Appreciation of Telesnaps, Audios, etc.

[lousingh]

I posted this in another thread when The Avengers episode "The Frighteners" was found.

I have been watching Callan starring Edward Woodward.  There are several episodes missing from its first two season.  My knee-jerk reaction was to look for a telesnap reconstruction.  And then it dawned on me -- there are almost certainly no telesnaps.  There are unlikely to be audio tapes.  And the fandom is unlikely to have been widespread enough and passionate enough to make a reconstruction for both to exist.  So as a fan of that series, I would have to dig for novellisations.

It made me realise how lucky we all are.  Not only did we have novellisations to try and imagine the missing episodes, but we had audios and telesnaps as well.  Some fans were able to recover edited footage.  And then we had fans with the passion and wherewithal to reconstruct the missing episodes from their memories and all the materials available to them.  And then we had fans willing to risk life and limb to find missing episodes for all of us to enjoy.  And we have others who remake episodes in college, create animated versions of missing stories, etc.  We are incredibly lucky.

I can and will stay mad at the BBC for destroying the old episodes, but let me bow my turban to those who have made my current Doctor Who experience possible.  I am better for all their efforts and more appreciative of the effort people have put into the work to make it possible.

[rebeccajansen]

I remember there was a continuing discussion in the late '80s Doctor Who fanzines about how many audio recordings there were known to be of missing episodes, all made by fans back at the time, and people were rating the quality of some. Apparently on some home recordings off air you might hear someone's cat, traffic outside, or someone being called to dins! Some fans figured out how to patch directly into the speaker wires so we have some excellent audio for many Who shows. It's entirely down to the fans there is more than scripts and stills of the transmission that were required for some arcane professional purpose every x number of seconds, and they even almost threw the entire script archive out at BBC once!

I feel we're lucky to have what we do have of some of my favorite '60s shows like Who, Z Cars, even a number of Dad's Army episodes were missing for awhile. ITV somehow lost every episode of season one and two of Ace Of Wands, and many Doomwatch, and two episodes of season one of The Avengers (last I'd heard) still seems rather skimpy representation. So it wasn't just the Beeb throwing things out, or even just England (many classic Ernie Kovacs shows reportedly thrown in to the sea).

I definitely prefer tele-snaps with original audio, and they can be done quite well!

[brianfretwell]

I think it is 3 1/3 Season 1 episodes of The Avengers. Part 1 of Hot Snow, and all of Girl on the Trapeze, The Frighteners and Tunnel of Fear.

[Alan Jeffries]

I'm sad that we'll probably not see all of Who (amongst other) again, I'm not angry with the companies. The culture of the archive was more transient back then and it was not required and treasured as it is now. But we all know that.
What I really wanted to say is that in my thoughts Doctor Who is possibly the best researched, fan catered for, and extensive rand of any releases out there. Yes, you can have 12 people doing commentaries on a film and all that jazz, but for the sheer amount of material, Who wins hands down in my opinion.
Thanks to all the people that have made this happen.

[Jaspal Cheema]

Case in point,I'm listening to the audio soundtrack of the Myth Makers and absolutely loving it! Such a witty and engaging script-adding to my enjoyment of the series even though the original video tapes have long been lost. We don't even have any telesnaps! If it wasn't due to the passion of Graham Strong and David Holman amongst others,we may not even have the soundtrack as well!
P.S Callan is in my opinion one of the greatest television series ever made.

[richardwoods]

Jul 18, 2021 18:11:06 GMT Jaspal Cheema said:

Case in point,I'm listening to the audio soundtrack of the Myth Makers and absolutely loving it! Such a witty and engaging script-adding to my enjoyment of the series even though the original video tapes have long been lost. We don't even have any telesnaps! If it wasn't due to the passion of Graham Strong and David Holman amongst others,we may not even have the soundtrack as well!
P.S Callan is in my opinion one of the greatest television series ever made.

I wouldn’t disagree with any of that!

[Ed Brown]

I admit to being no expert on the arcane practices at ITV, where ABC who made 'Callan' were only one of a dozen or so regional ITV companies producing shows for the ITA Network, but do we have any hard evidence that John Cura, who was contracted by the BBC to provide the telesnaps, ever worked on any ITV shows?

