possible methods of episode recovery

[james C]

Hello all, im a bit bored at work at the moment so ive been turning over in my head possible ways of recovering missing episodes, heres a few ideas, apologies if they have already been suggested!

-If a BBC technician kept a copy of DMP ep2 here, would it be likely that technicians working for foreign TV stations may have also kept "souvenirs"? I admit it would be vastly difficult to track these people down, but perhaps a notice in local papers in the major cities where the TV stations are based would be worthwhile, easier tyo do for places like new zealand or canada, perhaps not so for Iran or Chad! if not local papers then trade papers like the BBC Ariel, or a similar publication for TV engineers.

-Is there any possibilitry of them turning up at British embassies? reading the post below about servicemen recieving film reels, it is possible after they were finished with they may have been passed to the local embassies. Again pretty far fetched but maybe worth investigating.

-Civil defence bunkers, where any of these equipped with film projectors? if so, perhaps they had episodes of TV shows stored there as well. Maybe ones like the one underneath whitehall ma have something.

Just idle ideas, please feel free to chuck them out if too fanciful!

[Brian D not logged in]

As I've said before, the most promising is the 'memoroscope'. As you know, ones brain (excluding damaged examples) retains everything it sees, but retrieving that memory from the depths (RAM, if you will) is the trick, which is what hypnotists profess to be able to do. Well, the memoroscope electronically retrieves these memories and converts them into digital signals, recorded on video. You then, on replay, see what your eyes would have seen that November day in 1966 or whatever. Of course if you hid behind the couch at the time there would be a problem.

the memoroscope does require a little work before it is ready to be mass-produced, of course. But it is only a matter of waiting for the technology to catch up with the idea. So do not give up hope of ever seeing your favourite eps again....

[Shaun B]

> the memoroscope does require a little work before it > is ready to be mass-produced

You're a master of the fine art of understatement!

[Dale Rumbold]

I think the memoroscope is actually impossible, memories not being stored electro-magnetically.

However, one possible (though very difficult) retrieval method may be as follows :

All electro-magnetic (including TV/Radio) transmissions naturally wend their way into outer space and could potentially be picked up and deciphered by 'alien' worlds (if they exist, which personally I think not).
Similarly, there are many large dishes spread around the world looking for similar transmissions from other planets. It is also known that certain stellar bodies have the property of reflecting 'light' and thereto TV/Radio waves. So, we just need to point the radio-telescopes toward a known reflective source, tune to the appropriate frequency that was in use at the time (e.g. BBC1 Crystal Palace VHF c. 1967) and pick up the reflected signal. Naturally, to pick up programmes from, say, 40 years ago, we would need to point at a reflective object that is 20 light-years away, and so forth.
There you go, as I said, physically possible but prohibitively expensive and unlikely to produce 'quality' images. Maybe I should patent this method before someone else does ....

[Brian D not logged in]

Dale said:

There you go, as I said, physically possible but prohibitively expensive and unlikely to produce 'quality' images. Maybe I should patent this method before someone else does ....

Nah, I mentioned this one in a post on the board a long time ago (before there was a Dr Who separate section) - and even then, I can't lay claim to it having been my idea, just something a mate mentioned in the pub.

By the way, a couple of years ago the recording of 'memory' in digital form was touted as being a possible 'cure' for Alzheimer's Disease.......

[ethantyler]

I started a missing episodes web-site when I first started using the Internet as a young teenager. I remember being e-mailed from someone claiming to have Invasion of the Dinosaurs: Part 1 in colour. I wasn't able to get a reply from them, but I forwarded the e-mail onto the BBC and I think they told me that it was a common mistake because "Dinosaurs" had been sold as a five-part serial overseas or something. I don't know whether the BBC tried to contact the person or not though.

That's the closest I've ever got to finding a missing episode.

[Bash Hardcastle]

Brian said:

As I've said before, the most promising is the 'memoroscope'. As you know, ones brain (excluding damaged examples) retains everything it sees, but retrieving that memory from the depths (RAM, if you will) is the trick, which is what hypnotists profess to be able to do. Well, the memoroscope electronically retrieves these memories and converts them into digital signals, recorded on video. You then, on replay, see what your eyes would have seen that November day in 1966 or whatever. Of course if you hid behind the couch at the time there would be a problem.

the memoroscope does require a little work before it is ready to be mass-produced, of course. But it is only a matter of waiting for the technology to catch up with the idea. So do not give up hope of ever seeing your favourite eps again....

That is the craziest bloody idea I have ever heard, and
I've read a lot of Scientology books.

