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Post by Alex Dering on Sept 12, 2012 15:03:43 GMT
Quick question that I don't recall seeing on the forum before:
DW episodes return usually from one of three routes:
1. A copy is found in a foreign or domestic archive (TV station, library, whatever).
2. A private collector makes the episode available.
3. A BBC employee returns a tape they had in their possession.
How do the Doctor Who episode returns compare with other programs of the same time? Most of the Dr. Who episodes that are recovered are unique. That is, the copy turned in is never followed by a second copy. A few duplicate finds turn up later (sometimes adding missing footage or improving visuals, etc.), but a lot of the episodes appear to be of the last-one-left variety.
How does this compare with other programs of the same time, specifically with returns from private collections? Are episodes of other programs being returned in multiple copies? Or are the other programs similar in return success rates?
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Post by Greg H on Sept 12, 2012 15:56:42 GMT
I think more prints of Doctor Who would have been struck than many other programs from the same time due to other countries screening them etc (Of course many prints were bicycled, yadda yadda). So in short there have been potentialy more prints of doctor who in existence at some point that could have be recovered in contrast to other programs which may have only ever existed as one print and were not sold abroad or worse still only ever on video tape and then wiped with the horse racing or something.
Who has an awful lot of missing episodes but then again there are shows which have done much worse. The archives for Hancock's half hour or Z cars, for example, are not exactly overflowing.
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Post by dennywilson on Sept 13, 2012 9:18:02 GMT
... DW episodes return usually from one of three routes: 1. A copy is found in a foreign or domestic archive (TV station, library, whatever). 2. A private collector makes the episode available. 3. A BBC employee returns a tape they had in their possession. ... few quick notes and facts. There hasn't been a foreign return in over 20 years since TOMB OF THE CYBERMEN. There's only been one return by a former BBC employee and that was DMP #2. Other than those two, the only other returns in the last 25 years have been from the collector circuit. Before that, the bulk of the returns were from foreign stations - with the most episodes recovered being the Pertwee episodes returned from CKVR - Vancouver and TV Ontario via BBC Toronto. There has been several finds that were redundant to what was already held - existing and recovered - over the years. |
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Post by Richard Tipple on Sept 13, 2012 13:32:35 GMT
It's an unpopular opinion, but I don't think there's anything left to find. The BBC did a pretty good job of destroying it all. There's a fair chance many missing episodes didn't even make it out of the 60's. Don't get me wrong, I'd be delighted if something missing turned up (especially if it's DMP, Marco Polo or The Smugglers) but I don't think it will.
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Post by Mark Vanderlinde-Abernathy on Sept 13, 2012 14:53:03 GMT
At least, there's nothing left to find via television archives. Private collectors? Maybe. And that's a very very very very pessimistic maybe. Go on world! Prove us wrong!  "There will always be 106 missing episodes of Doctor Who!" |
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Post by Greg H on Sept 13, 2012 15:28:03 GMT
I am an optimist on the matter of missing episodes. I still think theres more out there. Some people have been intoning 'nothing else will ever be returned, its all been found, etc' for quite some time now and only recently 2 episodes came back from an unexpected source and also those 2 episodes had never had a single whisper circulate about them existing in private hands to the best of my knowledge. Ask me for definitive proof and, no, I don't have any; however I would be very suprised if there aren't a few more 16mm prints or even domestic recordings that have lingered on into the 21st century  |
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Post by John Andersen on Sept 13, 2012 23:34:44 GMT
Some people have been intoning 'nothing else will ever be returned, its all been found, etc' for quite some time now and only recently 2 episodes came back from an unexpected source and also those 2 episodes had never had a single whisper circulate about them existing in private hands to the best of my knowledge. The trouble is that we will never know for sure whether all the existing prints have been found or not. Quite a few of the film collectors that have returned prints didn't know the episodes they had in their possession were missing. If they don't know that, then they certainly are not going to try to return something if they think the BBC has its own copy. The best thing to do is keep spreading the message by talking with other people, and maybe one of us will run into somebody who knows where some old films might be located. |
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Post by Ross Mann on Sept 14, 2012 0:51:13 GMT
Are you only counting foreign recoveries from TV archive sources?
