Post by davecrichton on Feb 9, 2013 21:54:59 GMT
Hi, I thought I'd share with you all some research I've been undertaking in the last few weeks. I decided, once and for all, to try to find out if 'The Macra Terror' screening at a school in New Zealand (Harley Street), which has been talked about for some years, really did take place and, if it did, crucially find out where the prints came from, and where they ended up...
For those of you not familiar with the story (see missingepisodes.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=who&action=display&thread=3342&page=1 ) it was first recounted by Neil Lambess in the 1990s. Neil is a trusted and prominent New Zealand-based Doctor Who fan and was jointly responsible for the recovery of 'The Lion' in 1999 with Paul Scoones. Neil recalled that, when he was at school in New Zealand in the mid 70s, a cancelled sports day had led the children to take shelter in the school hall, where they were shown at least two episodes of Doctor Who, which Neil believed was 'The Macra Terror'. Years later, in the late 80s/early 90s, Neil had returned to the school and been told, by the staff of the day, that the A/V equipment had been operated by an 'old film buff' who'd since moved out of the area and died - his collection seemingly sold off.
I've always been fascinated by lost television episodes, especially Doctor Who, and, like you all, it's always frustrating feeling that there's so very little left that can be proactively achieved. Most all archives have been checked and have been contacted as part of the sterling efforts by Paul Vanezis et al. We all hope, deep down, that episodes might be in the hands of private collectors, but where to start? It's a needle in a haystack and all the while you're searching, without lead, you're not even sure there's anything to find... With this in mind, over the years, Neil's story has really resonated with me. Given that Neil is an entirely trustworthy and prominent fan, I've always been surprised by the fact that nobody has ever taken his memory seriously enough to take a further look. This is one instance, one very rare instance, where there's actually a trail to be followed. After years of berating this, I finally decided to do a bit of research!
The main objective, throughout, wasn't to necessarily find the 16mm prints (yes – of course, that would have been fantastic, but maybe too fantastic to hope for), but rather to separate the fact from fiction and find out how Dr Who episodes had come to be played out in a school in New Zealand. As it happens, this still isn't entirely certain, but keep reading and hopefully you'll see some small progress has been made.
As many of you will know, Jon Preddle's exhaustive research in this area tells us that NZBC listed the episodes as having been destroyed on 27th June 1974. Let's suppose that the copies that were alleged to have screened in the school were the NZBC prints (which I think is the most probably explanation – yes, of course, there's the very small chance that these were copies imported by a private collector from another territory – but the school is located in Masterton, just over an hour by car from where the NZBC copies were held, in Wellington). If that's the case, and bearing in mind, we don't know the exact date of the screening, we have three possibilities to imagine:
a) The 16mm prints of Macra were 'loaned' to the school (or someone associated to the school) prior to June 1974 and, after the screening, were returned to the station where they were destroyed as recorded.
b) The 16mm prints of Macra were salvaged from the skip, and fell into the hands of a collector who was associated with the school, which means the screening was after June ‘74.
c) The 16mm prints of Macra left the archives earlier than '74 (through whatever means) and, in the '74 audit, are found to be missing, and are simply recorded as being destroyed in compliance with their contractual obligations.
Naturally, the first step in my research was to validate Neil's claim. Therefore, the first thing I did was to contact as many Harley Street School children as possible (those who attended between 72-75). I simply asked them if they remembered a sports/fun day between Fernridge and Harley Street that was cancelled, and a B&W TV show shown on the projector instead. I felt it important, at this stage, not to lead people's memories. I had several replies from the 250-300 pupils I contacted, no specific memories of Doctor Who, but lots of suggestions as to who the projectionist would have been.
With a few clues, I now started to piece together a staff roll for 72-75. Harley Street school closed down in the early 2000s, so there was no way of approaching the school directly, however, with every teacher I found, I gained a few extra names, and it wasn't long before the 70s teachers and principal that I had contacted, were able to retrieve their staff photos. The school had around 15 staff at the school in any one year, and at least now I had a definitive list of them all.
