Missing episode recoveries history

[Klaus]

^^Many of the older shows the Pythons cited as influences, like Spike Milligan, are mostly gone... we're just lucky in this case.

[throwback]

To put this in perspective, Sophocles wrote over 100 plays. Someone thought that seven of his plays had value, and were subsequently preserved. This one example has been repeated throughout history. I am happy that we have as many Doctor Who episodes from that era. I would be enthusiastic if additional episodes were found.

[Christopher]

throwback wrote:

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To put this in perspective, Sophocles wrote over 100 plays. Someone thought that seven of his plays had value, and were subsequently preserved. This one example has been repeated throughout history.

Well, others were preserved at various times, and subsequently lost at various times. For instance, the Library at Alexandria preserved official copies -- or even originals -- of the plays of Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Euripides, and considered them to be of such value that they were reluctant even to loan copies out to anyone. But not everyone values the same things, and those plays and a wealth of other knowledge were lost when the Christians took over Alexandria and burned the library's contents in their purges of pagan culture. There may have been other copies and collections that have been preserved and lost at various times; but those seven happened to be part of a compilation that existed recently enough to have survived to the present.

And so it is with the missing Doctor Who episodes. Which ones survived the purges and which ones didn't was more a matter of chance than deliberate selection.

[Mr. Adventure]

As time rolls on a lot of these old shows are more historical curiosities and artifacts than truly cherished anyway. I don't know if twenty, thirty years from how many people are going to be thinking wistfully about lost Troughton episodes.

[diankra]

Well, that's impossible to say. If anything, I'd say the Troughton era seems to be more popular now than it was say 25 years ago, and in some ways it seems less dated than the 1980s episodes. Now whether that's just a natural function of distance (20 years old seems dated, 50 seems quaint, 75 seems... who knows yet? Prehistoric? Even better?) only time will tell...

[Candlelight]

Zeppster wrote:

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Finding episodes at this point is extremely hard unless we find out there were a lot more film technicians that were Doctor Who fans. Which we've found 2 in the last decade so you never know.

Were they fans though? Francis Watson grabbed the two episodes when being told to dispose of films in the projection room, and took them home to screen at his local film club.

Terry Burnett just happened to mention to Ralph Montagu that he had episodes in his collection.

I don't recall either of them stating they were fans of the series. Then again I didn't hear them say they weren't!

[diankra]

Yes, you're right to say that they weren't fans: if they had been, they'd have known the episodes were missing. They were just people who'd watched Doctor Who a bit and liked it enough to think that they might as well hold on to a spare copy that would otherwise go to the bin.

[Ar-Pharazon]

I must have read some mis-information on the longevity of early technicolor films.

The Vitaphone Project has located a complete Technicolor print of the long-lost Stooges 1933 MGM Colortone short HELLO POP! This is the only lost short with all three Stooges, and also stars Ted Healy and Henry Armetta. The 35mm nitrate print was found overseas and after some torturous steps to get the nitrate packaged and shipped, it is today safely in the hands of Eric Aijayla at YCM labs. Ned Price at WB has ensured the funding of the restoration, and ideally we could see this within a year. The sole known print burned in the big MGM fire in the 1960's.

What I don't get is, even in the 30's, there must have been at least dozens of copies of this short sent out to theaters when it was released. How is it there's only one copy left to get burned up in the 1960's?

Outside of the copy in Australia of course. Unless all copies were technicolor and they all disintegrated.

They can't have been as anal about keeping track of copies of films in the 30's as they are now.

I think this gives us hope that some of those missing Doctor Who episodes could turn up, if a 2-reeler missing for 50 years can be found.

[Candlelight]

Ar-Pharazon wrote:

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I must have read some mis-information on the longevity of early technicolor films.

What I don't get is, even in the 30's, there must have been at least dozens of copies of this short sent out to theaters when it was released. How is it there's only one copy left to get burned up in the 1960's?

Outside of the copy in Australia of course. Unless all copies were technicolor and they all disintegrated.

They can't have been as anal about keeping track of copies of films in the 30's as they are now.

I think this gives us hope that some of those missing Doctor Who episodes could turn up, if a 2-reeler missing for 50 years can be found.

After the release in cinemas had ended there would be a request by the studio for those films to either be returned or destroyed (similar to what happened to Dr Who episodes). If a studio is sitting on 12 prints but only needs to retain one (IE the original negative for example) then the other 11 get junked, and in future if any re-release is sold then more copies are run off that surviving neg.

What they should have done - and a lot of companies do this these days, possibly from lessons learned from the MGM fire - is they'll have two vaults, in two different physical locations.

That way if one is lost the other still exists.

BBC Enterprises retained the 16mm negatives after the BBC engineering department had wiped the original quad master tapes, but after five years the rights to resell had expired, and so if there was no further use for the prints then they were junked.

There was some belief that Enterprises only ever had copies of films, and that other versions were still in existence elsewhere at the BBC. It's highly frustrating that there was no global system to keep track of all the episodes; although at the time the Dr Who production office only cared about the upcoming season, and not of episodes past.

[Ar-Pharazon]

^ I just wonder, in the 1930's, how strict they were about getting those films returned, and how closely they could keep track of everything.

Today, I can totally see it, with all the technology & databases & licenses & anal nature about pirating.

And hey, some missing Doctor Who eps are rumored to be in Australia, maybe the same guy has some of those.

[Candlelight]

I keep hearing this rumour, what is it?

I mean it's likely either a hoax or someone mishearing the source of the 2011 discoveries was (likely) Australia.

[diankra]

Possibly a garbling of the old hopes about the Harriet Street store in New Zealand.

[Ar-Pharazon]

Candlelight wrote:

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I keep hearing this rumour, what is it?

I mean it's likely either a hoax or someone mishearing the source of the 2011 discoveries was (likely) Australia.

I keep "hearing" the rumor too. No idea if it's true.

But Oz was the main place, outside of the UK, that got Doctor Who episodes in that era (as a former colony?), and thus likelier to have them still around somewhere.

I think the hope is, they didn't destroy them.

The US didn't get anything till the mid 70's, I think, so probably no chance any of those missing eps are here.

[Candlelight]

Ar-Pharazon wrote:

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I keep "hearing" the rumor too. No idea if it's true.

But Oz was the main place, outside of the UK, that got Doctor Who episodes in that era (as a former colony?), and thus likelier to have them still around somewhere.

I think the hope is, they didn't destroy them.

The US didn't get anything till the mid 70's, I think, so probably no chance any of those missing eps are here.

http://missingepisodes.blogspot.co.n...anyprints.html

A large chunk of the Australian episodes were sent back to the UK in 1975. A handful of episodes (The Chase 1, The Celestial Toymaker 4, The War Machines 2 and The Faceless Ones 1 off the top of my head) stayed in Australia. Others were confirmed as destroyed or sent to New Zealand (in terms of missing stories only The Reign of Terror was in this batch, and the NZBC destroyed these copies in 1971).

In terms of main buyers, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore (and later Hong Kong) were the big broadcasters. Singapore in particular as they're the last known buyers of such stories as The Tenth Planet and The Power of the Daleks...

Sierra Leone retained a batch of most of Season Three but their archive was destroyed in a civil war in 1999.