Daleks' Master Plan Questions

[G D Peck]

Just got a few questions around The Daleks' Master Plan (incl. Mission to the Unknown).

Firstly do we know yet what actually happened to the prints sent to Australia? Were they destroyed by the ABC or sent back to the BBC?

What was Australia sent, was it negatives or viewing prints? Only ask as if Australia were sent negatives does that mean the three existing episodes were from a different source.

Do we know where the three returned episodes originated?

[Bobby Clark (synthpopalooza)]

Far as I know, episode 2 was in the hands of an ex BBC employee who took the film (and also an episode of the Daleks) back in the 60's to save it from destruction. Both prints were returned to the BBC in 2003.

The other two surviving episodes were, if I remember rightly, found in the basement of a Mormon church in London ...

[Jon Preddle]

Oct 22, 2011 12:26:43 GMT G D Peck said:

What was Australia sent, was it negatives or viewing prints? Only ask as if Australia were sent negatives does that mean the three existing episodes were from a different source.

Do we know where the three returned episodes originated?

As was standard practice at the time, the BBC in London sent their office in Sydney Australia a full set of negatives of all Doctor Who stories. BBC Sydney then struck off a set of positives for the ABC. (These would likely to have been Suppressed Field telerecordings.)

Those positives were duly dispatched to the Australian film censorship board. The prints were returned to BBC Sydney when the serials were "rejected".

Without the sale to the ABC, BBC Sydney was unable to offer the serial to other countries within their catchment area.

It's unlikely that Sydney would have sent the negs back to London, as London had telerecorded a fresh set of negatives and prints as Stored Field telerecordings by then (two of which were subsequently recovered in the 1980s).

The "old" Suppressed Field negs and prints held by BBC Sydney were most likely destroyed sometime in the late 1960s/early 1970s.

[LanceM]

Fascinating information there Jon, never heard the end on that one myself. Always was a bit curious as to the fate of the ABC recordings.

As a side note, I was under the impression that the Mormon Church (where the box emblazoned with the BBC logo as discovered containing these among others), was prior to that BBC property?

I still leave hope for further material from this fascinating serial may as yet be discovered. Who knows, someone could have recorded the Christmas special ( Feast Of Steven ) on a CV-2000B for their kids by a wealthy family? You just never know......And The Hunt Goes On! ;D

Cheers, Lance.

[Greg H]

I must confess I sometimes idly wonder about those negatives. I wonder if any of them seeped out into the film collecting community or fans? Far from impossible as there is precedent. You never know your luck, some might surface at some point.

[Steven Sigel]

Lance: You are correct, the building where DMP 5&10 were found was formerly a BBC facility.
Greg: Very unlikely that a collector would have a negative - I've probably had 25,000 16mm prints go through my hands, and I've only run across maybe a few dozen negatives of any sort. Since you can't project a negative, most collectors wouldn't be interested. (Not impossible of course, just not likely).

[Steve Roberts]

Oct 22, 2011 21:53:41 GMT Jon Preddle said:

As was standard practice at the time, the BBC in London sent their office in Sydney Australia a full set of negatives of all Doctor Who stories.

Do we actually have proof that this is true, or is this long-established "truth" simply the result of someone putting two and two together simply because it sounded likely. I was talking to Damian the other day and he had been in direct contact with someone who had been high up in the process and was told that the ABC were never sent negs.

[Jon Preddle]

Nov 20, 2011 8:10:20 GMT Steve Roberts said:

Oct 22, 2011 21:53:41 GMT Jon Preddle said:

As was standard practice at the time, the BBC in London sent their office in Sydney Australia a full set of negatives of all Doctor Who stories.

Do we actually have proof that this is true, or is this long-established "truth" simply the result of someone putting two and two together simply because it sounded likely. I was talking to Damian the other day and he had been in direct contact with someone who had been high up in the process and was told that the ABC were never sent negs.

The ABC wasn't sent negs, but the BBC's Sydney office was. They had them to make the prints for the ABC (who sometimes needed multiple copies of the same eps), NZ, Hong Kong and Singapore.

(The actual task of making the prints was farmed out to external film labs.)

I may be wrong in that negs of ALL Doctor Who eps were sent to Sydney; but they were certainly still supplying prints as 'late' as 1969, as evidenced by the "Australian Reel Co" stamp on the film can for "The Moonbase" ep 3.