I should note, at this point, that one particular teacher, has been incredibly helpful, and what little knowledge I have uncovered wouldn't have been possible without him, he's spent countless hours researching things for me (my 'man on the ground') as he still lives in Masterton. This gentleman, who I'll call 'Mr M' was mentioned by countless students at Harley Street as being the possible source of the Dr Who – he was also involved in school sports throughout that time. Alas, my first conversation with him revealed he couldn't recall Dr Who being shown, and certainly wasn't the source, but he was a goldmine of information that helped me to progress my research.
From 'Mr M', we learned that Harley Street School did have a projector in the 70s – a Bell & Howell. Only specific teachers were allowed to operate it, as the school required each of the teachers to be trained and obtain a license to use it. The school received films (mostly educationals) from an organisation called the 'National Library Service' of New Zealand. Four prints were dispatched at any one time, and loaned for a fortnight, where they would be returned and another four sent on. Early on, I was able to discover that the organisation most certainly were not the source of the Doctor Whos. It was confirmed that the NLS had no connection with NZBC and would have had no commercial rights to loan copyrighted material. The school, likewise, had no direct contact with NZBC (as 'Mr M' was one of the key projectionists, he was able to confirm that he'd have been 'in the know' if it had), so I was able to concentrate on the only other possibility – that someone associated with the children or school had the prints in their collection.
With a definitive list of teachers to hand, I started contacting them, one by one, and time and time again, nobody remembered Dr Who, or the cancelled sports day...Not a good start, for sure! A couple of names kept being mentioned by the staff about who might have been interested in film, and had access to the projector. One in particular looked like a real contender for a while – sadly, the gentleman had since passed away. I managed to find his children and, sadly, his widow had only recently passed away, so they were in the process of clearing the house. No sign of 16mm, and the children couldn't remember their father ever having been interested in film.
With hundreds of school children having failed to identify the event, and with more and more staff failing to remember, I was starting to think that perhaps Neil was misremembering. However, at the time, I'd expanded my research to incorporate Fernridge School. Neil had moved to Fernridge School from Harley Street in the early 70s, and it was a trip with Fernridge to the school where the screening happened. Fernridge was a country school with only 49 children on role in 1974 and two classes. Here I found several of Neil's classmates thought that the event 'rang a bell' but couldn't say for sure when it had taken place, or indeed, whether 'Dr Who' was shown. Still, it seemed more promising than the Harley Street end of the search...Then, out of the blue, I had a reply from one of the old students who said he did indeed recall the cancelled sports day. Again, cautious as to not lead his memory, I established that he'd seen a B&W TV show, which he thought could well have been British Sci-Fi. I sent him a link to the Troughton title sequence on YouTube and he confirmed it was definitely Dr Who. Just to be sure, I sent him three telesnaps, one from Macra, one from the Moonbase, and one from the Ice Warriors (showing their respective monsters), I also sent a short synopsis of each story. I got a reply straight back telling me that, without doubt, he'd seen the episode that featured the telesnap from Macra! Although he couldn't date the event, or add to Neil's memory significantly, the details were the same, cancelled sports day, sports in the morning, Dr Who in the afternoon, before the busses arrived to take them back.
While the search was frustrating at this point, we now had confirmation of Neil's recollections. In addition, my discussions with staff revealed Fernridge and Harley Street would have taken part in joint events (albeit mostly at local parks, rather than onsite), and the Bell & Howell in the school hall, all corroborated Neil's story, and it was enough for me to be sure that this event definitely took place. When or how was another question!
The next step in my research was to contact the local archives in the area, where the old school records for Harley Street and Masterton are stored (the archivist there is a good friend of 'Mr M'). In New Zealand, all schools keep a document called a 'log book', which was usually completed by a student, on behalf of the principal, and was a journal of daily life at the school. As I understand it, it was a requirement for schools to keep this information. Fortunately, the log books still exist and with help from 'Mr M' and the archivist, we were able to find that, worryingly, neither school had a record of Fernridge ever coming to Harley Street. Not that the log books are entirely exhaustive accounts, but added to the school teachers’ lack of memory of any such event, it wasn't a helpful discovery.
