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Post by Paul Vanezis on Feb 16, 2020 9:26:53 GMT
Are there any plans to release these two found episodes on DVD? It has been discussed. I hope so. P
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Post by Paul Vanezis on Dec 24, 2019 20:17:34 GMT
Yes.
Great to see it on air again. It's actually a repeat from Boxing Day last year. I produced and directed the intro with Mike and Phil, and graded the actual episodes.
I think that we can forgive the BBC for not making 'a song and dance' about it!
Paul
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Post by Paul Vanezis on Dec 26, 2018 22:37:46 GMT
Hi all, The episodes are uncut as far as the film copies are concerned. However, a broadcaster in the past has cut a chunk out of the opening sketch in episode 7 where Eric discusses getting a knighthood. I doubt anyone will notice. There is also a jump cut during the closing credit crawl which proved too tricky to repair. Episode 5 is intact although the print is slightly warped, so not perfectly stable. However, only eagle eyed boffins will be able to spot any issues. Paul How could a broadcaster make a cut if they where audition prints? That could mean a few things. 1. They where returned originally and the BBC sent them out again. 2. They where screened aboard but not paid for. 3. Damaged while being played in the cinema and repaired. Why send a brand new print to audition when you would send out a fresh set on purchase? Or perhaps they didn't expect a high return on a sale to Sierra Leone and just sent what they had on the shelf, or bicycled it on from another country. I think the latter is more likely. Paul
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Post by Paul Vanezis on Nov 26, 2018 10:19:23 GMT
Guys, where have you been?
These have already been featured on 'The One Show', but the fabulous news is that the BBC will re-screen these at Christmas in fully restored colour. They are episodes 5 & 7 of series one.
The recovery and screening of these episodes has been made possible by the tenacity of Philip Morris of TIEA. Episode 5 will be screened at Missing Believed Wiped on December 15th.
Paul
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Post by Paul Vanezis on Nov 13, 2018 15:10:53 GMT
Kaleidoscope found: 1. Steptoe and Son episode My Old Man's A Tory in private hands and got access to it. No. They didn't find it and they didn't have access to it. Kaleidoscope was also aware of "a sizeable amount of BBC comedy shows" in private hands but could not retrieve it at the time, but now it can: No, Kal can't. It's in a different private collection and Kal don't have access. Copyright holders do. Separate to the "booklet" list, Phil Morris found nine episodes in Sierra Leone in a movie theater. No. As Charles has pointed out above, the comedy material came from a variety of sources. Philip found a cut version of the Basil Brush episode back in 2013. The print returned to the BBC this year is (apart from FR tidies) uncut. Paul
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Post by Paul Vanezis on Oct 5, 2018 19:59:16 GMT
Paul, was all this material found in Sierra Leone or just the M&W episode? Well I would be surprised if everything I have seen came from the same location. I don't know for sure; it's not a question I have asked. Paul
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Post by Paul Vanezis on Jul 21, 2014 22:58:37 GMT
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and valuable insights. Perhaps some sl were returned in1974 and some destroyed in1999. I'm curious if you feel phils response has caused you to reconsider or if this might be an area where you both may have different views. I have come to the conclusion that in the dr who community there is a lot of politics and unique people. It appears that many feel that Phil has some things in motion that could lead to some returned material. We will all celebrate if there is truth to this. And therefore I don't press and Wish godspeed. What people would feel most comfortable with is an estimated time period Phil expects for this series of leads. Wheather months, years, or decades. However if people say things to get attention,many will not be happy but it will still be hard to complain if the person has done good for the cause. What will come out of this I don't know and understand I'm not supposed to know. . And that's ok. My thanks for the added Info you shared and all you've done and I wish all the best. There are first hand accounts of screenings in the mid 1980's of DW. From the description it could be 'The Savages'. Jon Preddle pointed out that it could also indicate a screening of 'The Monster of Peladon' which was also screened in Sierra Leone. Other circumstantial evidence points to film cans of DW being there in 1992 which couldn't be 'Monster of Peladon' because no film recording copies of that serial were ever made, hence the theory that it must relate to the lost Hartnells. Then there was more specific information which came my way, but still circumstantial. In those cases, you take a view and use the best information that you have and draw a conclusion from that. Regarding Philip, he is the most dedicated person to his job that I know and doggedly follows up every lead. If he does track down anything else, it will be because he has put the effort in. He is fully deserving of any plaudits he gets, as are all the other guys who have tracked down lost material. Paul
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Post by Paul Vanezis on Jul 21, 2014 21:44:28 GMT
