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Two Lost Doctor Who Episodes Found
First time accepted submitter crow writes "Two episodes of Doctor Who from the 1960s, thought to have been destroyed in the 1970s, have been found. Both were in the hands of a private collector who didn't know what he had. Like most episodes of the time, these were half-hour shows, part of a four-part story, and portions of both stories are still missing."
We're still going to need a TARDIS to put the whole series together.
just time-shifted. Get your facts straight, DW fans!
Theres a list of missing episodes on this website but it hasn't yet been updated to include the new discoveries. With the finding of "The Underwater Menace" part 2, we now have a new "earliest surviving episode to feature Patrick Troughton." Hopefully the BBC can do their usual magic to restore these episode...there are apparently bits missing.
Man, that doctor who series is so damn expensive. I have a complete known collection of stargate, sanctuary, star wars, and others I can't think at the moment, but when I walk past the movie isle at frys, and I see the price and size of DR WHO, I just keep walking every time. That's the fucking truth.
It always amazes me how things like these can be lost.
Do you think anyone is going to any great lengths to preserve episodes of "Terra Nova"? But you never know, it could become a huge cult classic in the future.
http://www.rimmell.com/bbc/news.htm
We Apprentice Developers and Designers
It's already happened. Terra Nova episodes have been posted to usenet, and shared on P2P, so they aren't going to be lost any time soon. What is trivial today, wasn't in the 60's.
That being said, I'm still utterly amazed that they put money into funding a television show, and then literally erase the tapes. What a waste!
In October 1996, Australian Doctor Who fans Damian Shanahan and Ellen Parry discovered a collection of the censored clips – several from missing episodes which do not exist in their entirety – in the records of the National Archives of Australia.[12] The clips had been sent by the Commonwealth Film Censorship Board (now the Office of Film and Literature Classification) to the Archives as evidence of the required edits having been made.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Who_missing_episodes#Censor_clips
Burning mod points here, but I apologize... that was a hoax. I suspected when I saw the original note and it was dated April 1st.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
The BBC Archives junked a lot of its black-and-white archives on the grounds that nobody watches that stuff. There is some disagreement over whether the archives were junked once or twice. The BBC article linked to notes that the BBC itself reused mag tape recordings -- whilst this is true, it is extremely disingenuous, as the BBC is not the same thing as the BBC Archives. The BBC Archives used film - the telesnaps that exist are photos taken directly off the film copies.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Across the pond, the American film industry routinely destroyed films after they had been run through theatres in the 1930's, 40's and 50's. Storing film required space and controlled atmosphere so many originals were burned in backlots rather than keep them. Most studios had no plan to redistribute or broadcast on television. Such was their vision. Makes the whole MPAA issue over copying sound laughable, doesn't it?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Nope, no such agreement existed and the actors were furious (Troughton especially) when the news of the junkings leaked out. The BBC denied it at first, then claimed it was one rogue employee.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The British film industry did that too; the original 'Wicker Man' negatives are believed to be buried under the M4 motorway as a lot of old film cans were apparently thrown in there as landfill.
Just going by wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Who_missing_episodes
(wikipedia being the be-all and end-all of my existence, you see, and i am now going to donate everything i own and my kids to wikipedia's personal appeal). 'Nuff said!
soylentnews.org Go there to enjoy the people!
Not only that, but pre-1940's nitrate film was actually very dangerous to keep around in archives. Keeping highly unstable and flammable film stock around in your archive was like storing your valuable book collection amongst a bunch of oily rags and gasoline cans.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Yep. It was a money saving exercise: storing tape for long periods, in a condition that will play again when you ask the too, requires care, effort and space - none of which are free. That and new tape cost money too: they could be wiped and reused a few times before being destroyed so there was a secondary saving here. Someone high enough up suggested getting rid of these particular tapes and the BBC bureaucracy being what it was (and perhaps still is?) no one further down questioned the wisdom as they passed the instructions on down the chain.
The same bureaucracy did save a large pile of tapes at one point. A consignment destined to be wiped or destroyed didn't have the relevant paperwork. After very little effort to track it down, someone just filed the issue under "to deal with later" and shoved the tapes into a storeroom where they remained forgotten and unnoticed for the best part of 20 years. In that time people had realised how silly the idea of destroying the content was, so when they were found they were carefully restored (some didn't survive, tape can be a sensitive medium), copied onto other media and better treated this time around. Some good stuff was in that pile: not just Dr Who but bits of Not Only But Also and other significant shows.
You know, if the FTL neutrinos are real, then there is every possibility that the episodes are on their way to a rescue point in the future right now.
