Doctor Who recoveries

[Shaun Reid]

What I would like to know is how many Doctor Who fans who started off in the search for missing DW episodes have moved on to searching for missing episodes of other shows?

I do belive the publicity that the discovery of missing DW episodes can only be a good thing for the hunt for other shows.

[William Martin]

for those people rich enough, get every missing episode you come across dr who or no, for the material your not intersted in there are bound to be people somewhere who are and they may have something you want, this is one way to get in with the collectors. Obvious stuff realy but worth saying all the same.

[Jim Exley]

I'll throw in my twopennorth too. I'll readily admit to being a fan of DW, but among a lot of other things.

Have to concede that Andy's comments about over-emphasis on the show in terms of archive TV in general are correct; let's give the benefit of the doubt and put it down to a vocal minority.

My personal interest in archive TV and old TV technology can be directly attributed from early exposure to the question of Dr Who's missing episodes. My interest diversified from there - so I think it did serve some useful purpose.

The neglect of other material compared to DW can be frustrating. I was as delighted as everyone else when "Tomb of the Cybermen" (it's not as good as it was before it was found!) was unearthed "among a large batch of BBC material returned from Hong Kong" but to this day I've heard no mention of whatever material was returned along with it. It would have been nice to know. Similarly, I hadn't even heard that the first episode of "Till Death Us Do Part" had been returned until it was shown on BBC4 - its recovery had been eclipsed by an incomplete 20-second DW trailer.

I think the overwhelming interest in DW, TOTP etc. is simply because it has a committed audience. Just a question of public awareness. Both were/are long running, and generated familiarity among several generations of people; maybe some have handed on the torch to their own children. Conversely, with some of the more ambitious productions that the BBC considered worthy of preservation, they were more often than not one-offs, only seen once or twice a long time ago. There's been little or no attempt to market them recently, and therefore there's no current awareness of their value or interest among the viewing public.

The oft-criticised BBC archiving/junking policy, formulated at a time when further commercial exploitation of TV was not foreseen, seemed to have been rightly concerned with saving current affairs and prestige drama rather than light entertainment. To me, that's understandable, though if they had had the foresight of the sell-through video revolution, I expect it's likely that they would have adopted a more populist approach.

[William Martin]

with present comany excepted, how many on the episode hunters are that effective? what techniques do they use and how hard do they try, I'm quite sure that all the members and guests of this forum have done their research, sought advice and have all the right addresses, but how many "amature" hunters are there? and do you think they cause trouble for others? it would be a shame if one particular source was checked as a dead end because the research and inquiry was poorly done.

[Dave Woodley]

As a casual browser of this site, I was pleased to see this thread revisited recently! Just thought I'd add my two-pennyworth (although I will warn you, I can be rather long-winded).

The reason that Doctor Who is so well-known is the way the programme aimed itself at a wide audience. I watched as a child yet my parents always watched with me and were just as absorbed as I was. I was also into Transformers as a kid, but I doubt my old dear could name their home planet or who the leader of the Decepticons was.

Also, so many folk love Who because it is all to do with childhood. The vast majority of Who fans first watched the programme as children and became hooked. Then as they grew up, there were so many ways for their love of the programme to develop. As a five year-old watching Tom Baker regenerate into Peter Davison, I was simply loving the drama and the excitement; watching the 'goodies' against the 'baddie'. Then when I was of an age to understand the story better, I could buy it on VHS. Then in the Archive feature in Doctor Who Magazine, I could read how the story was made; from script to screen. Now I can log onto the Restoration Team Forum to find out just how nutsty a state the original VT tapes are in and how some deleted scenes still exist on some Shiboogie-woogie tapes or whatever theyr'e called. There are very few programmes which have the same wealth of artistic and technical articles written about them. It's like me old Dad; loved playing with train sets as a kid, now he travels on old steam trains and watches railway documentaries on Discovery. It's all just an extension of childhood. It doesn't mean we're sad old gits, we just can't bring ourselves to leave such an important part of our lives behind.