[Jeff Stone]

A method that I believe others have thought of involves taking the telesnaps and/or existing 8mm cine material and using them as a template to create what would be
essentially an animation of the snaps. The computer would draw new CG frames based on the snaps and cine film. The more snaps to hand of a given scene, the closer the "re-animated" scene would be to the original. The end result would probably be
a bit unnerving; a black-and-white cartoon made entirely of photorealistic images.
This would involve hundreds of hours' work for even one episode, and would not deliver up anything like the lost footage....all the quirks and human actions in actual recorded material would of course not be there...but it could certainly be done. And this is more or less the only way anything approaching a restoration of the lost episodes can be contemplated in a live-action format - until the invention of videotape de-erasure software or time travel, that is.

IMHO.

Jeff

[LanceM]

Kind of like that early recon of The Nightmare Begins, that some people said gave them the creeps.

Lance.

[Richard Bignell]

Jeff said:

A method that I believe others have thought of involves taking the telesnaps and/or existing 8mm cine material and using them as a template to create what would be
essentially an animation of the snaps. The computer would draw new CG frames based on the snaps and cine film. The more snaps to hand of a given scene, the closer the "re-animated" scene would be to the original.

And when you only have a single tele-snap from an entire scene, exactly how is any computer program is going to be able to extrapolate the missing material?

When you bear in mind that the tele-snaps represent around 60 frames out of an average of 37,500 in an average episode, you can quickly see that no program will ever be able to cope with recreating missing frames from the existing pictures.

Richard

[Jeff Stone]

And when you only have a single tele-snap from an entire scene, exactly how is any computer program is going to be able to extrapolate the missing material?

In that case, quite obviously, you don't do that episode. Did you really not know the answer to that question, or is asking patronising rhetorical
questions your forte? You seem to make a habit of
talking to everyone like they're idiots. When in fact
most people here are probably much smarter than
you are, and definitely more polite. I am not
a fool, sir, and I will not put up with being talked
down to by you or anyone.


When you bear in mind that the tele-snaps represent around 60 frames out of an average of 37,500 in an average episode, you can quickly see that no program will ever be able to cope with recreating missing frames from the existing pictures.

Oh, that is total nonsense. , and you're just changing the argument to fit your theory. You're correct
about there not being enough snaps, but the snaps
are merely a guide to a wholly new animation. That is most certainly possible. During my film course at college, I helped create an entire 5 minute animated
feature based on maybe 75 photographs. We had
only crude gear, and it came out quite well.

No program being able to cope...that is total and
utter rubbish, Richard. I can't see the future, but
I don't need to be Edgar Cayce to predict that
the computers of 10 years hence will make these
things we're typing on now look like Babbage's
Difference Engine.

Jeff

[ron]

Surviving actors from one of the missing Doctor Who episodes could get together and try to describe the scenes between the telesnaps/clips. William Russell read the linking narration for the BBC Audio release 'Marco Polo' and Peter Purves read 'The Savages', and I'm sure they agreed with what had been written, but maybe they and some other actors could have more recollections.

[Richard Bignell]

Jeff said:

In that case, quite obviously, you don't do that episode.

Then you're going to have a bit of a problem seeing as that applies to virtually every missing episode going.

You seem to make a habit of talking to everyone like they're idiots.

What, don't you like people pointing out the elephant-sized holes in your ideas?

Oh, that is total nonsense. , and you're just changing the argument to fit your theory. You're correct about there not being enough snaps, but the snaps are merely a guide to a wholly new animation. That is most certainly possible.

Of course it isn't nonsense. What you seem to be suggesting that you take the tele-snaps, load them into some fictional computer programme, which is then somehow able to define what a set looks like and is able to extrapolate movement based on a few images. If you know of a computer program that can accomplish this then you better point it out to the RT quick, as there was nothing available in the broadcasting arsenal a few months back when Lost in Time was being worked on that could reimagine the lost frames in the missing material from The Faceless Ones.

Richard

[Stuart Douglas]

I don't know why you bother Richard - it must get very frustrating.

I do like the sound of the memoroscope though - and it's no less likely than the Magical Frame Extrapolating Computer...

Stuart

[Brian D not logged in]

Bash said:

Brian said:

As I've said before, the most promising is the 'memoroscope'. As you know, ones brain (excluding damaged examples) retains everything it sees, but retrieving that memory from the depths (RAM, if you will) is the trick, which is what hypnotists profess to be able to do. Well, the memoroscope electronically retrieves these memories and converts them into digital signals, recorded on video. You then, on replay, see what your eyes would have seen that November day in 1966 or whatever. Of course if you hid behind the couch at the time there would be a problem.

the memoroscope does require a little work before it is ready to be mass-produced, of course. But it is only a matter of waiting for the technology to catch up with the idea. So do not give up hope of ever seeing your favourite eps again....

That is the craziest bloody idea I have ever heard, and
I've read a lot of Scientology books.

It was written tongue-in-cheek, actually. Have you marked me down as a Who anorak or adolescent dreamer? Unless of course your comment is humorous rather than malicious. A bit difficult to tell.....