Look, you might think the copy protection on Blu Ray is a pain, but wait until you get a load of the confusingly-named Hyperspatial Digital Causality Protection that the unelected cartel of the Time Lords require on any temporally displaced media. I mean, one can downgrade your nice 1080p to standard def, but that's not as bad as the headache you get when the real HDCP cuts in and makes you never have been going to see the video you just watched.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
http://www.btinternet.com/~m.brown1/intro.htm
https://www.msu.edu/~gobeski1/Missing.htm
http://www.paullee.com/drwho/missingwithouttrace.html
These are the accepted accounts - two junkings (one for fire safety reasons, one to make space) with absolutely nothing to do with contracts or magnetic tapes (beyond BBC central not having a copy) - along with a description of the transfer from video to film.
As far as I'm concerned, the current BBC description is a highly edited description of the events with NO mention of the telerecordings and the Wikipedia account seems to be pure mythology. I can find ZERO evidence for it. Almost everything definitive known about the early Doctor Whos was written in the Disused Yeti newsletters, with articles contributed by BBC staffers with inside knowledge, often due to being there at the time. This link gives you the archive for it:
http://archive.whoniversity.co.uk/dy/dy_main.htm
Absolutely no story whatsoever should be accepted on face-value if it contradicts an official or semi-official statement in the newsletters. They're the premiere source of authenticated information.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
My second stop, of course, would be the mid-to-late 1930s, to have a drink with Hitler and get to know him and then decide whether I have a moral duty or even moral right to kill him.
Future Kryten: Kryten, we're epicures now. We travel through history enjoying the very best time has to offer. ... ...
Future Rimmer: Dolphin sweetmeats, roast suckling elephants, baby seal hearts stuffed with dove pate. Food fit for emperors!
Future Lister: We socialize with all of the greatest figures in history -- the Hapsburgs, the Borgias
Future Kryten: Why, only last week, Louis the Sixteenth threw a banquet especially in our honour.
Future Rimmer: The man is a complete delight -- urbane, witty, charming
Kryten: He was an idiotic despot who lived in the most obscene luxury while the working classes starved in abject poverty.
Future Rimmer: Well, we certainly didn't see any of that while we were there!
Future Kryten: And his wife's an absolute cutie.
Future Cat: I think they're our favourite hosts. If you don't count the Hitlers.
Kryten: The who?!
Future Rimmer: Providing you avoid talking politics, they're an absolute hoot.
Kryten: You're good friends with the Hitlers?!
Future Kryten: It's just a social thing. We don't talk about his work. We just have a few laughs, play canasta, and enjoy the odd game of mixed doubles with the Goerings.
Kryten: I don't believe what I'm hearing!
Future Rimmer: Look, you have to understand -- we travel back and forth throughout the whole of history, and naturally we want to sample the best of everything. It's just a bit unfortunate that the finest things tend to be in the possession of people who are judged to be a bit dodgy.
Kryten: Herman Goering is a "bit dodgy"! What has become of you all? You've all abandoned your morals, been seduced by power and wealth. All you're interested in now is indulging your carnal desires.
Future Rimmer: And could we tell you some stories about _that_!
Kryten: I don't recognize any of you! You're just amoral self- serving _scum_, freeloading your way through history!
Future Kryten: Good grief! I can't believe I used to be such a stuck-up pompous prig.
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All the content was on film, through the telerecordings process. Overseas sales were done exclusively through film, not video, so all episodes (barring Feast of Stephen) were telerecorded onto film for sales. These telerecordings were held in the BBC Archives. The magnetic tape copies held temporarily by the BBC were in part because editing film is a bastard and it's hard to add effects. The initial masters were therefore mag tape, but once the recordings were telerecorded (re-mastered) onto film, the mag tape was marked for recycling. It wasn't useful after that point, since they could always broadcast off the film copies if they wanted to repeat anything.
The BBC's current version of events is highly edited, to the point of being "economical with the truth" (ie: lying through their teeth.) The junkings were a terrible event in history (even the Apollo moon landing footage was destroyed!) but this revisionism is an insult beyond insults. Do they take us for fools? (You don't have to answer, it's bloody obvious they do or they wouldn't be revising extremely well-documented events to make themselves look better.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
To be fair, the BBC are far more pragmatic about copying than most other broadcasters. For example, Top Gear is the most downloaded show on the internet, and they've referenced this fact a couple of times in the show. The only action I've ever known them to take over that is to shut down a few websites who hosted every single episode ever, which was frankly taking the piss just a little bit anyway.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
Personally, I'd ammend copyright in the following ways:
By 'common high-quality archive' I'm thinking things like 'glass master' for CDs and DVDs, certain backup tapes for programs, etc... Matter of fact, keeping stuff in multiple formats is ideal - For a movie: Glass master, 10 pressed DVDs, and a digital backup stored in a cloud type storage system. Regular testing and updating is included in the renewal costs.
The idea is to make Walt Disney think long and hard about keeping movies like 'Snow White' copyrighted, much less their huge archive. Sadly, Walt Disney is one of the better companies at preserving their works. Others have let films rot in vaults. Thus the requirement for the LoC to act as an archive.
I don't read AC A human right
I'll go one further, ANY copyright is effectively a (now long-term but theoretically finite) loan from the public domain and the holder has a duty of reasonable care (at least).