But if we are now discovering information is wrong then how can we trust anything else that has been put forward as 'fact'? Paul Vanezis told us all the Sierra Leone episodes were destroyed in 1999. Yet now we learn they went back to London in 1974. That's 30 years of delay. How badly could the film have degraded in that time? Phil's been searching for ten years and has stated he was on the wrong track for a long time. Can we thank Jon Preddle for that? It was only by chance Richard Bignell came across the TIE Ltd in 2008. If the initial research had been more vigourous then this may have been located sooner. There's even a rumour that TIE Ltd was mentioned by Sue Malden in Doctor Who Magazine in the 1980s. On the back of 'Wiped!' it states the following: If Phil Morris's assertion that junkings at Villers House continued until 1981 and not 1978, is true, can we expect 'Wiped!' to be filed in the fiction section instead of factual. If it was 1981 how much more material was destroyed? A serious review of the whole research done on missing episodes would be a good idea in my humble opinion It would be nice if you didn't try and hide behind a pseudonym. If you want transparency, start at home. Regardless, Phil's information doesn't negate at all material being in Sierra Leone in 1999, although of course during any research you evaluate and re-evaluate incoming information and sources to get as close to the truth as possible. Perhaps I shared the information too early? Maybe I decided to fill an information gap with what I thought to be the truth at the time in the interests of transparency? Regardless, I stand by what I said then, now. Regarding Jos, Jon and Phil worked independently. I wasn't fully aware of Jon's work to pass on to Phil in the early days, but I passed on what information I could based on the best evidence we had at the time. Key to this was my locating the commercial rights top sheets from the clearance files, the infamous clearance history sheets in 2008. These detail all sales, payments, invoice numbers etc... for all foreign sales of DW and I passed these to Philip. As for junkings continuing until 1981, well that is confirmed by two of my sources and I passed contact details to Philip. The reason why it hasn't been mentioned is because the junkings weren't official. Some of it could be explained by people who were unaware of the new directive not to junk material, possibly because they were on leave when it was implemented. Having worked for the BBC for 22 years, I know how this could happen. But one particular person was vindictive enough to make a point of junking material and gloating about it, despite the protestations of his co-workers. He was reprimanded. Yes, he did junk returned Doctor Who although nobody knows if it was material that is currently missing. Another contact I tracked down used to work at Villiers House and was a DW fan. After the directive came in, he would secretly send newly returned or at risk DW anonymously to Sue Malden at Windmill Road. I asked Sue a few years ago if she had ever been sent material anonymously and she confirmed that she had. As for Ian and whether he did in fact find and return 'The Daleks', well, I don't know as I wasn't there. But Ian did tell me that he had a photographic memory, total recall. Recently he claimed that I hadn't in fact discovered the three 'Reign of Terror' films, that he had never heard of me at the time of the discovery by BBC Enterprises and that he found and returned the material. Cyprus BC replied to the BBC Enterprises request several weeks after they responded to mine, but there is no doubt I found them first. The letter I got from Cyprus was printed in the DWAS newsletter at the time and it is dated. I have never claimed to have returned them to the BBC. And besides, I'd never heard of Ian Levine at the time. But Ian did elaborate on one important return, that of 'Evil' 2 and 'Faceless Ones' 3 in 1987. Recently he said that I had given him the films to return on my behalf. This isn't true. The films were owned by Gordon Hendry and still are. They weren't mine to give to Ian. Gordon returned the films to the BBC Archive, I was just oiling the machinery to make sure the films ended up back in the archive. Ian did however borrow the films two weeks before the return to make his own copies, in return for which he provided copies of various sci-fi drama on videotape that we wanted to see. On the day Gordon returned 'The Faceless Ones' #3, I sat with the film examiner who went through the film for the first time at the BBC, something I would do years later with the 9 films Phil returned just a few months ago. Gordon was at Television Centre where John Nathan-Turner had arranged a studio tour. Regards, Paul
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Post by Paul Vanezis on Sept 24, 2012 8:34:09 GMT
I know all the Nigerian stations were nationalised in 1976 as NTV but would the lady that Ian Levine contacted in 1984 (and who returned the three Hartnell stories sold to Midwest TV) have had access to BPTV's archive? Yes, she probably would have, assuming of course that BPTV still had possession of those prints at the time of amalgamation. Obviously we've looked into the situation in Nigeria. One thing I think we can all agree on with Ian is that he is thorough. I asked him way back whether it was possible for anything else to have survived there and he was confident he'd exhausted all possibilities. I had no reason to disbelieve him. Other countries though did have material at the same time and attitudes there were quite different, as we now know for Sierra Leone. That is a bigger problem for me; if someone had travelled there in 1984 they would have been able to watch 'The Savages' on telly. Paul
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Post by Paul Vanezis on Sept 22, 2012 15:34:20 GMT
