissioned an animation studio to remake the episodes and save them from oblivion, while giving the Doctor’s most famous nemesis a cartoon makeover.
The animation will be released on the BBC Store at 5.50pm on November 5. This is exactly 50 years to the minute since it was first transmitted on BBC One.
A handful of clips have been salvaged and posted online, but no complete film recording is known to have survived after the master negatives were destroyed in an archive purge in 1974.
The Power Of The Daleks sees the Time Lord go to war with the Daleks on the planet Vulcan accompanied by his companions Polly (Anneke Wills) and Ben (Michael Craze).
This is not the first time a lost recording has been recreated using animation.
Producer and director Charles Norton and comic book artists Martin Geraghty and Adrian Salmon teamed up to make a lost Dad’s Army episode into a cartoon earlier this year and will now turn their hands to Doctor Who.
The Power Of The Daleks will return in black and white after being developed with the use of audio recordings of the programme, surviving photographs and film clips.
Mr Norton said: “The Power Of The Daleks animation is the most ambitious Doctor Who archive restoration ever attempted and we’re all very honoured to be a part of such an exciting project.
“Intelligent, suspenseful and magnificently staged, Power Of The Daleks is one of the great lost classics of 1960s television and a superb example of the black and white era at its finest.”
BBC Worldwide executive producer Paul Hembury said: “Charles and his team are remarkably talented and passionate about Doctor Who and we are thrilled that fans will soon be able to enjoy this rather sinister but wonderful, classic story.”