After a few other avenues had been examined, it led me to the belief that the event may well have been a holiday programme of some kind. This would explain why only certain pupils recall the event, and why Harley Street School have no memory or documentation. If a church group, or even an organistation like the YMCA had hosted such an event, they'd have simply taken over the school for a few days, with the proviso the school was returned in the same condition it was left. I contacted YMCA Masterton, the most prominent group at the time, but sadly their records don't go back that far. Again, 'Mr M' was sceptical that holiday programmes were commonplace in Masterton in the 70s, but it's still a distinct possibility.
Having contacted Harley Street School teachers, I now attempted to contact the Fernridge staff, however, though it was a tiny school, it was almost entirely administrated by two people, the principal and one teacher – sadly both of whom had passed away. However, I was able to contact the daughter of the principal, who was actually at the school around the same time. As of writing, I'm still waiting to hear from the principal's widow, who may be able to help. I also contacted the former principal of another local school, Opaki, who we think may have also been involved on that day. Again, he didn't recall it, but I'm still concluding my research on the Opaki side.
Around this time, my research led me to discover some names of prominent collectors that were in the area in the 1970s, many of whom had come across 16mm ex-NZBC prints. Many had passed away, but I was able to learn what was in their collections from other collectors who'd acquired large parts of the collections (the National NZ archives had also cherry-picked these collections, but only archiving NZ material). No record of Doctor Who, but I was heartened to discover that many of the collectors I spoke to, knew to look out for Doctor Who because of Neil's discovery of 'The Lion' in \99 and the ensuing publicity. Graham Howard's research, which led to the recovery of the censor clips from NZ, had also helped raise awareness. The president of one of the members-only clubs in NZ, kindly offered to run an article I wrote appealing for information about missing TV. This is a paper-newsletter and might help reach older collectors, who aren't on the internet (as was the case with many of the collectors I was referred to on my search, some of whom were in their 80s).
Although I was sceptical of the information the school gave Neil in the 90s, about the old 'film buff' I thought I best follow up on it. I found out who was teaching at the school in the 90s and spoke with many of them. It was clear that no teachers were still around who had taught there in the 70s and I think I know the name of the collector they mentioned to Neil. He had indeed passed away, but he wasn't the source of 'Macra' and wasn't involved with the school in the 70s. Although we can't know for sure the name Neil was given (he can't remember with any accuracy), we can be reasonably sure that, if the teachers of the time can't remember such an 'obvious' source of the Dr Who prints, it's very unlikely teachers who hadn't even joined the school until two decades later would be able to identify him. I therefore ruled out this end of the search.
It's interesting that Neil's memory is so good in this regard, where his fellow students’ recall (with the exception of one), is much less clear. I feel the key to this is that Neil was a 'Dr Who' fan at the time. This is important in two regards – firstly, the events of that day have much greater prominence than, for instance, someone who had never seen the programme. Neil remembers the excitement of seeing it was a Doctor Who being shown on the projector, and his disappointment that it was one he'd already seen on the original NZ transmission. This anchors his memory around an emotion. It's also relevant because, only around a decade after the event, Neil was already becoming aware of the situation of missing television, and in the 90s is sharing the story of the screening. In the late 80s, Neil's memory of the event is only 15 years old, and he's a Doctor Who fan, who knows exactly what he saw. We therefore have to counter that against his fellow students who won't have given that day a single thought in forty years, and to whom the show meant nothing...
