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Post by Qasim Yusuf on Jul 3, 2018 19:47:02 GMT
I've been reading up on where the missing episodes were screened and have come across a rumour stating that Mission to the Unknown may have been shown on 6 November 1972 in Singapore. Apparently after they had finished showing The Three Doctors Part Four there, Planet of the Daleks Part One was supposed to air the following week however Planet Part One didn't screen the following week and something else did instead which may have been Mission. I have come across 2 websites which state this and am not sure how accurate the rumour is. Has anyone got any further information on the likelihood of this story being true?
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Post by John Wall on Jul 3, 2018 20:41:39 GMT
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Post by Chris Wilkinson on Jul 3, 2018 21:55:49 GMT
Realistically, the answer must be no. They surely couldn't have paid for it themselves, considering the fact that Australia (effectively the gateway to the so-called 'minor Commonwealth') never made clearance payments to screen it. There are no examples of minor Commonwealth countries paying for Doctor Who episodes on their own. Unless they were offered the single-episode serial for a much-reduced price simply because it had been sitting on the shelves for so long without purchase, and because Singapore could screen it in order in relation to the rest, I doubt they ever did broadcast it.
Mission (production code 'T/A') could have been screened 'in error' after being sent from Britain to join the similarly-coded Galaxy 4 serial (production code 'T') which had just been moved from New Zealand, both of which being returned in 1973/4. If this scenario was true, maybe it was screened on the basis of it being part of the 'same' serial? Since this would be an administrative error, it surely wouldn't have appeared on sales documentation. Is there anything that survives suggesting that serial 'T' was five episodes in length when it was given to Singapore? Anyway, what would have been the point when Mission was thematically a prelude to Master Plan which they obviously didn't buy?
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Post by Richard Marple on Jul 4, 2018 20:42:32 GMT
I was wondering if this was ever exported as The Daleks Master Plan was never sold abroad.
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Post by Jon Preddle on Jul 5, 2018 5:12:30 GMT
The reason why the idea of Mission playing in Singapore arose was simply because there was one extra airdate in Singapore in 1972. Chances are this was simply due to the pre-emption of a scheduled episode during that run.
Since there is no record of music royalties being paid out for a sale of Mission to Singapore, it's highly unlikely there was a sale or screening in 1972.
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Post by Matthew Kurth on Jul 6, 2018 4:08:50 GMT
Since there is no record of music royalties being paid out for a sale of Mission to Singapore, it's highly unlikely there was a sale or screening in 1972. Out of curiosity, do the royalty sheets for Galaxy Four specify payment for a specific number of episodes (ie, four)? I'm trying to understand what the paperwork looks like and how we can feel confident that Mission couldn't have been included with the rest of Serial T, either as a misunderstanding at the payment/ordering level or at the print sourcing level.
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Post by Jon Preddle on Jul 6, 2018 4:45:36 GMT
Since there is no record of music royalties being paid out for a sale of Mission to Singapore, it's highly unlikely there was a sale or screening in 1972. Out of curiosity, do the royalty sheets for Galaxy Four specify payment for a specific number of episodes (ie, four)? I'm trying to understand what the paperwork looks like and how we can feel confident that Mission couldn't have been included with the rest of Serial T, either as a misunderstanding at the payment/ordering level or at the print sourcing level. The Clearance History Sheet for 'Serial T' records it (in three places!) as being a 4 parter.
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Post by Sue Butcher on Jul 6, 2018 5:39:10 GMT
I was wondering if this was ever exported as The Daleks Master Plan was never sold abroad. The ABC was sent an audition copy, which was rejected.
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Post by John Wall on Jul 6, 2018 9:31:52 GMT
What is worth noting is that no conclusive evidence of an unauthorised broadcast has ever surfaced, “The Savages” in Sierra Leone was more likely to have been “The Monster of Peladon”. There are some parts of the world where things are more “relaxed” - which is probably why prints weren’t destroyed - but nothing suggests that any of these places broadcast anything that they hadn’t paid the appropriate fee for. I suspect that this was because they knew that it could turn the tap off. Singapore is not the sort of place I’d contemplate unauthorised broadcasts occurring.
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Post by Ralph Rose on Jul 6, 2018 14:15:44 GMT
It's theoretically possible that a place was left in the schedule for Mission to the Unknown, but it was never shown in that spot due to clearance issues. TV schedules are planned months in advance, but have been known to change last minute. If the change happened after the schedules were released to the press, the listings would not show the change.
