Doctor Who in the U.S.A. (in the 1970's)

[David Zientara]

I read in one of the articles that Time-Life began making "Doctor Who" available for purchase in the United States starting in 1972. My question is: has it been established that Time-Life only made available the Pertwee episodes, or were they selling the Hartnell/Troughton episodes as well? If the latter is the case, then that would perhaps be another place to look, although even if it were the case, there would be no guarantee that they still have any Who, with over 30 years having elapsed.

[Richard Bignell]

David said:

I read in one of the articles that Time-Life began making "Doctor Who" available for purchase in the United States starting in 1972. My question is: has it been established that Time-Life only made available the Pertwee episodes...

It has indeed, David! The early 70's package consisted of 13 Pertwee stories - Silurians, Ambassadors, Inferno, Terror of the Autons, Mind of Evil, Axos, Colony, Daemons, Day, Curse of Peladon, Sea Devils, Mutants and The Time Monster.

I think the first time the US purchased any b/w material was in 1986.

Richard

[ethantyler]

richardbignell said:

The early 70's package consisted of 13 Pertwee stories - Silurians, Ambassadors, Inferno, Terror of the Autons, Mind of Evil, Axos, Colony, Daemons, Day, Curse of Peladon, Sea Devils, Mutants and The Time Monster.

Out of curiosity, were those stories purchased in colour or black and white?

[Richard Bignell]

ethantyler said:

Out of curiosity, were those stories purchased in colour or black and white?

Colour - it's why we have the material we do from Silurians 1-7, Ambassadors 2-7, Terror of the Autons 1-4, The Daemons 1-3 & 5 and the colour clips from The Mind of Evil.

Richard

[ethantyler]

richardbignell said:

Colour - it's why we have the material we do from Silurians 1-7, Ambassadors 2-7, Terror of the Autons 1-4, The Daemons 1-3 & 5 and the colour clips from The Mind of Evil.

I see! Thank you. Is all that colour material sourced from off-air recordings? (From the same person?) I only recently learnt how the colour restorations were achieved (i.e. using off-air colour recordings), which answered so many of my questions about recolourisation, particularly why The Ambassadors of Death, Planet of the Daleks 3 and Invasion of the Dinosaurs 1 couldn't be recolourised using the same techniques.

[David Zientara]

richardbignell said:

I think the first time the US purchased any b/w material was in 1986.

Richard

I recall seeing "The Daemons" in black and white in the spring of 1986; it was not too long after NJN started airing "Doctor Who" regularly. The first Hartnell/Troughton episodes I saw were in 1987, when WNYC channel 31 (a now-defunct PBS affiliate in Brooklyn, NY) started airing the episodes starting with "An Unearthly Child" and continuing in chronological order. If my memory serves me correctly, they skipped over "The War Machines" and "The Dominators" (and possibly "The Ark" as well) even though those stories were already recovered by the BBC archives.

[Wright Blan]

Does anyone have a list of stations who initially carried the Pertwee "Who" episodes? Might be helpful.