Out of The Unknown - Archive Status

Archive Status

Of the forty-nine episodes of Out of the Unknown that were made, only twenty survive in their entirety, mainly from series one. Almost thirty minutes of “The Little Black Bag” also survive, as do shorter clips from “The Fox and the Forest”, “Andover and the Android”, “Satisfaction Guaranteed”, “Liar!” and “The Last Witness”. Complete audio recordings exist of “The Yellow Pill” and “The Uninvited” as well as audio clips of other lost episodes. Off screen photographs, known as tele-snaps, were taken of many first and second series stories including some of the missing episodes. These were published in Mark Ward's Out of the Unknown: A guide to the legendary BBC series in 2004. The fourth series episodes “The Last Witness” and “The Uninvited”, both of which are missing, were remade as episodes of Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense as “A Distant Scream” and “In Possession” respectively and broadcast in the UK in 1986. A new adaptation of John Wyndham's Random Quest, which had been dramatised for series three and had also been adapted as the film Quest for Love, was made for BBC Four and broadcast on 27 November 2006 as part of that channel's Science Fiction Britannia season.

Out of the Unknown has, as of 2007, never been released on VHS or DVD. The episode Level 7 was shown at the British Film Institute South Bank in August 2009, while the episode “Thirteen to Centaurus” was repeated by BBC Four in 2003 as part of a J.G. Ballard retrospective.

The BBC Archive Treasure Hunt, a public appeal campaign, continues to search for lost episodes.