Need help for writing an article

[James Amaz]

So I'm putting together an article on missing episodes for the humor megasite Cracked.com, and I've come here looking for material. I need one or two other shows with missing episodes to write about. They do not have to be British, but it's fine if they are. 

I have already included:

Dr. Who
Mystery Science Theater 3000
The Sesame Street episode "Snuffy's Parents get a Divorce"
The Tonight Show (incl. Johnny Carson and Jack Paar)
The DuMont Network (incl. the early Jackie Gleason sketches)
The Quartermass Experiment

But I've been given some restrictions:

An editor from the site told me that there were too many episodes that are lost because the tape was wiped in order to be reused, which made the article feel kinda repetitive. I originally had the UK version of Fraggle Rock on my list, but I removed it because of this. Now my list has only two episodes lost for that reason, which I'm assuming is the maximum.

Cracked has a rule that your list can't have more than two items in common with a similar list. I've already hit two in common with lists on other sites that contain:

Doomwatch
A for Andromeda
Out of the Unknown
Out of this World
Hancock's Half Hour
Counterstrike
Ace of Wands
Dark Shadows

Mary Kay and Johnny
The Dick Cavett Show
The Avengers
The CBS Evening News (Using other news shows would probably be a gray area)
The Madhouse on Castle Street
Search for Tomorrow
At Last the 1948 Show
The Magnificent Marble Machine

I think they've also done other articles that mention the lost original footage of live events like the moon landings.

So with all those restrictions, you can see how I'm having trouble coming up with one or two more items. What are some good ones? The more interesting/popular the show was (or has since become), the better. Remember, they can't be shows that were wiped for the sake of reusing the tape.

[RWels]

A moderator will shortly tell you to use your real name.

Meanwhile, how about "My Living Doll"? The master tapes/films were lost in an earthquake in the 90s (you google this later to check). It's also interesting because it's a collectors' dilemma: There's (reportedly) a chap who is trying to release the episodes he can find along with bonus material - so far so good - but he has scared off film collectors by using heavy handed tactics (demanding films rather than asking, claiming they were under copyright when they weren't).

Then there is Sherlock Holmes, one TV adaptation has quite a few missing. With Peter Cushing I think? Others here will know better.

I miss Not Only But Also, Misleading Cases, and All Gas And Gaiters, but that's purely personal. Many people won't know them, let alone the (locally famous) examples from The Netherlands that I could mention.

Small parts of Monty Python were wiped. You might also think of shows (or movies) that once were lost but were recovered (DW and ALT1S (the latter once nearly nil and now 73% extant) but there may be many more that we don't know of.

Was Fraggle Rock wiped? I thought the tapes were simply shipped around a few times until no-one knew what became of them?

Nuance: The moon landing footage wasn't lost. There were data tapes from which better images could have been produced. It's just not the same.


Although it was incredibly shortsighted, please keep it a bit in perspective: It was a widespread practice at the time when there were no chances for repeats and home video did not exist; and there are also many shows were (or were not) archived that we do not miss today at all. I'm just saying, it's no use blaming the people in charge today.
It sort of mirrors the movie history. As soon as colour (and in case of the movies, sound) was around the earlier output was dumped as worthless. Copies often survive at the end of the line, that is, Australia and New Zealand.
Actually the wiping would not have done as much damage when they hadn't dumped the film copies (telerecordings AKA kinescopes) in the '70s. You can't reuse film so it was used as landfill... If tapes had been wiped but films not junked, we would have almost everything we are missing... (Discuss, please!)

Finally, perhaps you could inspire some recoveries. Not all collectors are into this - see the My Living Doll example - but many are. And after all, allowing the right people to take a copy of a privately owned film print is the only way in which missing episodes will really become safe and available again.
Even audio recordings taken from TV would be welcome to KAL. There are even a few US and UK shows for which video but no audio exists. Who knows, your readers' parents' audio reels might just help us out. I have personally returned a lot of audio to KAL (and sometimes to the BBC even though they have little commercial use for it).

[John Green]

Good reply.I think-I should know this-that the Fraggle problem relates to Southern TV's archive belonging to Disney,who don't seem to care about the material.
For a humour site.I'd mention the peculiar 'Heil Honey,I'm Home' (more missing,generally unbroadcast,than lost).
If Leslie Phillips has cachet amongst the sort-of-youngsters the recent retrieval of episodes of Our Man From Saint Marks is a possible. wipednews.com/2012/04/29/ourmanatstmarks/
Look for the thread on Hugh and I Spy,too. wipednews.com/2013/06/23/hughandispy/
The weird Gnomes of Dulwich (worth a google) is entirely missing,I believe.

[Rob Moss]

Sept 24, 2013 21:51:59 GMT RWels said:

A moderator will shortly tell you to use your real name.

You rang..?

Yes, welcome to the board, Captain, but as my learned friend rightly points out, we have a policy here of using real names, please, not handles. I'd be grateful of you could change your user display name straight away, please.

Many thanks!

[RWels]

Sept 24, 2013 22:01:46 GMT John Green said:

Good reply.I think-I should know this-that the Fraggle problem relates to Southern TV's archive belonging to Disney,who don't seem to care about the material.
For a humour site.I'd mention the peculiar 'Heil Honey,I'm Home' (more missing,generally unbroadcast,than lost).
If Leslie Phillips has cachet amongst the sort-of-youngsters the recent retrieval of episodes of Our Man From Saint Marks is a possible. wipednews.com/2012/04/29/ourmanatstmarks/
Look for the thread on Hugh and I Spy,too. wipednews.com/2013/06/23/hughandispy/
The weird Gnomes of Dulwich (worth a google) is entirely missing,I believe.

