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Post by Robert Lia on Feb 11, 2014 0:54:13 GMT
It was published back in the early 1980's some where I think possibly one of the Peter Hanning books (but I could be wrong about that) that it was wiped in error when the tapes of the Patrick Troughton story The Invasion was disposed of
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Post by G D Peck on Feb 11, 2014 5:02:45 GMT
According to BroaDWcast and Wiped a set of PAL video tapes for this story were sent to BBC Sydney in 1974. Shame that after the censors rejected the story they never put the tapes in storage like they did with The Green Death and Frontier in Space, we could have had Part One in PAL today if they did.
I know that ABC and BBC Sydney have been checked for missing episodes but have they been checked for PAL video tapes of Pertwees in recent years?
In fact this leads me to another question. Has Dubai been thoroughly searched for Planet of the Daleks 3 - given they returned parts 4-6 on PAL VT.
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Post by robstickler on Feb 11, 2014 12:13:37 GMT
Urban myth, Keith. I believe the VTs of the Troughton Invasion were wiped before Dinosaurs TXed. Aw really? I thought that too. Does that myth originate from Peter Haining's "A Celebration" (I'm at work and can't check). ---- It was published back in the early 1980's some where I think possibly one of the Peter Hanning books (but I could be wrong about that) that it was wiped in error when the tapes of the Patrick Troughton story The Invasion was disposed of Apologies, jumped the gun with my reply! |
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Post by Rob Moss on Feb 11, 2014 12:32:06 GMT
It was published back in the early 1980's some where I think possibly one of the Peter Hanning books (but I could be wrong about that) that it was wiped in error when the tapes of the Patrick Troughton story The Invasion was disposed of Without wishing to be unkind to Mr Haining, he ain't no Pixley... |
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Post by Matthew Kurth on Feb 11, 2014 13:19:47 GMT
It was published back in the early 1980's some where I think possibly one of the Peter Hanning books (but I could be wrong about that) that it was wiped in error when the tapes of the Patrick Troughton story The Invasion was disposed of Without wishing to be unkind to Mr Haining, he ain't no Pixley... To be fair, at that time I don't think all of the documentation had been reviewed at the level of detail it has now. On the surface it seems like a reasonable conclusion if you didn't know when the tapes had been wiped... Urban myth, Keith. I believe the VTs of the Troughton Invasion were wiped before Dinosaurs TXed. Can we examine this further for a moment since the episode title myth is likely to persist? The VT for "The Invasion" is listed as having been wiped on 20 May 1971 per The Destruction of Time, so yeah, well before "Invasion of the Dinosaurs" was made. So it certainly wasn't a case where someone was gathering up the various quads for "The Invasion" and said "Hey, here's another tape with this title, let's wipe it too". So the only way the "mistaken as being a tape from a Troughton story" could hold any water is if someone was doing an audit, saw the title, and said "Hey this was supposed to be wiped, you missed one!" which still doesn't seem likely. Furthermore, despite the on-screen title, wouldn't the label on the tape have listed the full title anyhow? But that brings me to a series of questions. When these tapes were cleared to be wiped, do we know how the tapes were described on the documentation? Somehow it seems unlikely to me that it was actually done as lists of individual episode titles for the dozens of shows that were being wiped at the same time, that seems too messy especially for the stories with individual titles. Could the order have come down as, say "OK to wipe Dr. Who Serial FF" instead? That would make it even more unlikely that a Pertwee would have been grabbed by mistake. Or, given this was handled by the engineering department, could the lists have come down by individual tape number, as in "OK to wipe tape VT/123/456/7890"? This, of course, would make confusion virtually impossible although someone could still mistype or misread a number and grab the wrong tape. (At one time I had a bookmark to a page that explained BBC VT numbering, but can't find it now.) For that matter, I don't see a notation of when the Pertwees were wiped on the Destruction of Time page. The BroaDWcast page for UAE reports the VT was wiped in August 1974, but the Serial WWW page doesn't repeat that date. If the UAE page is accurate, the two telerecording sessions would have to have taken place between February and July of 1974 and the VT must have been wiped almost immediately after review by ABC in Australia. Can anyone shed additional light on this? |
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Post by Richard Marple on Feb 11, 2014 13:45:07 GMT
Urban myth, Keith. I believe the VTs of the Troughton Invasion were wiped before Dinosaurs TXed. Aw really? I thought that too. Does that myth originate from Peter Haining's "A Celebration" (I'm at work and can't check). It also mentions that Planet Of The Spiders was the last story telerecorded, so is the source of that misinformation. |
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Post by Richard Bignell on Feb 11, 2014 14:35:22 GMT