Wasn't "The Lion" discovered to exist in New Zealand back in '99?
A country that (I have read in the past) never actually screened that serial!!
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Post by Ross Mann on Sept 14, 2012 0:57:56 GMT
Are there any of the original video tape copies that are unaccounted for?
Ie. A VT'd episode that there is no "official" record for having been junked, wiped and/or reused?
And did any of the wiped Pertwee colour VTs end up with Tom Baker episodes recorded over them?
Probably a stupid question, but I'm intrigued!! :/
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Post by Jon Preddle on Sept 14, 2012 3:05:30 GMT
Wasn't "The Lion" discovered to exist in New Zealand back in '99? A country that (I have read in the past) never actually screened that serial!! Yes, it didn't screen because of censorship, but the films had to be sent to NZ in order to be assessed. |
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Post by Alex Dering on Sept 14, 2012 5:15:55 GMT
Hmm. Now this all leads to a follow-up question.
Has anyone approached the search from a "last known transmission of episode" POV? (I suspect so, but I'd love to hear the details in either case).
Example (I'm making this up, but stick with me on it): Say that the Wheel in Space was broadcast from Toronto in 1971, several years after its transmission in England. Not only would the Canadians have seen it, several large populations in America would have as well. Has anyone concentrated search efforts on the basis not just of countries that had the transmissions, but also those areas in neighboring countries that could have received the signals? I realize I'm out on a limb here, but wouldn't it be lovely from someone from Buffalo, NY, to have all the episodes? "Oh yeah, we had one of the first VCRs. We always got the Canadian stations. Loved those Dr. Who stories. Always kept the tapes because they never released these episodes. Isn't that funny..."
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Post by D. Frame on Sept 14, 2012 6:54:13 GMT
Hmm. Now this all leads to a follow-up question. Has anyone approached the search from a "last known transmission of episode" POV? (I suspect so, but I'd love to hear the details in either case). Example (I'm making this up, but stick with me on it): Say that the Wheel in Space was broadcast from Toronto in 1971, several years after its transmission in England. Not only would the Canadians have seen it, several large populations in America would have as well. Has anyone concentrated search efforts on the basis not just of countries that had the transmissions, but also those areas in neighboring countries that could have received the signals? I realize I'm out on a limb here, but wouldn't it be lovely from someone from Buffalo, NY, to have all the episodes? "Oh yeah, we had one of the first VCRs. We always got the Canadian stations. Loved those Dr. Who stories. Always kept the tapes because they never released these episodes. Isn't that funny..." I have a nasty suspicion that I read somewhere that domestic video tape degrades naturally over time . Which worries me because I have video tapes from 1986/1987 . At the moment the picture is just as good as the day they were taped . But for how long ! |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 14, 2012 8:46:10 GMT
I am an optimist on the matter of missing episodes. I still think theres more out there. Some people have been intoning 'nothing else will ever be returned, its all been found, etc' for quite some time now and only recently 2 episodes came back from an unexpected source and also those 2 episodes had never had a single whisper circulate about them existing in private hands the best of my knowledge. Ask me for definitive proof and, no, I don't have any; however I would be very suprised if there aren't a few more 16mm prints or even domestic recordings that have lingered on into the 21st century I have the same view as you, Greg. It's not based on blind optimism that I believe there are more episodes out there though but on the law of averages assumption that it's perfectly reasonable to think there are at least some prints are still lying around somewhere or other (how many exactly is another question entirely!). People have been saying there's no more DW out there since the '80s; they were saying it immediately before the two episodes turned up last year, at which point they were shown to be wrong yet again. So absolute declarations such as (e.g.) "there's nothing else with the TV companies themselves now" are meaningless unless you have Superman's x-ray vision and have scanned at high speed every single vault and archive on the planet. You can categorically prove something exists by producing the physical evidence. The same is not possible though as far as proving non-existence of anything is concerned! As there are so many film prints out there of one kind or another dating right back (and many probably still unacknowledged / catalogued), I remain hopeful. This applies to all missing TV and not just Doctor Who, of course. |
