Nine missing episodes of 'Doctor Who' 1960s stories 'The Web of Fear' and 'The Enemy of the World' are among the 11 episodes found at a TV station in Nigeria.
The black and white story sees Patrick Troughton's second Doctor battle robot yeti in the London Underground. Also recovered is a complete version of Troughton's six-part story The Enemy of the World, reported BBC.
The latest find is said to be the largest haul of missing episodes recovered in the last three decades.
Eleven Doctor Who episodes were discovered, nine of which were missing, in the Nigerian city of Jos by Philip Morris, director of a company called Television International Enterprises Archive.
"I am described as the Indiana Jones of the film world. The tapes had been left gathering dust in a storeroom at a television relay station in Nigeria. I remember wiping the dust off the masking tape on the canisters and my heart missed a beat as I saw the words, Doctor Who. When I read the story code I realised I'd found something pretty special," Morris said.
He said it had been a "lucky" find given the high temperatures in the African country. "Fortunately they had been kept in the optimum condition."
Only episode three of 'The Enemy of the World' already existed in the BBC archive. The Nigerian discovery of episodes one, two, four, five and six completes the story.
Episode one of 'The Web of Fear' existed, with the rest thought lost forever but now episodes two, four, five and six have been recovered though episode three is still missing.
Ninety-seven episodes of the television drama is still missing as BBC destroyed many of the original transmission tapes in the 1960s and 1970s. The episodes that are found belong to the ones that were transferred on to film for sale to foreign broadcasters.
'Doctor Who', the longest running TV drama, made its first appearance in 1963. The story revolves around Time Lord, a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor, who has the ability to regenerate his body when near death.
Actor Matt Smith is the 11th actor to portray the character in the sci-fi drama as it completes 50 years.
