How many missing episodes are still out there?

[Bobby Clark (synthpopalooza)]

Here's a thought ...

We know that a lot of the Doctor Who directors (in particular Waris Hussein and Peter Bryant) had their work telesnapped by John Cura so as to preserve a record of it. Is it also possible that any of these directors (or indeed other people involved with the making of the show) might have had any of these episodes taped? It might do to try and track down some of the production people on these old shows, see if they had the foresight to preserve anything. I know Peter Bryant has sadly passed on, but there are others ...

[Steven Sigel]

Extremely unlikely -- videotape in the 60s was very expensive -- that's partly why the shows were transfered to film (which at the time was much cheaper; it also didn't require standards conversion). So if anyone were to have obtained copies - it would most likely have been on film. And more importantly, there would probably be some record of it....

synthpopalooza said:

Here's a thought ...

We know that a lot of the Doctor Who directors (in particular Waris Hussein and Peter Bryant) had their work telesnapped by John Cura so as to preserve a record of it. Is it also possible that any of these directors (or indeed other people involved with the making of the show) might have had any of these episodes taped? It might do to try and track down some of the production people on these old shows, see if they had the foresight to preserve anything. I know Peter Bryant has sadly passed on, but there are others ...

[Richard Bignell]

synthpopalooza said:

Here's a thought ...

We know that a lot of the Doctor Who directors (in particular Waris Hussein and Peter Bryant) had their work telesnapped by John Cura so as to preserve a record of it.

It rather depends what your definition is of "a lot". To my knowledge, the only director who purchased his own tele-snaps was Chris Barry. The only other directors who had them, Waris Hussein and Richard Martin, probably took the production office sets home with them as paid for by the programme budget. This they were entitled to do, on the understanding that they were still the BBC's property and could be reclaimed at any time.

Anyhow, back to your point.

One thing to remember is that many directors viewed working on the programme with some distain at the time. As staff directors, they were told what they were working on - they didn't choose! As such, they would not have been inclined to spend their wages on getting copies of their work recorded onto expensive videotape!

You also have to bear in mind that all the existing directors are aware of the archive status of their stories, so I'm sure if, on the off chance, they did have anything, they would have made it known by now!

Richard

[Greg H]

Yes, sadly I have to agree. I would go on the record as saying that I find it pretty unlikely that anyone connected with the production of the program having home recordings. Im sure they've already been hounded near to death by Dr Who fans for anecdotes and archival status probably came up in the conversation

I am much more hopeful about the dark waters of home recordings made by the public in the 60s. Im certain there is something out there.

[Deleted]

With any luck a missing episode should turn up soon a Troughton would be great but any episode back would be good I am sure that there are episodes some where out there.

[Greg H]

Well according to another thread I seem to recall reading around here, some Troughton did appear to have turned up, but it was episodes from the Dominators or something like that and had already been sold on. Who knows could even have been another pointless hoax.
But yeah it would be awesome to have a few more minutes of Troughton.

[Ronnie McDevitt]

To a certain extent the identity of missing episodes which may or may not exists in private hands is completely irelevant. I would rather not know if say "Evil of the Daleks" was being hoarded if there was no possibility of a return and lets face it is entirely up to the individual who may have saved the episodes from destruction what exactly they do with them.
However for what it is worth a friend of mine contacted some film dealers around ten or twelve years ago regarding 16mm Dr Who prints.
One of them claimed to have had a handul in the past but could not be specific other than that one episode featured Yeti.
Apparently the dealer further stated at that time such prints were becoming increasingly rarer.
Also one collector who has returned missing material told me personally that he only just missed out on a couple of Dr Who insert reels at a film fair in the 1980s one of which apparently featured Daleks.

[madman]

I have been in contact with a nice chap at <www.bvws.org.uk/405alive/> and he says: "I get an awful lot of emails asking for lost episodes of this and that (and 95 percent of them mention Doctor Who). :-) I did have a few hundred tapes from the early seventies and they're still being trawled through but so far none of them have contained any Doctor Who. There have been quite a few finds of interesting clips and loads of schools programmes which were believed missing, but nothing all that spectacular." So, it's good to know that some collectors who may feasibly have something ARE aware, and efforts are under way to find out. I thanked him, of course, and asked him to pass on the message to any other similar people he encounters who may not know the possibilities. Of course, because he specifies the 1970s, it's missing colour Pertwee that's more likely found here.

The tantalising story about Yeti and Dalek material above may, I suppose, refer to stuff that eventually ended up with the BBC and well known about – The Abominable Snowmen ep we have and possibly even those The Power of the Daleks clips that we know so well and which were on sale on eBay earlier this month, perhaps. Always nice to hear promising titbits of news, though.

[Steven Sigel]

ronniemcdevitt said:

However for what it is worth a friend of mine contacted some film dealers around ten or twelve years ago regarding 16mm Dr Who prints.
One of them claimed to have had a handul in the past but could not be specific other than that one episode featured Yeti.
Apparently the dealer further stated at that time such prints were becoming increasingly rarer.
.

If it had Yeti in it, it was undoubtedly a copy of "Web of Fear (1)". That was one of the episodes that was "borrowed" from the BBC archives in the 80s and duped.

[Stephen Neve]

stevens said:

ronniemcdevitt said:

However for what it is worth a friend of mine contacted some film dealers around ten or twelve years ago regarding 16mm Dr Who prints.
One of them claimed to have had a handul in the past but could not be specific other than that one episode featured Yeti.
Apparently the dealer further stated at that time such prints were becoming increasingly rarer.
.

If it had Yeti in it, it was undoubtedly a copy of "Web of Fear (1)". That was one of the episodes that was "borrowed" from the BBC archives in the 80s and duped.

On what basis do you make that assumption, it could have been any episode of the web of fear.

[Steven Sigel]

stephenneve said:

stevens said:

If it had Yeti in it, it was undoubtedly a copy of "Web of Fear (1)". That was one of the episodes that was "borrowed" from the BBC archives in the 80s and duped.

On what basis do you make that assumption, it could have been any episode of the web of fear.

On the basis that there were a fairly substantial number of prints of "Web (1)" struck at the time, and had it been anything else, it would most likely have shown up by now. Simple case of probabilities -- e.g. let's say there are at least a dozen known prints of "Web of Fear (1)" out there and there are no known prints of any of the other chapters - which do you think it more likely?

[Daniel O'Brien]

Wasn't 'Web of Fear' 1 returned from Hong Kong back in 1978? Blatant hoaxes aside, have there been any credible rumours re parts 2-6? To be honest, I think the New Zealand censor clips are as close as we'll get to further recoveries from this story.

[Greg H]

I have heard fairly persistent rumours about portions of web surviving. Who knows the truth, but im sure no one was expecting daleks masterplan 2 to float up to the surface either!

[Deleted]

Have any of you guys out there got any new info about missing episodes I would be interested in any news thanks.

[B Thomas]

Errr... funnily enough... no.