Destroyed Episodes

[myreignofterror]

I think Australia has some. I know there have been searches in the past, but according to some info I got from a very reliable, Second Doctor Handbook, Australia bought all episodes, except for Feast of Steven, which was not being sold anywhere.

[Adrian Gregg]

nope sorry, as all who fans should know (and i know this would destroy ones hopes entirley)

all the "missing" episodes had a internal BBC Number and a filecard, in the late 70's these cards were looked at and checked in depth and found that almost 99% of "struck" prints had indeed been returned and destroyed, pretty much the ONLY epps that have been returned are ODD prints ones that were struck for a reson and never intended to be part of Ents catalouge.



ok ok the odd print turns up but for the most part these are those Odd prints. like the dalek masterplan, crusade, etc etc.. these were NEVER ents prints to start with.

and yes maybe there's some early Home video/film recording's out there.
but for the most part if any recordings of this nature ever see the light of day, its "proper" adult shows and light entertainment. not cheap kid's shows. hell one guy even adapted his 16mm camera in the early 60's and made his own telerecordings of the entire run of the ATV morcambe and wise run. and some of those are better quality that the official ones.
so yes there is a chance but think about it..

[Richard Bignell]

Apr 22, 2008 7:04:30 GMT Adrian Gregg said:

all the "missing" episodes had a internal BBC Number and a filecard, in the late 70's these cards were looked at and checked in depth and found that almost 99% of "struck" prints had indeed been returned and destroyed

Really? Who did that?

pretty much the ONLY epps that have been returned are ODD prints ones that were struck for a reson and never intended to be part of Ents catalouge.

ok ok the odd print turns up but for the most part these are those Odd prints. like the dalek masterplan, crusade, etc etc.. these were NEVER ents prints to start with.

I'm not quite sure where you get that one from! All the 16mm telerecordings were made for BBC Enterprises. The only exception to this is the telerecording of the pilot episode that was made for Sydney Newman to view and give his observations.

Richard

[Adrian Gregg]

Today at 2:04, ade42 wrote:
all the "missing" episodes had a internal BBC Number and a filecard, in the late 70's these cards were looked at and checked in depth and found that almost 99% of "struck" prints had indeed been returned and destroyed

Really? Who did that?

i read this in the mid 80's might have been an interview with Steve Bryant. In the interview he was subduing the more, lets say, rabid fans who claimed "every" Tv studio was capible of hiding missing episodes and were causing merry hell for the beeb at the time. might have even been with Adam Lee regarding the Ice Warriors find.
blimey it could even been from Ian Levene.

its only from memory, but in the interview they,he,she?!
stated that in the late 70's when Ian Levene (which is why he could have said this) "We went though all the card's. these are a card system like the dewy system used in libarys, every film Neg had a card and there was a card made up when a batch of positives were made (with space to list the 20odd struck) and when the print was returned from somehere a red line was written though the returned print and a small d, if the print was sent back out again this information was on the cards, it listed every print of every Dr who that Ents had struck. and in virualy every case the bbc got back the epp and then sent it for destruction. the bit i remember is how he describes his heart almost breaking when going though these cards as it was clear THEN that they had been destroyed and here was the evidence. but he did mention that there were some prints that were not "crossed off" but wouldent go into what they were.
the intervew also went into another show "Z-Cars" as he said that the "Cards" for Z-cards were not "crossed off" and a proper search for Z-cars could find loads of epps. where he knew 30 years ago that a dr who search could find bugger all..

Now the reason this sticks in my mind is that i Handel one of a kind 16 inch Accetaes most days, and i have livley conversations with the gents that bring me these discs for Transfering, and yes most are film collectors too and have rafts of Ents films but alas most have never seen a dr who print !! I have a dr who 16mm Sticker (copy) as a poster above my rack mounted gear at old film collectors always comment about it .. but talking to these gents about the TV prints they Once had makes one almost cry at the classic comedy that "at one stage" certanly DID exist but again the only Dr Who prints they had seen were early pertwee's etc.

please Richard prove me wrong!! i could live with a litle hope!

Quote:
pretty much the ONLY epps that have been returned are ODD prints ones that were struck for a reson and never intended to be part of Ents catalouge.

ok ok the odd print turns up but for the most part these are those Odd prints. like the dalek masterplan, crusade, etc etc.. these were NEVER ents prints to start with.

