10 Lies About Doctor Who You Probably Believe
4. The Doctor Appears In Every Story
If there’s one thing we can be certain about, it’s that the Doctor appears in every episode of Doctor Who, right?
Well, that was likely the mindset that '60s viewers had going in to Mission to the Unknown, the single-part prologue to the 12-part epic, The Daleks’ Master Plan. They would no doubt have been expecting the Doctor to crop up at any moment, and would no doubt have been confused when he didn’t.
Over the years, other stories have come close to not featuring the Doctor – the ‘Doctor-lite’ episodes of the Tenth Doctor era (Love & Monsters, Blink, and Turn Left) being the most prominent examples – but Mission to the Unknown is, to date, the only story to lack them completely.
It’s all the more disappointing then, that it’s one of the episodes currently missing from the BBC archives. You can, however, experience it in recreated form thanks to the students of the University of Central Lancashire, who restaged the episode in 2019.