Doctor Who legend Patrick Troughton’s son reveals which missing story he most wants to see found

Patrick Troughton's run as the Second Doctor was historic - but so much of it can't be revisited due to many of his episodes still being missing.

The beloved BBC sci-fi series famously still has 95 episodes missing from its 1960s run, after many early instalments were wiped or junked as part of archive practices between 1967 and 1978, when broadcasters routinely cleared programmes because of storage issues, material costs and rights limitations.

53 of the missing episodes are from Troughton's era as the Second Doctor, which ran from 1966 to 1969 and saw him take over from William Hartnell after the very first regeneration.

Speaking as part of Radio Times' Doctor Who Insiders, Troughton's son Michael, who has taken over duties as the Second Doctor for Big Finish's audio adventures, opened up about which episode he'd most like to see found.

"No one's to blame. In those days, tape was so expensive," he pointed out.

"We all did it with VHS - we recorded over over the top of it, and that's what happened. But I suppose I would like to see that first one [The Power of the Daleks], the first ever performance.

"I remember his feedback from that - he phoned up afterwards to tell us how it went and everything, he was really nervous about the first studio [record], with Michael [Craze] and Anneke [Wills]. I'd probably love if they found that one single episode, but the whole lot would be brilliant."

It's certainly not out of the realm of possibility, considering missing Doctor Who episodes have been found over the years - most recently, two episodes from The Daleks' Master Plan.

While Patrick Troughton died in 1987, Michael has continued his legacy, voicing the Second Doctor in Big Finish's beloved audio adventures from 2022.

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"It's great fun playing Dad!" he said. "When Nick [Briggs, Big Finish's creative director and voice of the Daleks in Doctor Who] phoned me up originally and came with the offer, I thought he was joking.

"We had a conversation, we put the phone down, and I thought about it, and I suddenly thought, actually, that wouldn't be a bad thing to have a go at."

Most recently, Troughton starred in The Haunted Windmill, which he described as having "very clever writing".

"There comes a point in the story when the crew have almost been caught by the Time Lords and the only way to avoid being caught - Raven (Emma Noakes) comes up with this idea - is to go into a completely different timeline, so that we slip into this timeline that is Earth, but as if the Doctor hadn't ever been there," he teased.

"This whole new strange Earth is almost like the old Earth, but is not, and there are all slightly different things that have happened, and different histories and different names, and people pop up that are relatives of very well-known characters, and I just think that's such a clever idea. What a great way to escape."

This year marks 60 years of the Second Doctor - so what better time to delve in?!

Doctor Who – The Second Doctor Adventures: The Haunted Windmill is available to buy on Big Finish. Doctor Who is available to stream on BBC iPlayer.

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