I'm not quite sure where you get that one from! All the 16mm telerecordings were made for BBC Enterprises. The only exception to this is the telerecording of the pilot episode that was made for Sydney Newman to view and give his observations.

Richard

What about PASB prints? where they just for ents? did they make em for future use? im a bit hazy about this.

what about viewing prints did ents make all these?

and if Ents made ALL the prints arn't there records which would prove beyond dought that all dr who is gone? Again i bloody hope not..

but i think so.. (hell this is not some kind of conspirisy to keep us looking when "those in the know" Know that all hope is lost)

[Richard Bignell]

Apr 22, 2008 9:55:38 GMT Adrian Gregg said:

its only from memory, but in the interview they,he,she?!
stated that in the late 70's when Ian Levene (which is why he could have said this) "We went though all the card's. these are a card system like the dewy system used in libarys, every film Neg had a card and there was a card made up when a batch of positives were made (with space to list the 20odd struck)...

Well, I think you're going to need to point to the actual interview itself if any of this is to be believed. Some of what you're saying seems to be culled from the interview that Ian Levine did with DWB back in 1992, where he talks about that "we know of a fact that they made 28 prints of every Doctor Who episode and they were sold out to 28 different tv stations", which is total guff anyway!

What about PASB prints?

What on earth is a PASB print? PasB stands for Programme-as-Broadcast and refers to a paper document listing the details of any given episode.

what about viewing prints did ents make all these?

The *only* prints made that could be described as "viewing prints" were the ones from The Daleks' Master Plan which were sent to ABC TV in Australia - but I don't think that there's any actual evidence that these were sent as viewing prints. Rather they were delivered to ABC assuming that, like all the other episodes, ABC would be purchasing and broadcasting them. It's just in this case, they were rejected for transmission.

and if Ents made ALL the prints arn't there records which would prove beyond dought that all dr who is gone?

As far as can be ascertained, none of the Enterprises card indexes have survived. If they have, they're now in deep archival storage and can't be retrieved.

Richard

[Matthew North]

in these parts PASB is Programme as Broadcast refering to the recording of a live programme, in my case the 6.30 news etc.

[Richard Bignell]

Apr 22, 2008 11:14:19 GMT Matthew North said:

in these parts PASB is Programme as Broadcast refering to the recording of a live programme, in my case the 6.30 news etc.

Yes, PasB is indeed Programme-as Broadcast not Recorded as mentioned. Original post amended.

I've never heard it used in any other context other than the named BBC documentation.

I still haven't got a clue what he means by PASB prints though!

Richard

[Andrew Martin]

Apr 22, 2008 11:24:52 GMT Richard Bignell said:

Apr 22, 2008 11:14:19 GMT Matthew North said:

in these parts PASB is Programme as Broadcast refering to the recording of a live programme, in my case the 6.30 news etc.

Yes, PasB is indeed Programme-as Broadcast not Recorded as mentioned. Original post amended.

I've never heard it used in any other context other than the named BBC documentation.

I still haven't got a clue what he means by PASB prints though!

Richard

PasB does also mean any recording taken off air, eg News, Newsnight, The One Show etc - the master tapes of live shows are logged as 'PasB's (which even confuses people working in tv sometimes!) However no-one would be recording Dr Who off air onto film recording on a regular basis unless it was just to avoid running the tape twice, i.e. early 70s DW film recordings have the same recording date as their tx date suggesting they were made when the tape was being transmitted.

[Richard Bignell]

Thanks for the clarification, Andrew! ;D

So presumably, ade42 is simply referring to the 16mm telerecordings when he refers to a "PASB print". If so, then yes, negatives were struck for use by BBC Enterprises.

Richard

[Steven Sigel]

As a quick aside -- my understanding is that the difference between a viewing print and a broadcast print is the density (contrast) that the print is struck with. A broadcast print needed to be a bit lighter in contrast than you might normally expect from a print you wanted to watch on a projector (you can still watch a broadcast print, they just look a bit pale).

In terms of Dr. Who, I've seen several prints that have "Viewing print" on the leader...

