Doctor Who search.............

[ianj]

Hi everyone,

With regard to other, earlier threads about Ian Levines new search for missing episodes, and all the other hoo-ha being typed about it; this search is, quite possibly, the last chance to recover any more Who................the reason being that even quite" backward "countries are now starting to get digital recording media, and are (presumably) going through their archives to copy/junk stuff............how sickening if episodes have survived somewhere up until now, only to be junked.............regards, ianj

[Steven Sigel]

Don't mean to rain on your parade- but in reality almost no one broadcasts from 16mm anymore and more than likely, if anyone had any of these prints at one time, they're long gone now... Remember, we're talking about prints that were last run on TV 30 years ago. The last archive Dr. Who find was "Tomb of the cybermen" and that was 13 years ago... (The Lion, and Day of Armageddon were recovered from private collections)

It's not impossible that a TV company might still have something, but as time goes on, it's increasingly unlikely... So, sure, go ahead and contact the TV stations that might have run them in the past, but don't count on finding anything. (As for contacting TV stations that never ran the series - I personally think that's a big waste of time).

The good news is that when a lot of the old 16mm broadcast prints were discarded, they were sold off to collectors, so there's still a chance that something survived and is in private hands. Although, once again, this is a long shot as well.


PS "Digital" has nothing to do with it -- broadcasters went to videotape transmission long before Digital was around... In the USA 16mm TV broadcast was basically non-existant by 1986 -- nearly 20 years ago...