The whole archive thing- why were they junked? Was it because the Beeb really believed that old black and white stuff was commercially dead? From my (albeit limited) understanding, the prints junked in the 70s by Ms Nash were done because they did indeed think that noone would want them (the world slowly turning to colour transmissions and all) but they thought or assumed that the BBC Film Library held a complete set. This was at BBC Enterprises, dealing with sales to overseas TV stations. These were the days before a centralised BBC Archive. I'm sure that if there had been better communication between the various departments of the Beeb, a hell of a lot more missing programmes (not just Who) would still be around today. Also, there were only 3 TV channels then too and the only way people saw their favourite proggy was to stay in and watch it! Before my parents bought a VCR, I still remember the thrill of watching a repeat of a favourite series, because when you saw it first time round, you naturally assumed that you would not be able to watch it again. Of course noone in the mid 70s could foresee the home video market. Of course noone was throwing film into the furnaces, cackling with glee. These were financial and logistic decisions, I'm sure.

I agree with the comments about Who fans; I have attended a Dr Who convention only once. I pledged afterwards- NEVER AGAIN! I have never been in the company of so many odd individuals in my life. Grown men wearing the complete fan outfit; Who T-shirt, Who baseball cap, Who watch and all topped off with a long knitted scarf. Also, the dreadfully embarrassing autograph session:-

Fan - Tell me Sylvester, did you think it was entirely ethical that you blew up the Daleks' home planet in Rememberance of the Daleks?

McCoy- Um, well, I'm not entirely... um... hmm... sorry, who was this to be dedicated to?

Yes, a large proportion of Who fans are odd, embarrassing, single men with whom NHS spectacles and acne go hand-in-hand. But there are a few normal ones out there; I am just about to tiptoe upstairs, past the kids bedroom and hop in next to my missus, who disappeared up the stairs about half an hour ago, after we shared a lovely Indian meal. And not a single Parka coat in sight.

But just because I am a Who fan does not mean that I don't care about other missing TV. I was one of the many folk who contributed towards the recent purchase of the Z Cars episode from eBay. I have seen very few episodes and I am not in any way a fan of the programme but I want this old stuff to be found! I feel that it is so important that any TV show, whether it was watched by 10,000 viewers or 1m, should be available for those who loved it to view again or for a new generation to discover.

[William Martin]

have to agree, women are more interesting than Dr Who, and the fans do range from totaly normal to very very scary, never been to a convention myself, they look rather clostrophobic to me, but I know there are more than enough good people to keep the fan base going for a long while.

[Vin de Silva]

One thing worth pointing out is that, with Doctor Who, it's not just that there is a "vocal" minority of people clamouring about the missing episodes.

There is an *active* minority of wonderful people who have chased lead after lead and worked with great passion to recover, preserve and restore rare material from Doctor Who. Without these people, the junkings would have contnued past 1978; many more of the Pertwee episodes would still be in monochrome; the 25 or so episodes recovered since 1980 would many of them still be missing; the telesnaps, high-quality audio recordings and Australian/NZ censor clips would never have come to light; VidFIRE and Reverse Standards Conversion might never have been invented; and so on.

All of this has happened because people who loved the show made the effort. As a fan myself, I feel incredibly lucky and grateful that these people exist -- this is one of the advantages of having a committed fan base. For missing television in general, the support base is much less coherent -- although this particular forum is an outstanding example of how things could be.

The point, I think, is not that Doctor Who has been "unfairly" hogging the limelight. Doctor Who fandom has been making the effort for over 25 years now, and I think we do (as a group) deserve the successes that have come our way -- again thanking profusely the minority who make it happen.

On the other hand, it has taken a much longer period of time for a community to build up around the idea of recovering missing television in general. Now that there are established groups like this one, and increased publicity by virtue of the BBC Treasure Hunt, and so on, I think the rewards will come. Of course, it is heartbreaking to think of all the material that might have come to light if this were 20 years earlier, but has been irrecoverably lost with the passing of time. Still, we've got to do the best we can right now.

cheers
Vin

[Brian D not logged in]

Thanks to Vin for a remarkably generous, cogent and grammatical (no misspellings and proper use made of the semicolon!) posting.

And no, I don't write as a Dr Who fan although I did enjoy it as a teenager.

The slapstick Dr Who convention in that otherwise unremarkable Alan Bleasdale drama a few years ago was brilliant.........

[Laurence Piper]

I agree. When people go on about Doctor Who fans and their love of the series eclipsing that of other worthy vintage shows, they forget a lot of what has been achieved by these "DW anoraks". Although i'm interested in archive TV generally, no one should undervalue these achievements. They have good knock-on effects for archive and missing TV generally!

[BizMark]

I notice Gareth R is wheeling out his "hindsight" argument again - which as I have said before is "foresight too late".

Dozens of websites now document (as did books and documentaries before) that home video technologies have existed since the mid-60s, and the first marketable home video system, the Philips N1500 series, became available in 1973.

