He is often credited as an influential figure in bringing to an end the BBC's policy in the 1970s of wiping episodes of
Doctor Who (1963) and other popular series. In 1978 he discovered
The Dead Planet (1963) at BBC Enterprises, where it was marked for destruction. By this time, the BBC had already purged hundreds of episodes of
Doctor Who (1963), but the BBC ended the policy the same year and established a new archiving policy which preserved all episodes the BBC had left and enabled future repeat showings, as well as commercial releases on video cassette and DVD.