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Post by Matthew Kurth on May 6, 2018 3:06:04 GMT
I wanted to revisit the 1992 Tenth Planet return hoax for a moment.
This from DWB #109 (January 1993):
I know just enough about 1/2" video formats to be dangerous. There was the EIAJ-1 video standard which emerged in 1969 and was full-field and interchangeable between different brands of machines. But before that there were a handful of competing proprietary formats, most of which were skip-field, which were not interchangeable. My understanding is that Shibaden made both EIAJ and non-EIAJ machines but I don't have enough detail of their model lines to say for sure.
Here's where my knowledge runs out and I am left with some questions I'm hoping someone may be able to answer.
1. How do we know the reels were (allegedly) recorded on a Shibaden machine? Just Barrett's word, or were there markings on the reels?
2. How do we know the tapes were truly blank, as opposed to having been played back on the wrong type of machine? Let's say a recording was made on a Sony skip-field machine and played back on a Shibaden EIAJ machine. Would the tape appear blank (eg, "snow"), or would it pick up the existence of an incompatible signal and try to decode it (showing traces of picture or other evidence of black burst being present)? Or might that depend on the specific format and machine?
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Post by zaqwilson on May 6, 2018 3:52:34 GMT
Didn't the hoaxer eventually admit to the subterfuge?
I do not know myself, but I assume the technically savvy lads of the Dr Who inner circle would have poured over the tapes from every angle. If there was info recorded, it should have been apparent even if they were not immediately readable?
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Post by richardwoods on May 6, 2018 10:03:32 GMT
Interesting question, I can see where this is going........
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Post by Greg H on May 6, 2018 11:42:07 GMT
Hi all.
This is a few years back now!
Barrett was a pseudonym was it not?
I wasn't personally involved, but wasn't a tape produced by the hoaxer after endless fobbing off and BS, which was just blank and had never contained any recordings of any doctor who in the first place? I recall this being 110% dead end and made up in its entirety by a certain individual who just wanted to be a time waster as usual........ Not really worth revisiting or worthy of analysis as such.
Any advances?
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Post by Ronnie McDevitt on May 6, 2018 12:15:05 GMT
It is a pretty open secret who Roger Barrett was (a BBC employee at the time) and he found the whole thing amusing admitting the Shibaden tape had always been blank
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Post by Matthew Kurth on May 6, 2018 13:56:48 GMT
Didn't the hoaxer eventually admit to the subterfuge? I'm not sure whether he admitted it or not. DWB #109 does report that several prominent fans were approached by the same person for the same transaction and never followed through, and leafing through the 1993 run of DWB I didn't catch any follow-ups. I assume the technically savvy lads of the Dr Who inner circle would have poured over the tapes from every angle. If there was info recorded, it should have been apparent even if they were not immediately readable? The DWB article doesn't name the "Shibaden engineer" and with this being very early in the Restoration Team timeline I thought it possible it was done without their involvement. Also, there's this: From Paul Lee's recollections:So clearly I'm not the only one who has thought of this. The 1/2" open reel tape I've worked with has all been EIAJ. Interesting question, I can see where this is going........ I should state for the record that I'm not actually suggesting that there really was a recording there that was missed by playing it in the wrong machine, although in retrospect that is what my questions imply. There is enough other circumstantial evidence outside the tapes themselves to make me comfortable that these tapes were in fact blank. I was just re-reading the story and felt like there were some assumptions being made. This could easily have been journalistic oversimplification. But it did make me wonder from a technical perspective what would happen if those assumptions were wrong.
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Post by Jaspal Cheema on May 6, 2018 20:27:08 GMT
I remember Doctor Who Monthly reported that Michael Craze had recorded linking material for this potential release. Has that ever been released?
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Post by Richard Bignell on May 6, 2018 21:13:27 GMT
I remember Doctor Who Monthly reported that Michael Craze had recorded linking material for this potential release. Has that ever been released? Not commercially, but if you look on YouTube under "Tenth Planet Intro" you'll find a rather rough copy of it.
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Post by jameshope on May 8, 2018 14:27:20 GMT
Was the identity of Roger K Barrett ever revealed
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Post by Ronnie McDevitt on May 8, 2018 15:12:41 GMT
Was the identity of Roger K Barrett ever revealed Like I said above his identity is well known and he has never made any attempt to deny his involvement.
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Post by timmunton on May 10, 2018 7:27:03 GMT
Was the identity of Roger K Barrett ever revealed I suppose he was never going to be able to keep who he was secret for long: After all, being the main founding member of Pink Floyd & being the UK's ( & world's too probably ) foremost proponent of psychedelic music; hugely famous & well loved; sublime songwriter & master of sound (chicken scratch trebleblast guitar included) & so on - how he thought he could get away with it & throw people of the scent just by using his real name, rather than the nickname by which he is famous, is beyond me ! And surely he would have realised this might damage the privacy of the quiet suburban lifestyle he had been living for so many years ( having almost completely removed himself from the machinations of the music industry by the early 1970s ) !!? 😉
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Post by timmunton on May 10, 2018 8:05:55 GMT
Was the identity of Roger K Barrett ever revealed Like I said above his identity is well known and he has never made any attempt to deny his involvement. As Ronnie says - it would seem Syd never made any attempt at denial despite the somewhat pointless "real name" subterfuge 😉☺
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Post by timmunton on May 11, 2018 15:43:11 GMT
It is a pretty open secret who Roger Barrett was (a BBC employee at the time) and he found the whole thing amusing admitting the Shibaden tape had always been blank ... although I didn't know he later worked for the BBC; must have been nice for him to get out of Cambridge for a bit & I guess he kept the BBC job under his hat for the sake of privacy - so the attention drawn to him by his self-penned hoax is all the more bizarre for that! 😉 ( & my sincere Apologies for what is probably now flogging a dead horse here)
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Post by timmunton on May 12, 2018 16:59:21 GMT
[ ... ] he found the whole thing amusing admitting the Shibaden tape had always been blank ... the incident was of course very insulting to the Dr Who community ( & I'm not joking about that fact ). I wasn't part of any organised Who fanbase at the time - & didn't hear about it back then - but it must have been pretty irritating to those who did; but they say every cloud has a silver lining & the silver lining here is that at least it caused the 'crazy diamond' to raise a smile or three ... or four or five or twenty four ... 😉 ( dead horse now officially flogged )
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Post by Ronnie McDevitt on May 12, 2018 19:19:10 GMT
I was coincidentally corresponding with `Roger' at the time on a completely separate issue when the story broke - around 1993?. I was still in contact when his name was revealed although I chose not to quiz him on the matter. In his next letter he unexpectedly mentioned he was behind the hoax - which I obviously knew. I think I am correct in saying he was quite happy to face the cameras during his TV appearance but the production crew thought it would be better if his identity was disguised. I have to say that in my dealings with him he seemed a pretty decent chap.
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