I suppose that there were other BBC shows he worked on, not just Dr Who, so somewhere sitting in a drawer there might be telesnaps of lost episodes of Z Cars, but which have never been of any practical use to people like us, because no one was taping the soundtrack of that show. Do we know for sure which other BBC shows he was contracted to provide telesnaps for?

I've certainly not heard it suggested that he was contracted to do something similar for ITV -- unless YOU know different???

[Richard Bignell]

Aug 8, 2021 5:59:51 GMT Ed Brown said:

I admit to being no expert on the arcane practices at ITV, where ABC who made 'Callan' were only one of a dozen or so regional ITV companies producing shows for the ITA Network, but do we have any hard evidence that John Cura, who was contracted by the BBC to provide the telesnaps, ever worked on any ITV shows?

Yes. Lots.

Cura freely offered his services to actors and production teams on both channels. He was never "contracted by the BBC". Individual offices made their own minds up about whether they wanted to use his services or not as it all came out of their production budgets.

I suppose that there were other BBC shows he worked on, not just Dr Who, so somewhere sitting in a drawer there might be telesnaps of lost episodes of Z Cars, but which have never been of any practical use to people like us, because no one was taping the soundtrack of that show. Do we know for sure which other BBC shows he was contracted to provide telesnaps for?

Cura started in 1947 and ended in 1969 and continually advertised from the mid-1960s on that he'd taken over 250,000 off them - so he obviously wasn't just doing Doctor Who.

He did loads from numerous BBC programmes - Z-Cars, Out of the Unknown, R3, Softly Softly, Dixon of Dock Green, Francis Durbrige Presents..., The Money Man etc.

[PAUL WOOD]

Jun 19, 2021 18:01:55 GMT lousingh said:

let me bow my turban to those who have made my current Doctor Who experience possible.  I am better for all their efforts and more appreciative of the effort people have put into the work to make it possible.

This is beautifully expressed and matches my own feelings exactly!

[Ed Brown]

Aug 8, 2021 14:03:40 GMT Richard Bignell said:

Cura started in 1947 and ended in 1969 and continually advertised from the mid-1960s on that he'd taken over 250,000 off them - so he obviously wasn't just doing Doctor Who.

He did loads from numerous BBC programmes - Z-Cars, Out of the Unknown, R3, Softly Softly, Dixon of Dock Green, Francis Durbrige Presents..., The Money Man etc.

Do BBC archives hold any copies of the non-Who telesnaps?

My impression from my own brief investigation of the ABC/Thames material held by Canal Plus taught me how very little material of any sort was held by them from the ABC years. It's a sad fact that Canal hold so few of the b/w episodes of 'Callan' and 'Public Eye' - two of the more popular ABC shows - and almost nothing in the way of non-film material, such as production files. Without a surviving production file, chances are slim of things such as telesnaps still existing.

It struck me that the BBC's main advantage, in terms of production file survival, is simply that the BBC still exists. Whereas ABC hasn't existed since 1968. And even Thames, as its successor, hasn't been an ITV franchise holder in many years.

Everyone involved with archive tv is focused on film or VT recoveries, and no one ever seems interested in the production documents, the sort of stuff that 'Dr Who' researchers and episode reconstructors take for granted because they only have to deal with the BBC.

[Richard Bignell]

Aug 9, 2021 3:00:07 GMT Ed Brown said:

Aug 8, 2021 14:03:40 GMT Richard Bignell said:

Cura started in 1947 and ended in 1969 and continually advertised from the mid-1960s on that he'd taken over 250,000 off them - so he obviously wasn't just doing Doctor Who.

He did loads from numerous BBC programmes - Z-Cars, Out of the Unknown, R3, Softly Softly, Dixon of Dock Green, Francis Durbrige Presents..., The Money Man etc.

Do BBC archives hold any copies of the non-Who telesnaps?

I wouldn't like to guess how many they do or don't have. They certainly have a few in addition to the Doctor Who ones.