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Post by Paul Vanezis on Sept 14, 2012 9:39:59 GMT
few quick notes and facts. There hasn't been a foreign return in over 20 years since TOMB OF THE CYBERMEN. There's only been one return by a former BBC employee and that was DMP #2. Other than those two, the only other returns in the last 25 years have been from the collector circuit. Technically true. However, many episodes came directly from the BBC or were passed on to Roger Stevens or Ian Sheward by BBC employees. They were: The Abominable Snowmen - 2 The Moonbase - 4 Invasion of the Dinosaurs - 1 The Time Meddler - 1&3 Although other episodes have come from the collector circuit, they can only have ended up there by being taken by BBC Enterprises employees. Examples of these are: The Faceless Ones - 3 The Evil of the Daleks - 2 The Wheel in Space - 3 Galaxy 4 - 3 The Underwater Menace - 2 We know that the two episodes that turned up last year in the hands of a collector were returned to the BBC from Australia in 1975. They were purchased in the early 1980's (probably in 1982) by the collector Terry Burnett who owns them to this day. It's my belief that any of the episodes that were returned in 1975 could turn up at some point from other collectors, and that is a lot of episodes. However, when a discovery is made overseas, it's usually, unlike a single ep discovery in the UK, a bulk find and a complete story. The Reign of Terror 1-3 in Cyprus, The Time Meddler, War Machines and Web Planet discoveries in Nigeria, Celestial Toymaker - 4 and War Machines - 2 (and another copy of Faceless Ones - 1 & Keys of Marinus 4 & 5) in Australia and Tomb of the Cybermen in Hong Kong demonstrate that when material is retained, it's usually retained as a complete sales set although in the case of the Australian episodes, they were all actually intended to be destroyed and were taken from shelves/skips or tucked away by ABC employees. I also spoke to one BBC Enterprises employee who would routinely send Sue Malden material anonymously, having been asked to destroy the films by his bosses. When I asked Sue if this had happened, she confirmed it but never knew who the person was. Most surviving returned films from the collector circuit are on the circuit because they were taken by BBC or BBC Enterprises staff. Paul |
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Post by Paul Vanezis on Sept 14, 2012 10:00:34 GMT
Just to add; there has been a lot of speculation about the source of some episodes in the archive, for example The Web of Fear - 1. Sue Malden recalls this as having been returned from overseas, and I'm sure that's true. But rather than it being a Hong Kong return, I think it much more likely that it was part of the batch of episodes sent back from Australia. One of the prints of 'The Keys of Marinus' that was sent back had chinagraph markings and Australian Broadcasting Commission leaders on them, as did the two episodes returned last year. The films from Hong Kong (Tomb) had BBC leaders on them, so could never have been in Australia or New Zealand as those countries replaced BBC leaders with internationally recognised SMPTE leaders. I think Hong Kong was sent in the main their own prints of the later stories which were then mostly sent on to other countries such as Gibralter etc...
The surviving Web of Fear print has a BBC leader on it, but it's not the one it originally had. There would only be three reasons to replace the leader. Firstly, it may have been returned without a leader at all (unlikely), secondly the leader was damaged (possible), thirdly the leader wasn't a BBC leader (most likely). I think the Web of Fear print is one of the batch of films from Australia. The Web of Fear was not censored in Australia and the BBC's copy is uncut. We know that many films were sent back in 1975 from Sydney and some of these still survive in the BBC archive. The BBC's print of episode five of The Dominators is in fact the ABC censored print (although the retained negative is intact) and we also have two other ex-ABC prints as well now.
Paul
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"There will always be 106 missing episodes of Doctor Who!" 