Jon

[Steve Roberts]

Do you have evidence for this? Do copies of the paperwork for the film lab and that sort of thing still exist? It just strikes me as a bit odd, from our end if nothing else. Each neg would require a separate telerecording run at the BBC in order to produce it. It just seems really unlikely they would do anything other than strike a single master neg in London and then produce all the film prints from that. If they needed two prints, they could have new ones struck and shipped by air in a couple of days.

Might they have been sent a finegrain print and had reversal prints struck directly from that instead if they did indeed make local prints? And now that I think about it, that might explain some of the poorer quality prints recovered from overseas that seem very 'dupey' - they might be direct reversal prints from a finegrain print.

[Jon Preddle]

Nov 20, 2011 22:48:49 GMT Steve Roberts said:

Do you have evidence for this? Do copies of the paperwork for the film lab and that sort of thing still exist? It just strikes me as a bit odd, from our end if nothing else. Each neg would require a separate telerecording run at the BBC in order to produce it. It just seems really unlikely they would do anything other than strike a single master neg in London and then produce all the film prints from that. If they needed two prints, they could have new ones struck and shipped by air in a couple of days.

Might they have been sent a finegrain print and had reversal prints struck directly from that instead if they did indeed make local prints? And now that I think about it, that might explain some of the poorer quality prints recovered from overseas that seem very 'dupey' - they might be direct reversal prints from a finegrain print.

I might not be au fait with the terminology, but yes, what you say is probably correct. BBC Sydney arranged for the copies for local distribution using some form of "master copy", whether a neg or other.

I can't lay my hands on it right now (I've been looking for it all morning!), but I do have a published interview from the late 1960s/early 1970s with someone from the BBC, who comments on the fact that the cost of making prints (he quotes they were 12 pounds each) made sending films cost-prohibitive, which is why they bicycle them or have copies made at a local distribution point.

I do know that the ABC requested "audition prints" from BBC Sydney, and in NZ they often had to send films to Sydney to be "Perma-cleaned". And sometimes the NZBC sent video-tapes to Australia to be converted onto film, because they didn't have the facilities to have that done in NZ. So while there is no paperwork for the film lab to speak of, there is some documentation held at TVNZ that covers the "Permaclean" process.

It might therefore be possible to track down the name of the "film lab" that was used by the BBC and NZBC.

[Steven Sigel]

I don't think that the film reel or can would have any relevance at all -- the films would have been most likely sent on cores, and put onto reels and into cans at their destinations.

I've got some prints in my collection that came from Australia - there are a couple with ABC leaders, but IIRC, those leaders were spliced on, not printed on. The others look like normal BBC TRs... I can check the T/R date on them if you want to see if they look like a separate recording date or not.

It's possible that dupe negs were made from the original T/R negs, but usually there would be some notation written into the leader (as there was, for example with the prints of Web Planet that I have which all say "Spanish Version" on them ).

[Jon Preddle]

Nov 21, 2011 2:20:13 GMT Steven Sigel said:

I don't think that the film reel or can would have any relevance at all -- the films would have been most likely sent on cores, and put onto reels and into cans at their destinations.

The Moonbase film can has on it a BBC Enterprises sticker plus a NZBC sticker. Only the latter would have been put on at destination. The BBC one would have been placed on at source, which, given the "Australian Reel Co" moulded stamp on it, must have been Sydney.

gallifreybase.com/w/index.php/The_Moonbase

[Steven Sigel]

Wouldn't that just mean that the print was put onto a reel/can in Sydney, not that it was necessarily printed there?... Could just as easily have been printed in London, sent to Sydney on a lab core, then transferred to a reel before being sent to NZ...

[Jon Preddle]

Nov 21, 2011 2:52:52 GMT Steven Sigel said:

Wouldn't that just mean that the print was put onto a reel/can in Sydney, not that it was necessarily printed there?... Could just as easily have been printed in London, sent to Sydney on a lab core, then transferred to a reel before being sent to NZ...

If so, why didn't BBC London send the film directly to NZ rather than to Australia first?!

Of course, those films could have been just some of several being sent from the UK to Sydney. at the time.

It would also mean the films were sent along with a sticker to be affixed to the film can before being despatched to NZ. But why would they bother doing that?

Or was the sticker typed and attached in Sydney? If so, why bother including the Purchase Order number?

Yes, tis very confusing!

[Jon Preddle]

Nov 21, 2011 2:52:52 GMT Steven Sigel said:

Wouldn't that just mean that the print was put onto a reel/can in Sydney, not that it was necessarily printed there?... Could just as easily have been printed in London, sent to Sydney on a lab core, then transferred to a reel before being sent to NZ...

I've remembered we've previously held a similar discussion on this forum about the ARC film cans!

missingepisodes.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=1024