My impression from my own brief investigation of the ABC/Thames material held by Canal Plus taught me how very little material of any sort was held by them from the ABC years. It's a sad fact that Canal hold so few of the b/w episodes of 'Callan' and 'Public Eye' - two of the more popular ABC shows - and almost nothing in the way of non-film material, such as production files. Without a surviving production file, chances are slim of things such as telesnaps still existing.

You have to bear in mind that a large part of Cura's work was not done for production offices, but for individuals - actors, actresses, directors etc., who wanted to keep a personal record of their own work. Many of the tele-snaps that have been located over the years are from those sources, not from production files.

It struck me that the BBC's main advantage, in terms of production file survival, is simply that the BBC still exists.

We are very fortunate that the BBC maintains a Written Archive and that these sorts of assets were thought about as part of the remit of the 1970s Advisory Committee on Archives. That said, there's still HUGE amounts of BBC documentation that didn't survive. Some programmes have very little or nothing at all in the way of production documents. For instance, Blake's 7 only has files for six of the 52 episodes, plus a couple of general files.

We're remarkably lucky with Doctor Who that so much does still exist - and even then, there is lots that doesn't. There are several stories for which there are no surviving production files at all. Others from the early years that only have a few documents in them covering one episode.

[RWels]

Do you know what really makes you appreciate all these things? When you are looking for audio or scripts for a different series, and you find that there's NOTHING.

[Ken Jacowitz]

According to Mark Lewisohn fascinating in-depth 2004 article “Snapshots of History “
(https://web.archive.org/web/20191020203540/http://www.the-mausoleum-club.org.uk/Cura/Cura.htm) sadly:

“ John Cura is buried in Streatham Park Cemetery. He didn’t make a will, so his estate, valued at £12,500, went to Emily. She never remarried. And his known archive of Tele-Snaps? According to Teddie Beverley, excepting the shots of the Royal Family and – thanks to a particularly timely visit – the Beverley Sisters, everything was destroyed in a fit of pique. ‘Emily told us that when John died she got in touch with the BBC and said, “I’ve got a garage full of photos, do you want them?” and an executive had replied, “We’re moving forward, Mrs Cura, not backwards.” Emily told us she was so upset that she destroyed the lot.’”

[richardwoods]

Aug 12, 2021 0:38:14 GMT Ken Jacowitz said:

According to Mark Lewisohn fascinating in-depth 2004 article “Snapshots of History “
(https://web.archive.org/web/20191020203540/http://www.the-mausoleum-club.org.uk/Cura/Cura.htm) sadly:

“ John Cura is buried in Streatham Park Cemetery. He didn’t make a will, so his estate, valued at £12,500, went to Emily. She never remarried. And his known archive of Tele-Snaps? According to Teddie Beverley, excepting the shots of the Royal Family and – thanks to a particularly timely visit – the Beverley Sisters, everything was destroyed in a fit of pique. ‘Emily told us that when John died she got in touch with the BBC and said, “I’ve got a garage full of photos, do you want them?” and an executive had replied, “We’re moving forward, Mrs Cura, not backwards.” Emily told us she was so upset that she destroyed the lot.’”

Sadly this is hardly an isolated incident. I have mentioned on here before that this happened to me when I tried to return some high quality recordings of missing BBC children’s radio programs from the 60’s to the BBC Treasure Hunt. Not in the same league as the clanger listed above, but still.....

[Jaspal Cheema]

Aug 12, 2021 0:38:14 GMT Ken Jacowitz said:

According to Mark Lewisohn fascinating in-depth 2004 article “Snapshots of History “
(https://web.archive.org/web/20191020203540/http://www.the-mausoleum-club.org.uk/Cura/Cura.htm) sadly:

“ John Cura is buried in Streatham Park Cemetery. He didn’t make a will, so his estate, valued at £12,500, went to Emily. She never remarried. And his known archive of Tele-Snaps? According to Teddie Beverley, excepting the shots of the Royal Family and – thanks to a particularly timely visit – the Beverley Sisters, everything was destroyed in a fit of pique. ‘Emily told us that when John died she got in touch with the BBC and said, “I’ve got a garage full of photos, do you want them?” and an executive had replied, “We’re moving forward, Mrs Cura, not backwards.” Emily told us she was so upset that she destroyed the lot.’”

So abrupt and such shortsighted thinking.