[LanceM]

All in all I would hope as the rest of us would that more episodes do indeed exist out there somewhere. StevenS stated he has seen prints which have a "Viewing Print" label on the leader, making the point that it is possible other viewing prints were struck. There are the cases of show producers, engineers, stars, etc who would of been in the position to request a viewing copy to be struck. I do not have any solid facts to back this claim up, but would just seem logical in that respect. I remember hearing stories of say Jimi Hendrix and Paul McCartney recording their BBC TV performances on old VTR ( Video Tape Recorder ) units, Galton and Simpson and their "Steptoe and Son" Shibaden Collection. Patricia Cahill and her ITV/BBC TV Performances on CV2000B video reels, there is also the infamous second episode of The Space Pirates along with redundant copies of Moonbase 3 episodes found in a gentleman's attic on video reels he had fashioned himself from any sort of magnetic tape he could find, rather like the chap who ridged his own ATV 16mm telerecordings at home. I myself have a episode of The Benny Hill show on 8mm film, which was filmed off the TV set in colour by a fan, has the full episode too, not clips. There are episodes which were far to remote at the time to be recalled. like the Dr Who ent. prints found in Nigeria. The print of the "Lion" had a NZBC TV film leader on it, my best guess would be that NZBC spliced the BBC Enterprises label out in favor for their own label.The odd film print was indeed rescued from a film skip,saved from a rubbish bin by a BBC employee,rescued from a projector room filled with rubbish, remote TV stations, misfiled or lost within the BBC itself ( Ice Warriors,Space Pirates footage, Fury From The Deep ep 6 footage, Power of The Daleks episode 1 trailer).Agreed for the most part for the records that the BBC did keep for destruction of film print index cards, some examples of which can be seen in the second issue of Nothing At The End of The Lane. At one point I saw that a line under the card for the 16mm print for episode 5 of Power Of The Daleks.Only the future can tell really, people are constantly looking around for old film prints, and the like, archives are routinely transferring their film holdings to digi beta or other modern formats. Will keep on looking in the meantime, see what can turn up given time.

Cheers, Lance.

[Jon Preddle]

My understaning of the Australian "viewing print" process is that BBC Enterprises sent BBC Sydney a master copy negative film print tele-recording of programmes for them to sell down under. Once a sale was made, BBC Sydney struck from the negative the broadcast positives, which they sent to the foreign stations.

As far as the ABC was concerned, given the number of cuts the government censors had requested it was a matter of convenience and low cost to them to get a low quality viewing print struck first, which was sent to the censor for evaluation. Once the programmes were passed and classified, the ABC ordered a broadcast quality positive to be struck, and the cuts were made to that print.

But if the censor rejected the episode, the ABC were saved the expense of paying for a more expensive broadcast print to be struck. In the case of the Mission to the Unknown and Master Plan, since the stories were deemed unsuitable for screening, the ABC never had a broadcast quality copy made.

Since BBC Sydney couldn't sell these 12 eps to ABC they withdrew it from sale to the others countries they sold product to in their catchment area - New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, etc.

In all likelihood the censor viewing prints of MTTU and TDMP were destroyed (unless they were archived along with the censor clips, but there is no definite record of this being the case).

As to what happened to the 16mm negatives held by BBC Sydney is anyone's guess. It's likely they were destroyed too, since they wouldn't sell them. It's also possible they were sent back to London.

Having said that, my own research into the broadcast of DW in Singapore has brought to light the possiblity that the RTS screened Mission to the Unknown in 1972. If this was the case, maybe they were sent the poor quality viewing prints - that had somehow escaped destruction - by mistake..?

Jon

[Jon Preddle]

I should add, having a viewing print struck first rather than a broadcast print was not done for all programming, but only for those where it was considered likely the censors might have issues. Since the censors had given A ratings to and/or requested cuts made from previous episodes, DW was one series for which viewing prints were regularly done.

Jon

[Martin Dunne]

Apr 23, 2008 3:52:42 GMT Jon Preddle said:

Having said that, my own research into the broadcast of DW in Singapore has brought to light the possiblity that the RTS screened Mission to the Unknown in 1972. If this was the case, maybe they were sent the poor quality viewing prints - that had somehow escaped destruction - by mistake..?

Jon

Incredible! Even if this doesn't lead to anything full marks for effort!

[Greg H]

Apr 29, 2008 10:21:11 GMT Martin Dunne said:

Apr 23, 2008 3:52:42 GMT Jon Preddle said:

Having said that, my own research into the broadcast of DW in Singapore has brought to light the possiblity that the RTS screened Mission to the Unknown in 1972. If this was the case, maybe they were sent the poor quality viewing prints - that had somehow escaped destruction - by mistake..?

Jon

Incredible! Even if this doesn't lead to anything full marks for effort!

Yes, it is quite an interesting bit of information. I would be quite interested to know what your research was!