So, if you've persevered with this update, that's where we are, as of writing. I'm now running out of leads, until I can have a better idea of exactly when the event occurred. I've contacted around 1000 people in this search, and it's currently a big web of information that's just waiting on one or two tiny clues which can help make sense of the bigger picture. There's too much to write here, but I am still waiting to hear on a few other hopeful lines of enquiry, so I'll keep you all updated. This week, the local newspaper for the Wairarapa (the area which Masterton is located in) ran a story on the search:
wairarapanews.realviewdigital.com/?iid=73670&startpage=page0000003
The paper has a print run in the tens of thousands and they also ran a picture on the cover, so this may spur a memory or two, which will help. I'm also on the hunt for some missing documentation that will add to my knowledge of the event.
Throughout this process, I've become more and more convinced that Neil is absolutely correct that Macra Terror was indeed shown to school children at Harley Street School. While my research hasn't (yet) produced the kind of concrete proof I'd have liked, all of Neil's recollections are plausible and now we even have a second confirmed account of the screening, and several other vague memories. It's worth noting that all of the teachers I've spoken to have no reason to doubt the story. All of the schools mentioned were regularly involved in inter-school events, and they all think it's quite likely that they'd show the kids a 'movie' to keep them quiet in the event of a cancelled event. Unfortunately, I'm missing one vital clue, there has to be some strange reason the kids were all at that particular school (something that was unusual) on that day – something that hadn't happened previously, nor was repeated in later years. Perhaps it was a special event or celebration that called for a gathering or a weekend club simply using the venue? Hopefully I'll be able to find the final piece of the jigsaw and make the leap...
I hope you've enjoyed reading the above – as mentioned, I'm not expecting to find Macra – even if it had survived the NZBC cull, it would still be somewhat of a miracle for it to have survived the intervening forty years, but I am hopeful I'll be able to learn more about the event and perhaps understand how Doctor Who came to be shown there.
Please can I ask that any well-meaning fans do not contact the school or any of the ex-pupils of the above schools. If you think you can help, please reply here. The people associated with this search have been incredibly kind, courteous and helpful in my enquiries, so I really don't want them bombarded by people re-running my research. At worst, this could scupper some last lines of enquiry I’m waiting on… I guarantee that if there is any more to be discovered on the matter, I'll find it!
Many thanks
Dave
(david_ian1@hotmail.co.uk)
For those of you not familiar with the story (see missingepisodes.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=who&action=display&thread=3342&page=1 ) it was first recounted by Neil Lambess in the 1990s. Neil is a trusted and prominent New Zealand-based Doctor Who fan and was jointly responsible for the recovery of 'The Lion' in 1999 with Paul Scoones. Neil recalled that, when he was at school in New Zealand in the mid 70s, a cancelled sports day had led the children to take shelter in the school hall, where they were shown at least two episodes of Doctor Who, which Neil believed was 'The Macra Terror'. Years later, in the late 80s/early 90s, Neil had returned to the school and been told, by the staff of the day, that the A/V equipment had been operated by an 'old film buff' who'd since moved out of the area and died - his collection seemingly sold off.
I've always been fascinated by lost television episodes, especially Doctor Who, and, like you all, it's always frustrating feeling that there's so very little left that can be proactively achieved. Most all archives have been checked and have been contacted as part of the sterling efforts by Paul Vanezis et al. We all hope, deep down, that episodes might be in the hands of private collectors, but where to start? It's a needle in a haystack and all the while you're searching, without lead, you're not even sure there's anything to find... With this in mind, over the years, Neil's story has really resonated with me. Given that Neil is an entirely trustworthy and prominent fan, I've always been surprised by the fact that nobody has ever taken his memory seriously enough to take a further look. This is one instance, one very rare instance, where there's actually a trail to be followed. After years of berating this, I finally decided to do a bit of research!
The main objective, throughout, wasn't to necessarily find the 16mm prints (yes – of course, that would have been fantastic, but maybe too fantastic to hope for), but rather to separate the fact from fiction and find out how Dr Who episodes had come to be played out in a school in New Zealand. As it happens, this still isn't entirely certain, but keep reading and hopefully you'll see some small progress has been made.