I don't think they were actually asked. At another forum, Ian Levine mentions contacting Sierra Leone in 1982. He states that the people there told him that they had no lost episodes. It is not mentioned whether he contacted the TV station that actually bought the stories or the archive. Was he a BBC employee or representative of the company at that time? It's a blistering hot day in Freetown. A clerk at the SLBC is moving a stack of tapes when the phone rings. It's Ian Levine. He says he's looking for old films, possibly a medical series. You don't know the guy. You haven't heard of this old tv series and he hasn't offered you anything to make it worthwhile to search the shelves for him. So you tell the person on the end of the phone (the person 4000 miles away who can't look into your eyes and tell that you're lying) that you don't have those films. No sir. You put the phone down, finish moving your film and go home to your house which is little more than breeze blocks with a corrugated tin roof. Paul
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Post by Paul Vanezis on Sept 21, 2012 22:51:29 GMT
Also, Im hoping Paul reveals some more information on Sierra Leone. For example, how come Ian's contact then failed to uncover anything? Also, if we can recover something like the vinegar print, what evidence or details are there that reinforce there might not be a reel or partial reel buried in Sierra Leone. Hi George. I can't say much about Sierra Leone apart from saying there is no DW there. Some material was there in 1984 and we believe other material was there until the storage facility was shelled in 1999. Ian's contact? Ian who? As for material being buried? Well, the building was shelled and burned to the ground. Paul
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Post by Paul Vanezis on May 2, 2012 14:12:20 GMT
...some of the posts may lead people to the conclusion that these things may not be a big deal to you. Examples could include posts which may make people wonder if there is very little concern about the loss of sierra leone or interest in seeing what might be there or little emotion after the armchair theaters and also repeated comments that all things should not be kept. Sometimes Ive even sent what I thought were potential leads and never recieved a thank you back for trying. Hi George. If you've sent a lead to me I've not seen it, or the full message body wasn't sent on to me. I'm not indifferent about anything. Regarding the Armchair Theatres, that was in 1989 and a distant memory. Those films are long gone and I'm not going to worry about spilt milk. I would rather concentrate my efforts in finding more material that actually does survive somewhere. The same can be said of Sierra Leone. When I revealed that not only had we checked Sierra Leone, but we could confirm with absolute certainty that nothing was left there, people came up with all sorts of hair brained ideas about films being left behind in the rubble and that something could have survived. Those people are nuts. When I said Sierra Leone had been checked and there was nothing there, I didn't mean "...but just maybe something survived in the rubble..." I meant what I said because I know the facts. So, I'm not being indifferent, just realistic. If people want to waste their time going out there with a shovel, I can't stop them. But they will be totally bananas if they do. Sierra Leone is a place which has been crossed off the list. The Armchair Theatre episodes are long gone (20 + years). Therefore, I'm not going to waste my time debating with people the why's and wherefore's. I have better things to be doing with my time. Regards, Paul
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Post by Paul Vanezis on Apr 8, 2012 13:03:44 GMT
Hi all.
In answer to everyone (and to clarify a few misunderstandings) we did not know before very recently that Sierra Leone had retained material beyond their contract period. I am certain that some material was there until the late 1980's because material was broadcast out of contract. The station itself was not destroyed in 1999, but the building that stored all their film was. Once we're sure of our facts we'll write something up, but what we do know is that despite the BBC sending telexes to these stations back in the mid 80's, very few responses were forthcoming. When the BBC & Enterprises said there was nothing more to be found because they'd contacted everyone, they were mistaken as the return from Hong Kong proved.
We think the episodes in Sierra Leone were Galaxy 4 through to The Smugglers.
Regards,
Paul
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Post by Paul Vanezis on Dec 16, 2011 14:20:02 GMT
We missed out before 1999. Lets explore this throughly so we know for sure Guys, seriously, there is nothing there anymore. If we had the slightest inkling there was we would go personally. There are no missing DW films in Sierra Leone. The station was shelled and burned down. Any film was destroyed entirely. I admire your enthusiasm for the search, particularly after the latest recoveries, but energies need to be expended elsewhere. Regards, Paul
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Post by Paul Vanezis on Dec 13, 2011 15:05:54 GMT
Not sure if Sierra Leone has been searched or not, just thought I'd bring it to someones attention Hi Andy, Well it's a good spot, although a few people have already emailed me with the info. I can now confirm that there is no material in Sierra Leone, but I can also say that we think the report is correct, that there were Dr. Who and other films in Sierra Leone in the early 1990's. In fact, we think we know which ones. I'm afraid that between 1991 and 2002 the civil war prevented any meaningful exploration of their archives and we very recently discovered that the TV station, including their entire archive, was destroyed during the civil war, we think in 1999. The list of material lost is far too distressing to print here. Regards, Paul
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