The Time Meddler

[Lance M]

I was just currious to find out if the BBC has ever offered cash incentives for the return of missing material? And if not, would they ever consider this option? Such as the chap in the Nigerian Television Archive said, what does the archive gain, if they went through thier archive, to search for missing material. Just currious, if anyone has any info or ideas.

Thanks,Lance.

[ethantyler]

Lance said:

I was just currious to find out if the BBC has ever offered cash incentives for the return of missing material? And if not, would they ever consider this option? Such as the chap in the Nigerian Television Archive said, what does the archive gain, if they went through thier archive, to search for missing material. Just currious, if anyone has any info or ideas.

Thanks,Lance.

I don't think they have, but I have heard one story (which I think is true, but may be a fan myth) about a con in which the BBC gave someone claiming to have The Tenth Planet 4 a laserdisc of Aliens.

Whilst cash incentives seem like a good idea, it's not very logical really. If they were going to offer an overseas archive money to search their archives, it would have to be a lot and what if nothing was found or even just one episode? It would be illogical to spend money in that fashion. Also, it's very unlikely that any more missing [Doctor Who] episodes still exist.

Basically, whilst it could be a good way to get missing episodes back (not just Doctor Who), it's unlikely to ever happen. However, I've always thought a finder's fee was a good incentive for people to return missing footage, especially as the BBC only have to pay when footage is returned. But, again, that's not very likely either as the people who might have missing episodes probably don't even know they have them.

[Ash Stewart]

The "Aliens" story is mentioned in Paul Lee's piece:

"I do know that negotiations have been taking place since at least before Christmas 1990 to recover what has been described as a 'poor quality' print of Power of the Daleks:2 (without it's opening titles if reports are true, although the episode hunter still hasn't seen the episode). Getting hold of this episode hinged on swapping the film print for a Laserdisc version of the extended version of the film 'Aliens' which was only available (at the time) from the USA. The Laserdisc was obtained, but since that was about two years ago and no progress has been made, we must, sadly, conclude that the whole incident was a hoax (although there was a rumour that the episode would re-surface in time for Panopticon 1992). Certainly, the episode hunter in this case (who was also responsible, with help from the now-defunct Wider Television Access (WTVA) group, for the safe return of The Reign of Terror:6 in 1982) does feel that he has been "messed about with", and the film collector does not return his 'phone calls. In the last few months, I have learned that negotiations for the safe return of the film collapsed when the collector refused to honour his part of the agreement, although it was felt by the episode hunter that his contact did have something, but didn't hold out much hope in retrieving anything. "

and

"Campbell was the one in negotation for an episode of "The Power of the Daleks" - but it was part 2, not 3 as reported by Jason Stevens. Campbell hadn't seen the episode but the collector wanted a copy of the laserdisk edition of the extended version of "Aliens", which was, at the time, only available from the USA. This was obtained, but Campbell never did get hold of the episode. "

There's no suggestion that the BBC gave this person the laserdisc.

[ethantyler]

Interestingly, I read elsewhere that the episode was The Tenth Planet 4 and that the laserdisc had been handed over, which was when the person "did a bunk" (those were the words the article used).

[Steven Sigel]

B said:

It would seem that episode 3 seems to exist several times over.

A 16mm copy of this episode was recently advertised on Ebay (within the last couple of months or so).

That was my posting... And it's one of the 4 prints mentioned in the earlier posting (one of the copies the BBC made)... Apart from those 4, I haven't heard of any others...

[Ash Stewart]

ethantyler said:

Interestingly, I read elsewhere that the episode was The Tenth Planet 4 and that the laserdisc had been handed over, which was when the person "did a bunk" (those were the words the article used).

Can you remember where you read this?