Sure, it was initially prohibitively expensive, but it didn't take a genius to see that, as with any new technology, it would end up getting cheaper and making inroads into the domestic market. Therefore, in 1973 it should have been perfectly realistic to think that any programmes produced from then on should be retained for future sale.

The other thing that debunks Gareth's argument (and I'm sorry Gareth, but I don't think you're quite old enough to have been there at the time either) is that some whole series of shows still exist (Dad's Army, apart from half of Series 2, exists complete) whereas other shows from the same era are completely missing.

Therefore, the "no further value seen" argument falls down, because otherwise we'd only have 2 or 3 Dad's Armys, or Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Ems (and I personally can't see why they were kept for any more than 1 or 2 years' after production) - but we do.

Surely the same argument should hold for any series, and yet there is quite clearly, by and large, a producer-related record, where shows produced by some people tended to be kept, and shows produced by other people tended not to be, or were hit-and-miss.

It has always seemed to me that the BBC 'archiving' policy, such that it was, was very clear on paper, but could be circumvented/overriden if the personality of the producer and/or stars had enough gravitas to ensure that the tapes were kept in safe enough custody/filed safely under a stack of VT engineers' tapes of soccer matches, to make the tapes appear to be 'missing' to the bulk-erasing brigade.

After all, if a batch of tapes is earmarked for wiping, but the said batch of tapes is difficult to find, then surely new tapes would (through gritted teeth) have to be ordered.

As I have alluded to above, sport fares very well - even though I'm sure re-use would be easier because sports rights weren't as complicated then, but even so if repeat/video release opportunities *weren't* seen (as Gareth suggests, although they quite clearly were), then all these countless football matches/Match Of The Day programmes would have been wiped aswell - or not telerecorded onto film. After all, would the BBC really have sold footage of Jimmy Hill to Dubai?

I see the same thing happen in my workplace with the amount of digital information that goes missing on our servers. I work in an environment where we're supposed to keep all sorts of records for legal purposes - mainly safety. Much of it gets wiped before it can be archived - a different type of media, but indicative of what happens.

Of course, given the BBC not having a hard-and-fast VT archiving policy until 1978, it's amazing how much stuff WAS indeed kept, and the losses could be an awful lot more. But with Philips video technology becoming more and more mainstream through the 70s, and with, like now, the BBC being under pressure to maximise their revenue by supplementing the license fee with income from Enterprises, you would have thought the home video revolution would have been seized upon just like the internet and digital interactive bandwagons are seized upon by the BBC of today.

The fact is, BBC management in the 60s and 70s were too commercially backward to see the potential of their assets, which under the market-driven forces of modern management would have driven them to plug the benefits of VCR technology in between every programme, in the way that BBCi and Freeview gets plugged today.

[Adam Hughes]

'The other thing that debunks Gareth's argument (and I'm sorry Gareth, but I don't think you're quite old enough to have been there at the time either) is that some whole series of shows still exist (Dad's Army, apart from half of Series 2, exists complete) whereas other shows from the same era are completely missing'

Half of them (D.A.) were officially wiped! In early 1980s, there was a repeat season with most of the existing colour episodes in b/w. The rest came back from down under later on.

[Ian]

If you are refering to the 1982 BBC2 repeat season of DAD'S ARMY, then only SOMETHING NASTY IN THE VAULT was repeated from the b/w telerecording.

But otherwise you are quite right: a large number of series 3/4 and 5 shows were only held by the BBC as TRs.

Got a list somewhere.........

[William Martin]

any plans to colourise the b/w ep from series 3 (room at the bottom?)

[John Miller]

Back to a point early in this thread. Why is Dr Who so popular. The answer I think is it was a programme many people were growing up with during the baby boom years when the population was at climactic growth! It was just one of many. Explanation may also lie in the fact that the show employed images of fantastic horror which embed themselves in the young mind of a child. it was made extremely well generally, at a time when the BBC were at their golden age of creativity, and when TV was growing up and experimenting, with exciting results. Don't forget people who discuss 'Who' also discuss other programmes of the period, i.e. Adam Adamant, Out of the unknown, Twizzle etc. Dr Who has, realistically received a greater level of publicity in comparison, not the least promotion by the BBC who realised the commercial potential of the piece. A pity that the word 'commercial' nowadays tends to be equated with potential. If other more obscure TV were considered, uses could be made such as research copies and subscription transmission requests to homes by personal submission which would bring other items in TV history into greater profile.

[RussoEnt]

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