Thanks for the responses everyone.
Interesting discussion.
It was in the early eighties when I read that unique footage like the Zarbi trail and Radio Times advert with the Daleks in ’72(?) hadn’t been archived.
After such lamentable losses, I assumed that a lesson had been learned and that after ’81 and that DWM list, someone was making sure nothing similar was lost.
I was wrong.
They'd definitely keep the master of the specially shot season 17 promo.
No.
I went throughout the nineties assuming that of course by now the BBC would be keeping all continuity.
I was wrong.
And when Doctor Who came back, I assumed that in 2005 - in the proper future - there was no doubt at all that all continuities were archived by the BBC.
I was wrong.
I’m told that it wasn’t until 2009 that an ongoing off-air archive was started at the BBC, but what I’ve been told could still be wrong.
I decided a while ago that I wasn’t going to listen to anyone who told me that all this sort of stuff was safe, because so many times before I’ve found it wasn’t.
I wish I’d never listed to all those reassurances from people that obsessive video recording was unnecessary. I’d have a lot more in my collection and fewer regrets now if I hadn’t.
But I’ve never regretted keeping too much. Like most proper TV archives, I learned that lesson the hard way.
Maybe the BFI has everything on VHS. Maybe they don’t.
There seems little point if they never allow access anyway, even to the broadcasters.
I want to see it!
I’m also a Beatles fan. The songs they recorded for the BBC were mostly wiped.
Beatles fans didn’t wait to see what the BBC or Apple might still have locked away. They wanted to hear it and rebuilt almost all the archive piece by piece and shared it around. The BBC and Apple now use these recordings.
If someone were to talk about junking some off-airs because they couldn’t play them on a Beatles forum, they would be inundated with offers to transfer the tapes, even if there would only be the chance of a slight audio quality upgrade to the continuity announcer.
There are Beatle people actively and systematically going through old off-air tapes and sharing what they find, including some very interesting non-Beatles BBC radio recordings.
There are forums filled with debate over the placement of some fragment of continuity in a programme reconstruction, or pages of opinion about which off-air tape is the ‘best’ source.
With Doctor Who off-airs, it seems like it’s just me shouting into a bucket.
Or being very dull about it on forums.
But it feels like somebody should be trying to save the Doctor Who off-air collections people are talking about if they're not already.
They aren’t going to last forever.
The BBC3 new series repeats I want to find would most likely be on DVD-R or even an old PVR. They need to be found now if they’re going to be because we all know those things don’t last very long.
Every forum post I see that mentions junking of any kind of off-airs breaks me just a little bit.
What might have been on those tapes or discs?
Maybe people assume that because there are continuities packages on the DVDs and Blu-rays, all the continuities exist in full, but they are sometimes remade, and there are many that aren’t the best quality or cut between two sources.
The Blu-ray continuities are edited into slick packages that are designed to be an easy watch. They do a great job of that, but they also have to cut any non-BBC material or anything that will cost too much to clear.
They cut any surrounding material that is incomplete to keep things neat.
They don’t usually include any regional variations, because they’re very similar. Just different announcers reading from the same script in a different accent, with maybe a slight variation in the BBC1 globe, and it would be nuts to include all the variations wouldn’t it?
Not for me.
I want ALL the regional variations.
I want the end of the episode of Triangle before Doctor Who comes on.
I NEED the continuities from the Doctor Who and the Monsters edit of Genesis of the Daleks in ’82, and they weren’t on the Season 12 Blu-ray.
I want it all so long as it involves or surrounds Doctor Who.
I have to set some limits.
You’re right that it’s important to focus on regional TV generally, but collecting Doctor Who is where my focus has been for so long, there’s no chance of me changing tack now. I hope regional TV is someone’s passion because I’d want to know who to send copies of any regional (or other potentially missing) recordings I come across in the process, but this is mine.
I am interested in finding, detailing and preserving all missing material, but I’m only interested in collecting off-air Doctor Who recordings.
If I found a missing 80’s regional news or quiz programme and also found a BBC3 repeat of Aliens of London, I’d be far happier with the latter, despite all logic.
I'm inclined to try some kind of effort in this direction, unless I'm dissuaded. If only to reduce my anxiety about off-air collections going to the wall with nobody at least trying to get a look at them first.