But that brings me to a series of questions. When these tapes were cleared to be wiped, do we know how the tapes were described on the documentation? Somehow it seems unlikely to me that it was actually done as lists of individual episode titles for the dozens of shows that were being wiped at the same time, that seems too messy especially for the stories with individual titles. Could the order have come down as, say "OK to wipe Dr. Who Serial FF" instead? That would make it even more unlikely that a Pertwee would have been grabbed by mistake. Or, given this was handled by the engineering department, could the lists have come down by individual tape number, as in "OK to wipe tape VT/123/456/7890"? It's the latter. The tapes were wiped by tape number. Although the programme title was noted on the authorisation sheets (such as "Dr Who R 1"), the tapes would have been removed by tape number from the engineering department's shelves and wiped. The dates for the two telerecordings of Episode 1 are 28 June and 10 July 1974. |
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Post by John Wall on Feb 11, 2014 14:41:11 GMT
It was published back in the early 1980's some where I think possibly one of the Peter Hanning books (but I could be wrong about that) that it was wiped in error when the tapes of the Patrick Troughton story The Invasion was disposed of Without wishing to be unkind to Mr Haining, he ain't no Pixley... We were at university together, he's an engineer  |
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Post by keithmchugh on Feb 11, 2014 22:01:46 GMT
According to "Wiped!" the Troughton "Invasion" tapes were wiped on 20/05/71. But it also says ALL 6 episodes of "Invasion of the Dinosaurs" were wiped in August 1974, but episodes 2-6 were later found and archived sometime before 1981.
So I wonder how only Episode 1 got wiped ? and where were episodes 2-6 that allowed them to escape the August '74 wiping ?
The transmission dates are given on the DVD release as 12th January - 16th February 1974. So August '74 seems rather soon for wiping this story anyway.
In theory someone could have recorded this episode off-air in colour since the Philips N1500 VCR system would have been around at this time.
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Post by Richard Bignell on Feb 11, 2014 22:13:21 GMT
There were many cases throughout the 1960s and 70s when the master videotapes were wiped in a rather haphazard order rather than erasing entire stories.
It's been postulated in the past that Barry Letts willingly gave the nod for Invasion of the Dinosaurs to be wiped because he hated the finished story so much. How true that is anyone's guess.
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Post by martinjwills on Feb 11, 2014 22:18:56 GMT
The dates for the two telerecordings of Episode 1 are 28 June and 10 July 1974. So the other telerecording of episode 1 may have better chroma dots, than the one used so far. Do we know which of the two is the one returned and used for the DVD |
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Post by keithmchugh on Feb 11, 2014 22:55:55 GMT
Do we know if this story was sold to the US or Canada and NTSC conversion dubs made ?
The next story "Death to the Daleks" for many years only had the NTSC dub as the surviving copy of Episode 1 suggesting that this season was sold in the NTSC format, or was this a later sale after the August '74 wiping ?
** Think I've found my answer. Wiped! says that there were no overseas sales of this story until the early 1980's.
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Post by simonashby on Feb 11, 2014 23:02:30 GMT
Do we know if this story was sold to the US or Canada and NTSC conversion dubs made ? Not until the 80s. No-one bought it until 1984. This excluded episode 1, despite existing in B/W. |
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Post by keithmchugh on Feb 11, 2014 23:28:19 GMT
Yes it seems there were 2 versions of this story for sale at one point by BBC Worldwide. 6 Parts with the B/W episode 1 and a 5 part full colour version without episode 1.
When I was working at TV Centre back in 1999/2000 one of my jobs was Worldwide dubs in the evenings. This story came in for copying on one of these evenings. What they'd supplied was a mixture of D3 tapes and maybe a single 1 inch Enterprises dub made at some point in the past. Because the BBC Enterprises/Worldwide 1 inch tape had come from the 5-part version with all the episodes re-numbered what they'd actually sent were the 6 parts but from different sets, so one episode was missing and another episode was supplied twice due to this re-numbering of episodes.
It's a long time ago but I have a feeling the 1 inch tape was episode 2 re-numbered as episode 1, but there was also a D3 of episode 2 (as episode 2). So what I think was missing was the B/w telerecording of the real episode 1. I guess it's possible that someone thought this 1 inch tape was the only colour copy of Episode 1 when in fact it was just another copy of Episode 2.
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Post by Matthew Kurth on Feb 12, 2014 0:22:53 GMT
[...] given this was handled by the engineering department, could the lists have come down by individual tape number, as in "OK to wipe tape VT/123/456/7890"? It's the latter. The tapes were wiped by tape number. Thanks so much Richard, that's invaluable to have for the next time that myth comes around! The dates for the two telerecordings of Episode 1 are 28 June and 10 July 1974. Huh. Any idea why it was done twice in such a short span? Could the first batch have experienced some technical fault? |
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