As many of you will know, Jon Preddle's exhaustive research in this area tells us that NZBC listed the episodes as having been destroyed on 27th June 1974. Let's suppose that the copies that were alleged to have screened in the school were the NZBC prints (which I think is the most probably explanation – yes, of course, there's the very small chance that these were copies imported by a private collector from another territory – but the school is located in Masterton, just over an hour by car from where the NZBC copies were held, in Wellington). If that's the case, and bearing in mind, we don't know the exact date of the screening, we have three possibilities to imagine:
a) The 16mm prints of Macra were 'loaned' to the school (or someone associated to the school) prior to June 1974 and, after the screening, were returned to the station where they were destroyed as recorded.
b) The 16mm prints of Macra were salvaged from the skip, and fell into the hands of a collector who was associated with the school, which means the screening was after June ‘74.
c) The 16mm prints of Macra left the archives earlier than '74 (through whatever means) and, in the '74 audit, are found to be missing, and are simply recorded as being destroyed in compliance with their contractual obligations.
Naturally, the first step in my research was to validate Neil's claim. Therefore, the first thing I did was to contact as many Harley Street School children as possible (those who attended between 72-75). I simply asked them if they remembered a sports/fun day between Fernridge and Harley Street that was cancelled, and a B&W TV show shown on the projector instead. I felt it important, at this stage, not to lead people's memories. I had several replies from the 250-300 pupils I contacted, no specific memories of Doctor Who, but lots of suggestions as to who the projectionist would have been.
With a few clues, I now started to piece together a staff roll for 72-75. Harley Street school closed down in the early 2000s, so there was no way of approaching the school directly, however, with every teacher I found, I gained a few extra names, and it wasn't long before the 70s teachers and principal that I had contacted, were able to retrieve their staff photos. The school had around 15 staff at the school in any one year, and at least now I had a definitive list of them all.
I should note, at this point, that one particular teacher, has been incredibly helpful, and what little knowledge I have uncovered wouldn't have been possible without him, he's spent countless hours researching things for me (my 'man on the ground') as he still lives in Masterton. This gentleman, who I'll call 'Mr M' was mentioned by countless students at Harley Street as being the possible source of the Dr Who – he was also involved in school sports throughout that time. Alas, my first conversation with him revealed he couldn't recall Dr Who being shown, and certainly wasn't the source, but he was a goldmine of information that helped me to progress my research.
From 'Mr M', we learned that Harley Street School did have a projector in the 70s – a Bell & Howell. Only specific teachers were allowed to operate it, as the school required each of the teachers to be trained and obtain a license to use it. The school received films (mostly educationals) from an organisation called the 'National Library Service' of New Zealand. Four prints were dispatched at any one time, and loaned for a fortnight, where they would be returned and another four sent on. Early on, I was able to discover that the organisation most certainly were not the source of the Doctor Whos. It was confirmed that the NLS had no connection with NZBC and would have had no commercial rights to loan copyrighted material. The school, likewise, had no direct contact with NZBC (as 'Mr M' was one of the key projectionists, he was able to confirm that he'd have been 'in the know' if it had), so I was able to concentrate on the only other possibility – that someone associated with the children or school had the prints in their collection.
With a definitive list of teachers to hand, I started contacting them, one by one, and time and time again, nobody remembered Dr Who, or the cancelled sports day...Not a good start, for sure! A couple of names kept being mentioned by the staff about who might have been interested in film, and had access to the projector. One in particular looked like a real contender for a while – sadly, the gentleman had since passed away. I managed to find his children and, sadly, his widow had only recently passed away, so they were in the process of clearing the house. No sign of 16mm, and the children couldn't remember their father ever having been interested in film.
