Query: Marco Polo, at least 2 episodes, in Tehran?

[Charles Daniels]

Hello,

First off, please forgive me for anything misunderstood on my part
Just heard something third or fourth hand, and we all know how that usually goes.

I understand that Paul Vanezis was at a small event in Banbury over the weekend and he made some comments about the probable existence of Marco Polo in a foreign archive?

It was believed to be there but it was essentially unreachable?

Is this correct?
Can anyone shed further light on this?

Or was this purely hypothetical and some people are being easily over excited?
Or is this just the rumour mill again?

Anyway, thought I'd check because it would mean, perhaps, that the audition prints sent to Iran have been traced?

[Ace St.John]

According to someone on Twitter who was also at the talk from what was said there is also the possibility that the prints are no longer there anymore. Could have been nicked or lost or junked but one variable remained over the years and that was sightings of tapes marked Doctor Who on the shelves of an archive.

Paul could just be confirming what we'very known about for years so nothing to get excited about for now as far as I can see.

[Charles Daniels]

Feb 5, 2019 9:17:59 GMT Ace St.John said:

According to someone on Twitter who was also at the talk from what was said there is also the possibility that the prints are no longer there anymore. Could have been nicked or lost or junked but one variable remained over the years and that was sightings of tapes marked Doctor Who on the shelves of an archive.

Paul could just be confirming what we'very known about for years so nothing to get excited about for now as far as I can see.

Cheers!

It would be interesting to know more about how audition prints were documented and how they were moved between locations after a decision was taken by the potential customer as to a sell or no sell.

[scotttelfer]

They were sent Episodes 1 and 2 as audition prints from New Zealand. I've seen a couple of places reporting "There may be more!" but everything Iran aired (Marco Polo didn't air, all they ever held were these two audition prints) is currently held in the archives so at best there could be higher quality duplicates.

[Charles Daniels]

Feb 5, 2019 13:12:23 GMT scotttelfer said:

They were sent Episodes 1 and 2 as audition prints from New Zealand. I've seen a couple of places reporting "There may be more!" but everything Iran aired (Marco Polo didn't air, all they ever held were these two audition prints) is currently held in the archives so at best there could be higher quality duplicates.

Thanks!

I would be sceptical of anything still being in Iran even if it was ever there.

1) I hope it was bicycled or forwarded along to anywhere but London

amd

2) I've seen footage of Western media being destroyed in mass there in 1978 onwards.
Huge mountains of tape and films in bonfires.

[Richard Marple]

I imagine even if any prints remained in Iran there was a good chance they were destroyed in the aftermath of the revolution when the archives were purged.

[George D]

tapes of marco polo does not sound likely. likely they would be films if they were there.

[Vaughan Stanger]

Feb 5, 2019 13:17:37 GMT Richard Marple said:

I imagine even if any prints remained in Iran there was a good chance they were destroyed in the aftermath of the revolution when the archives were purged.

From what we know of Iran's rulers and their attitude toward Western culture, that sounds like a virtual certainty.

All Doctor Who ME finds are surprising, of course, but if this one ever happened I'd be astonished. As ever, I'd love to be proved wrong.

(Over to you, Mr Morris...)

[Ace St.John]

Feb 5, 2019 16:09:21 GMT George D said:

tapes of marco polo does not sound likely. likely they would be films if they were there.

I agree I'm just quoting how the Tweet was written although some do loosely refer to reels of film as tapes... (albeit inaccurately depending on how you look at a reel of film)

I assumed from the context that they were referring to containers or cans containing 16mm telerecordings

However upon reflection there is always a chance of telerecordings on 16mm film being telecined onto tape by the broadcaster prior to broadcasting but very unlikely that such a tape wouldnt have been wiped or recorded over for other broadcasts. As far as I know video tape copies of Who were never sent out to foreign broadcasters by the Beeb in the 1960's only film copies. Later during the color era U-matic NTSC or PAL video tapes were sent out as colour copies. 16mm b&w Telerecordings of Pertwee were still sent out for places that were still broadcasting/purchasing them in monohrome.