The extra slot in the schedule could be nothing more than an example of this happening.
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Post by Jon Preddle on Jul 6, 2018 20:40:10 GMT
It's theoretically possible that a place was left in the schedule for Mission to the Unknown, but it was never shown in that spot due to clearance issues. TV schedules are planned months in advance, but have been known to change last minute. If the change happened after the schedules were released to the press, the listings would not show the change. The extra slot in the schedule could be nothing more than an example of this happening. While the schedules would indeed be planned months in advance, notifying the newspapers of the daily TV schedules would be no more than a week or two ahead of transmission; and the Singapore papers didn't print episode titles, so even if the station did substitute the planned episode with another on the day of broadcast, the printed listings weren't affected. (The papers and the public would remain unaware of the last minute change.)
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Post by Robert Lia on Jul 6, 2018 21:04:20 GMT
Come on people what is so hard to believe that there was not a preemption in the TV guide in Singapore. Every country had preemptions for one reason or another from time to time be it for Sports, Political events, National Holidays and such.
I remember as a kid after Dark Shadows ended its run on ABC on 2 April 1971 the following week a new show appeared in Dark Shadows place in the listings in the Los Angeles Times, But on one day Dark Shadows was still listed instead of Password and as an 8 year old I assumed perhaps they had one more episode left to air but it was a mistake and Password aired there. Newspaper's make mistakes also
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Post by Chris Wilkinson on Jul 6, 2018 21:59:47 GMT
Come on people what is so hard to believe that there was not a preemption in the TV guide in Singapore. Every country had preemptions for one reason or another from time to time be it for Sports, Political events, National Holidays and such. I remember as a kid after Dark Shadows ended its run on ABC on 2 April 1971 the following week a new show appeared in Dark Shadows place in the listings in the Los Angeles Times, But on one day Dark Shadows was still listed instead of Password and as an 8 year old I assumed perhaps they had one more episode left to air but it was a mistake and Password aired there. Newspaper's make mistakes also Why would 6 November 1972 have been a pre-emption when The Myth Makers (next scheduled serial) had been sent from New Zealand on 20 September 1972 - at least six weeks earlier with plenty of time to get through customs? If it was customs that delayed the process, why was the same not true for The Savages which was sent from NZ on 10 January 1972 and aired just ten days later on 20 January 1972? There were no problems in screening Galaxy 4 for 9 October 1972.
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Post by Robert Lia on Jul 6, 2018 22:10:29 GMT
Television shows get preempted all the time for multiple reasons, there is nothing sinister about a preemption. Look how many times Dr. Who had preemption's on the PBS stations in the USA in the 70's and 80's.
As I said above preemption's can happen unexpectedly as well. Look at the Assassination attempt of US President Ronald Reagan in 1981 that was an unscheduled preemption across the board on all 3 networks here in the USA.
And also as the ABC rejected the episode it would have been unable to offer it to Singapore or any other minor Commonwealth Country
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Post by Chris Wilkinson on Jul 7, 2018 11:35:36 GMT
Television shows get preempted all the time for multiple reasons, there is nothing sinister about a preemption. Look how many times Dr. Who had preemption's on the PBS stations in the USA in the 70's and 80's. As I said above preemption's can happen unexpectedly as well. Look at the Assassination attempt of US President Ronald Reagan in 1981 that was an unscheduled preemption across the board on all 3 networks here in the USA. And also as the ABC rejected the episode it would have been unable to offer it to Singapore or any other minor Commonwealth Country Haha, sinister pre-emptions!
A case that springs to my mind is Zambia in 1965 where they had four pre-emptions for the first episode of An Unearthly Child. However, you can see from the airdates on BroaDWcast that Singapore had a comparatively impeccable record of screening things on a weekly basis when showing 1960s Doctor Who. Though the broadcast times differed slightly from week to week, there were only a couple of occasions where there no Doctor Who was screened, one of which was a national holiday.
From all that's been said about this, those who have researched it are assured that an episode did air and that it was not a pre-emption. Personally, I think the extra billing could very well be a repeat of either Galaxy 4 #4 or an early showing of The Myth Makers #1 repeated again the following week. This could have been down to power cuts, or transmission problems at Television Singapore.
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