All episodes of Heil Honey I'm exist, even though only the pilot was screened. I would class that as a separate list of series that exist but have no past because they were never aired, like (the less bizarre) Behind the Veil and the sadly misjudged Desmond Pfeiffer. There are already several lists of weird TV pilots, anyway.

Gnomes of Dulwhich... now there's a strange concept. The last (#6) episode's audio is known to exist, but that's all. Missing series from those days sometimes star really famous actors early in their careers. Peter Cushing for example was in a Pride and Prejudice series in the '50s.
Yet another factor is that once something's missing, it acquires a mystique. Lost films and tv shows may appear better than they were, "London after midnight", a much sought after missing film starring Lon Chaney, was apparently a complete dud according to the people who had seen and reviewed it. The famously missing series from The Netherlands that I mentioned might not have had any lasting appeal at all, or not beyond 1 generation of TV viewers. We have no way to check, so lost show X now becomes an imaginary masterpiece.

I'd really call your list a success if it manages to recover some audio (perhaps even for mute video) and a masterpiece if it actually helps to recover video recordings.



For the other members of this board: I wonder if it's worthwhile to keep a list somewhere of mute (video-only) recordings... Would that help focus on the audio?

[Greg H]

Also, the non-forum section of this website could be of use to the OP. If you click on www.missing-episodes.com/ and then look for the link on the left 'what's missing', there is a bit of an overview of some of the missing bits of television history. As it is an overview it may help you not to get too bogged down with what is a fairly weighty topic to research!

[Brian Denton]

The weird Gnomes of Dulwich (worth a google) is entirely missing,I believe.

This is probably a good example of one of those where a found episode would be likely to disappoint. However, I can clearly recall seeing a b&w clip of Hugh and Terry with outstretched fishing rods arguing about something. Maybe it was on a quiz or retrospective in the eighties.

[James Amaz]

Thanks, everyone! Profile updated. I'll look into a few of these suggestions shortly.

[John Green]

I can remember watching and not liking 'Gnomes'.I'm not sure I'd have understood the analogy/metaphor.Have to admit that Terry Scott also tends to come across as aggressive.

[RWels]

Sept 25, 2013 13:18:05 GMT Brian Denton said:

The weird Gnomes of Dulwich (worth a google) is entirely missing,I believe.

According to the site on the forum of which we are now (and also to the motion picture gallery), there is an audio recording of the last episode. Nothing else.
Perhaps the Gnomes are a bit too obscure for the article. Then again, series that have been completely wiped are more impressive that way than those that are missing just a few or have a few no longer in colour (Goodies), or even those from which a couple of episodes survive.

Billy Bunter is another example of which a lot was never recorded and much that was, is now lost too. Don't forget to take a look at the main site's lists.

[Pete Morris]

IMDB has tags for lost series, and partially lost series

www.imdb.com/keyword/lost-tv-series

www.imdb.com/keyword/partially-lost-tv-series


Note - this is the results of a search engine, not a list that someone else has made. You can use it without breaking the 2 item rule.

And also note that the "best" or at least the highest rated are at the top of the list. That should help.

[Pete Morris]

Another thing - are you counting Doctor Who as one of your two wiped to reuse the videotape? It's more complex than that. All bar one of the episodes were transferred to film before the videotape was reused. The films have been lost for a variety of reasons. I think you can fairly use this and two other shows where the video was wiped.

[RWels]

Sept 25, 2013 20:13:18 GMT Pete Morris said:

Another thing - are you counting Doctor Who as one of your two wiped to reuse the videotape? It's more complex than that. All bar one of the episodes were transferred to film before the videotape was reused. The films have been lost for a variety of reasons. I think you can fairly use this and two other shows where the video was wiped.

That's one of the things I already said.
All the same, they may not have been literally lost when the tapes were wiped only when the films were discarded, but it pretty much amounts to the same thing.
(OT: Which DW, other than Feast of Steven, was not transferred to film?)

[James Amaz]

Sept 24, 2013 22:01:46 GMT John Green said:

Good reply.I think-I should know this-that the Fraggle problem relates to Southern TV's archive belonging to Disney,who don't seem to care about the material.
For a humour site.I'd mention the peculiar 'Heil Honey,I'm Home' (more missing,generally unbroadcast,than lost).

I would LOVE to do Heil Honey I'm Home. Unfortunately, someone already included it on a column on shows cancelled after one episode, and they don't generally allow two columns to bring up the same thing, unless they are showing us something major about the thing that the other column did not.

It's actually OK if something was unbroadcast. The Sesame Street example on my list falls into that category. The working title is "7 Legendary Shows (with Episodes You Absolutely Cannot See).

So generally, the more legendary, the better.

[RWels]

But you're not looking for shows that were recorded, not transmitted, and lost, are you? I'm sure there are examples of that, too.

Heil Honey is strange in that while 8 or 9 episodes still exist, it was apparently a take-over of the network that cancelled it, and not protests... or so I've heard.

Never seen but still existing is also "Jake's Journey", a pilot for a never-made series by Monty Python's Graham Chapman. A clip is on youtube (from "The best TV shows that never were").