[John Wall]

Iran - assuming that the broadcaster hasn’t moved location - could be somewhere things have sat on shelves for decadss, like Nigeria.

[martinjwills]

Marco Polo was the most widespread of the missing episodes, so could be in many 3rd world countries, so it could be any of these. here is a link to the missing episodes list

missingepisodes.blogspot.com/p/howmanyprints.html

and at least 2 are listed as fate unknown

[Nicholas Fitzpatrick]

One being the Thai version. I've always wondered about that one, as typically Thai TV would broadcast with a Thai soundtrack, not an English one.

Of course, that list doesn't preclude other copies. For example CBC surely returned their filmprint to BBC in Toronto (which is surely more likely than them junking it) - but they'd also have had their internal video recording that they used to use to lag the broadcast by up to 3 hours to western stations - though that would likely have been reused hours later. And also their own kinescope(s) with the commercials included that was then bicycled to the remote stations that couldn't access the national feed. Though I've not heard reports of any such kinescopes surviving for anything ... and there must have been many reels a day! Probably all in a landfill in Labrador or Manitoba somewhere ...

[scotttelfer]

Feb 5, 2019 17:34:10 GMT martinjwills said:

Marco Polo was the most widespread of the missing episodes, so could be in many 3rd world countries, so it could be any of these. here is a link to the missing episodes list

missingepisodes.blogspot.com/p/howmanyprints.html

and at least 2 are listed as fate unknown

Feb 5, 2019 17:49:26 GMT Nicholas Fitzpatrick said:

One being the Thai version. I've always wondered about that one, as typically Thai TV would broadcast with a Thai soundtrack, not an English one.

Of course, that list doesn't preclude other copies. For example CBC surely returned their filmprint to BBC in Toronto (which is surely more likely than them junking it) - but they'd also have had their internal video recording that they used to use to lag the broadcast by up to 3 hours to western stations - though that would likely have been reused hours later. And also their own kinescope(s) with the commercials included that was then bicycled to the remote stations that couldn't access the national feed. Though I've not heard reports of any such kinescopes surviving for anything ... and there must have been many reels a day! Probably all in a landfill in Labrador or Manitoba somewhere ...

Just to be absolutely clear, we are talking very specifically about the Iran prints that came via New Zealand. It's not a case of "it could be any of these", this is very specifically based off the fact we don't know what happened to those particular prints. There may very well be other copies out there, but that's not what we are looking at in this particular case. Episodes 1 and 2 were sent to Iran as audition prints, and the rest remained in New Zealand until their eventual destruction.

[Jon Preddle]

NZ sent eps 1-2 to Iran in 1967. Iran TV would probably have also seen eps from the first three serials as part of its auditioning process. On the strength of these auditions, they bought the series - but only the ones that had 'music and effects' tracks to enable dubbing or narration. It appears thy also took the ones pre-dubbed into Arabic, since Arabic and Farsi are not that too dissimilar. Marco did not have M/E tracks,so it wasn't purchased or screened.

But I really do find it hard to believe that even after all this time, the Iran TV station have kept none of the other prints but did retain the two from Marco. If anything, they sent everything back to the BBC after screening. I am certain (but really have no way to prove it for fact) that the prints of The Web Planet that were held by the BBC in the 1970s with the alternative 'Next Episode: The Space Museum' caption are from this set.

[Paul Vanezis]

Hi all

To be clear, at the talk I explained that we have a first hand account from an engineer who had done some work at the state broaďcaster in Tehran. Whilst there he spotted cans of Doctor Who on a shelf. The first two eps of Marco Polo were sent there from New Zealand, and I explained that there was a slim possibility that they could still be in Tehran. I have actually mentioned this before, including to Waris Hussain directly.

There are obvious problems with Iran and until there is more of an accord with the west I don't think there is much chance of repatriation.

Paul