With hundreds of school children having failed to identify the event, and with more and more staff failing to remember, I was starting to think that perhaps Neil was misremembering. However, at the time, I'd expanded my research to incorporate Fernridge School. Neil had moved to Fernridge School from Harley Street in the early 70s, and it was a trip with Fernridge to the school where the screening happened. Fernridge was a country school with only 49 children on role in 1974 and two classes. Here I found several of Neil's classmates thought that the event 'rang a bell' but couldn't say for sure when it had taken place, or indeed, whether 'Dr Who' was shown. Still, it seemed more promising than the Harley Street end of the search...Then, out of the blue, I had a reply from one of the old students who said he did indeed recall the cancelled sports day. Again, cautious as to not lead his memory, I established that he'd seen a B&W TV show, which he thought could well have been British Sci-Fi. I sent him a link to the Troughton title sequence on YouTube and he confirmed it was definitely Dr Who. Just to be sure, I sent him three telesnaps, one from Macra, one from the Moonbase, and one from the Ice Warriors (showing their respective monsters), I also sent a short synopsis of each story. I got a reply straight back telling me that, without doubt, he'd seen the episode that featured the telesnap from Macra! Although he couldn't date the event, or add to Neil's memory significantly, the details were the same, cancelled sports day, sports in the morning, Dr Who in the afternoon, before the busses arrived to take them back.
While the search was frustrating at this point, we now had confirmation of Neil's recollections. In addition, my discussions with staff revealed Fernridge and Harley Street would have taken part in joint events (albeit mostly at local parks, rather than onsite), and the Bell & Howell in the school hall, all corroborated Neil's story, and it was enough for me to be sure that this event definitely took place. When or how was another question!
The next step in my research was to contact the local archives in the area, where the old school records for Harley Street and Masterton are stored (the archivist there is a good friend of 'Mr M'). In New Zealand, all schools keep a document called a 'log book', which was usually completed by a student, on behalf of the principal, and was a journal of daily life at the school. As I understand it, it was a requirement for schools to keep this information. Fortunately, the log books still exist and with help from 'Mr M' and the archivist, we were able to find that, worryingly, neither school had a record of Fernridge ever coming to Harley Street. Not that the log books are entirely exhaustive accounts, but added to the school teachers’ lack of memory of any such event, it wasn't a helpful discovery.
After a few other avenues had been examined, it led me to the belief that the event may well have been a holiday programme of some kind. This would explain why only certain pupils recall the event, and why Harley Street School have no memory or documentation. If a church group, or even an organistation like the YMCA had hosted such an event, they'd have simply taken over the school for a few days, with the proviso the school was returned in the same condition it was left. I contacted YMCA Masterton, the most prominent group at the time, but sadly their records don't go back that far. Again, 'Mr M' was sceptical that holiday programmes were commonplace in Masterton in the 70s, but it's still a distinct possibility.
Having contacted Harley Street School teachers, I now attempted to contact the Fernridge staff, however, though it was a tiny school, it was almost entirely administrated by two people, the principal and one teacher – sadly both of whom had passed away. However, I was able to contact the daughter of the principal, who was actually at the school around the same time. As of writing, I'm still waiting to hear from the principal's widow, who may be able to help. I also contacted the former principal of another local school, Opaki, who we think may have also been involved on that day. Again, he didn't recall it, but I'm still concluding my research on the Opaki side.
Around this time, my research led me to discover some names of prominent collectors that were in the area in the 1970s, many of whom had come across 16mm ex-NZBC prints. Many had passed away, but I was able to learn what was in their collections from other collectors who'd acquired large parts of the collections (the National NZ archives had also cherry-picked these collections, but only archiving NZ material). No record of Doctor Who, but I was heartened to discover that many of the collectors I spoke to, knew to look out for Doctor Who because of Neil's discovery of 'The Lion' in \99 and the ensuing publicity. Graham Howard's research, which led to the recovery of the censor clips from NZ, had also helped raise awareness. The president of one of the members-only clubs in NZ, kindly offered to run an article I wrote appealing for information about missing TV. This is a paper-newsletter and might help reach older collectors, who aren't on the internet (as was the case with many of the collectors I was referred to on my search, some of whom were in their 80s).
