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Post by Alex Taylor on Oct 6, 2012 19:01:26 GMT
Yeah, that is either cribbed from Wikipedia or else the other way around. Either way, it's nonsense: the DVD release was taken from broadcast-quality tapes, and the "VHS release" referred to was a set of 20 episodes across 12 tapes put out by RCA in the mid-80s. Eight of those episodes resurfaced on the DVD.
As for home-recordings...we know that a great many were indeed recorded on their original broadcasts. The problem is that tapes weren't particularly cheap back then, and it was ultimately just a kids' show so the majority of recordings were likely timeshifting and thus recorded over soon after. Most of the surviving off-airs come from the collection of someone who actually worked on the show.
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Post by Alex Taylor on Oct 6, 2012 17:15:58 GMT
I suppose you *could* argue that it's only clips that are missing, but from the perspective of an episode-hunt we are looking for the complete shows - the UK-specific inserts are the main difference between the UK and US edits, but they are not the only ones. For example, I'm told by the sound supervisor for the first two years of the UK show that they routinely dubbed extra sound effects in over the US-shot scenes, and I know that there was sometimes extra incidental music used too.
Bottom line: we would want the complete UK edits to be recovered.
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Post by Alex Taylor on Oct 6, 2012 10:01:01 GMT
You mean like the heading "Lost UK TV Shows Search Engine" that appears on every page? ;-)
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Post by Alex Taylor on Oct 6, 2012 9:32:14 GMT
None of the episodes are "missing" in that the original US edits all exist and indeed have been available on DVD for years. It's only the UK shows which have been lost.
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Post by Alex Taylor on Sept 24, 2012 20:54:07 GMT
Yes, there is :-) 'Volcano' doesn't have a cliffhanger reprise anyway, but IIRC it's hardly unique in that respect.
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Post by Alex Taylor on Sept 24, 2012 19:14:32 GMT
Actually...doesn't DMP:6 end with the cliffhanger into 'Feast'?
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Post by Alex Taylor on Sept 24, 2012 19:04:29 GMT
You mean on the original UK broadcast, or the Enterprises f/r? Yes, on the UK broadcast. Fascinating! I never knew that :-)
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Post by Alex Taylor on Sept 24, 2012 14:10:54 GMT
As for Master Plan 6, there's documentary evidence to indicate that caption actually read Next Episode Volcano... You mean on the original UK broadcast, or the Enterprises f/r?
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Post by Alex Taylor on Sept 24, 2012 10:43:06 GMT
Actually, I was asking whether *Enterprises* ever did edits to remove/replace cliffhangers where the following serial was no longer being sold. ISTR reading somewhere that the end of 'Web Planet:6' was re-edited to lead into 'The Space Museum' rather than 'The Lion' once the latter was withdrawn, but my memory isn't what it once was. Also, I can't remember things.
I'm also curious to know whether DMP:6 was edited by Enterprises to remove the 'Next Episode: The Feast of Steven' caption.
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Post by Alex Taylor on Sept 24, 2012 7:45:58 GMT
Although if the entire cliffhanger was excised then presumably that was done by the broadcaster rather than the censor.
Actually...given that noone ended up buying Masterplan, did Enterprises re-edit G4 (or anything else) to remove cliffhangers?
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Post by Alex Taylor on Sept 24, 2012 7:43:42 GMT
If that were the case then I would expect the tapes to be PAL, not NTSC. The 12 released on DVD a few years back are the only episodes that Henson have, AFAIK, and none of them are included in that set of clips.
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Post by Alex Taylor on Sept 23, 2012 13:01:21 GMT
In the case of 'Fraggle', there were four production blocks, both in the US and the UK, each of 24 episodes (although exactly *which* 24 episodes made up each block differed slightly between the two countries). In the US, this was then split into five seasons for transmission, which will be what IMDB are showing.
In the UK it was split into seven series, over a much longer time-period: the US show ran from 1984-87, but in the UK it ran 1984-90.
Looking more closely at the lostshows list, I think what may have happened is this: my site lists 12 episodes as 'released on VHS'. This refers to the mid-80s RCA home-video releases, and the episodes have not been available since. lostshows omits all mention of these 12 episodes, which makes me suspect that whoever compiled that page incorrectly thought that I was talking about a *recent* VHS release which hadn't yet made it onto DVD and thus that the original tapes were still around.
They also omit a further batch of episodes which (to the best of my knowledge) either only exist as off-air recordings or do not exist at all. This batch tallies neatly with the list of episodes on the public-facing BFI database. Unfortunately this is just a partial list of broadcast details, and does not reflect the episodes the BFI actually have. Unless they've acquired more since the start of this year, the BFI only have the episodes listed on my site.
Bottom line: unless there have been discoveries of which I am unaware, there are 29 episodes available in broadcast-quality, 12 out on DVD and 17 at the BFI; a further 12 as commercial VHS releases and 16 as off-air recordings; and 39 missing.
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Post by Alex Taylor on Sept 23, 2012 11:15:01 GMT
The listing on lostshows.com doesn't match my records, and contains at least two errors: there were 96 shows, not 120; and what they have listed as 'Series Four' was actually two separate runs of episodes, so their 'Series Five' should be 'Series Six'.
Other than that, their list and totals do not match mine. From my own research, 39 are thought to be missing, not 34; and of the 57 which survive 28 are not known to exist in broadcast-quality, not 14. The page also omits several episodes which I have listed as 'missing' or VHS. Does this indicate a mistake in the lostshows database, or have more episodes been discovered?
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Post by Alex Taylor on Sept 22, 2012 23:09:53 GMT
The YT clips went up in July, I think. I haven't been able to find out whether Henson only hold clips or have the full episodes. Another DVD, 'The Best of Red', was released in August which included a couple of the episodes but unfortunately the disc turned out to be just the US shows again.
Henson definitely have at least clips from some other 'missing' episodes - a number of Captain/Sprocket and Travelling Matt clips were featured on the US Season Three DVD set. None of them came from episodes I don't have, but most of them were from episodes for which broadcast tapes are not thought to be available. It's possible of course that they simply have the original insert tapes rather than complete shows, but I now wonder if the Paley Center tapes contributed to the DVDs...
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Post by Alex Taylor on Sept 22, 2012 22:21:15 GMT
Do they now...that could certainly explain why the YT videos are all running at 29.97fps.
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