'Doctor Who' Just Made a Huge Discovery

Doctor Who has a beloved history. Long before it jumped the Atlantic and became a crossover hit in America, it was a treasured piece in British cultural canon. You might not have heard of the show until a few years ago, but the show is celebrating its 50th birthday this year, and that points to one very obvious point: There's a lot of it. So much of it. So much. Some of it was bound to get lost along the way, and it did — many, many episodes were misplaced, in fact. It's been confirmed, though, that some of those long-lost vintage Doctor Who episodes have been found .

The BBC — woefully unaware back then of the cultural importance the show would continue to hold in the decades that followed — destroyed a whole bunch of Doctor Who episodes in the 1960s and 1970s as a way to save space. One hundred and six episodes of the total 253 of vintage Who were lost, to be exact.

Over the years, more and more episodes have surfaced from foreign broadcasters, and this newest find could very possibly be another instance of that.

The BBC is expected to announce the exact nature of this find at a press screening in London sometime this week, and details of how or when fans would have access to them has also yet to be announced.

This year's a big one for Who; Matt Smith just last week wrapped his last episode as the Eleventh Doctor, so this season will feature both the series' 50th Anniversary Special and the introduction of Twelfth Doctor Peter Capaldi.