Although I was sceptical of the information the school gave Neil in the 90s, about the old 'film buff' I thought I best follow up on it. I found out who was teaching at the school in the 90s and spoke with many of them. It was clear that no teachers were still around who had taught there in the 70s and I think I know the name of the collector they mentioned to Neil. He had indeed passed away, but he wasn't the source of 'Macra' and wasn't involved with the school in the 70s. Although we can't know for sure the name Neil was given (he can't remember with any accuracy), we can be reasonably sure that, if the teachers of the time can't remember such an 'obvious' source of the Dr Who prints, it's very unlikely teachers who hadn't even joined the school until two decades later would be able to identify him. I therefore ruled out this end of the search.
It's interesting that Neil's memory is so good in this regard, where his fellow students’ recall (with the exception of one), is much less clear. I feel the key to this is that Neil was a 'Dr Who' fan at the time. This is important in two regards – firstly, the events of that day have much greater prominence than, for instance, someone who had never seen the programme. Neil remembers the excitement of seeing it was a Doctor Who being shown on the projector, and his disappointment that it was one he'd already seen on the original NZ transmission. This anchors his memory around an emotion. It's also relevant because, only around a decade after the event, Neil was already becoming aware of the situation of missing television, and in the 90s is sharing the story of the screening. In the late 80s, Neil's memory of the event is only 15 years old, and he's a Doctor Who fan, who knows exactly what he saw. We therefore have to counter that against his fellow students who won't have given that day a single thought in forty years, and to whom the show meant nothing...
So, if you've persevered with this update, that's where we are, as of writing. I'm now running out of leads, until I can have a better idea of exactly when the event occurred. I've contacted around 1000 people in this search, and it's currently a big web of information that's just waiting on one or two tiny clues which can help make sense of the bigger picture. There's too much to write here, but I am still waiting to hear on a few other hopeful lines of enquiry, so I'll keep you all updated. This week, the local newspaper for the Wairarapa (the area which Masterton is located in) ran a story on the search:
wairarapanews.realviewdigital.com/?iid=73670&startpage=page0000003
The paper has a print run in the tens of thousands and they also ran a picture on the cover, so this may spur a memory or two, which will help. I'm also on the hunt for some missing documentation that will add to my knowledge of the event.
Throughout this process, I've become more and more convinced that Neil is absolutely correct that Macra Terror was indeed shown to school children at Harley Street School. While my research hasn't (yet) produced the kind of concrete proof I'd have liked, all of Neil's recollections are plausible and now we even have a second confirmed account of the screening, and several other vague memories. It's worth noting that all of the teachers I've spoken to have no reason to doubt the story. All of the schools mentioned were regularly involved in inter-school events, and they all think it's quite likely that they'd show the kids a 'movie' to keep them quiet in the event of a cancelled event. Unfortunately, I'm missing one vital clue, there has to be some strange reason the kids were all at that particular school (something that was unusual) on that day – something that hadn't happened previously, nor was repeated in later years. Perhaps it was a special event or celebration that called for a gathering or a weekend club simply using the venue? Hopefully I'll be able to find the final piece of the jigsaw and make the leap...
I hope you've enjoyed reading the above – as mentioned, I'm not expecting to find Macra – even if it had survived the NZBC cull, it would still be somewhat of a miracle for it to have survived the intervening forty years, but I am hopeful I'll be able to learn more about the event and perhaps understand how Doctor Who came to be shown there.
Please can I ask that any well-meaning fans do not contact the school or any of the ex-pupils of the above schools. If you think you can help, please reply here. The people associated with this search have been incredibly kind, courteous and helpful in my enquiries, so I really don't want them bombarded by people re-running my research. At worst, this could scupper some last lines of enquiry I’m waiting on… I guarantee that if there is any more to be discovered on the matter, I'll find it!
Many thanks
Dave
(david_ian1@hotmail.co.uk)
