Radio Times - The Hunt for Doctor Who

[cosmichobo]

Latest Update below:

http://forum.gateworld.net/threads/8...1#post14213743

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G'day,

Please for the love of god like/tweet this link:

http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2012-...of-doctor-who1

Radio Times are trying to get the word out to a broader audience RE the missing episodes... We need as many people spreading this through social media as possible...

cheers

cosmic

[cosmichobo]

Bumping this for more exposure...

Would be great if "the hunt" did help to uncover a few more missing episodes before they are all assigned to landfill... (those that aren't already there, that is)

[Quizziard]

Wonder if the BBC has considered putting something in with their Pension Fund mailshots... since some of the biggest chances are from ex-employees having "borrowed" or copied stuff.

[cosmichobo]

Mmm, indeed, a mail out to all former BBC staff (at least ones in likely locations to have been near where the reels were stored/disposed of) would be a good idea.

Not that they'll do it...

[Blencathra]

I'm not certain how genuine this is, if at all. It could be a complete hoax from start to finish or we could be looking at something really exciting. I don't know. Has anyone else heard anything about this?

http://www.roguecyberman.com/private...-who-episodes/

http://www.roguecyberman.com/valenti...-macra-terror/

[cosmichobo]

I call hoax...

RogueCyberman has been banned on GallifreyBase.com (largest WHO forum I know of), for trying to promote his £25,000 reward scheme... (Um, well or other reasons)

I don't know how serious he really is... he claims to be a wealthy 24yo... Must be damn wealthy to be offering so much money for the recovery of Doctor Who eps...

What concerns me the most is that he claims that he wont hand any recovered episodes over to the BBC...

And now the claims of having found someone with a stash of missing episodes...

I certainly believe people out there have more missing episodes - 2011 proved that reality - but I doubt there's a lot in one place...

Meanwhile since the late 70's, people have been hoaxing the discovery of missing episodes... usually involving some kind of time factor - Oh, yes I can show you the episode but not until my friend's dad gets back from China...

Given the way RogueCyberman's story seems to be unfolding, it sounds like he is giving himself plenty of room to avoid ever actually proving a word of what he says...

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And he's getting a lot of flack from everyone for his main sponsor - a softcore porn blog of Doctor Who fans...

[Blencathra]

Hoax was certainly my first thought. It will be interesting to see what happens after the deadline, if he manages to provide any convincing proof of the existence of these episodes at all. I guess we will see shortly.

Something that does concern me about this guy is the amount of vicious comments he's got from various people. If I had a couple of episodes tucked away (I don't, incidentally ) and I stumbled across what has happened to this guy, then I'd think twice about telling anyone about them. People should calm down and ignore him if they think he's full of cr*p. Otherwise they may scare off someone who genuinely does have an episode or two.

[cosmichobo]

It's a bit old now (2010), but a guy claimed to have episodes 1 & 2 of Web of Fear, but refused to give ep 2 to the BBC as he'd given them other (non WHO) missing material before, at cost to himself, with no recompense, and thus sees no point in helping them...

This may or may not be a hoax, I don't follow that forum, nor know the person making the claim, but his comments are pretty antagonising... But also quite understandable from his perspective - if true.

Sadly it's that quite possibly real mentality that could be barring us from enjoying more missing episodes...

That said, people like Ian Levine have long said they would contribute financially to any recovered missing episodes... and there's also been offers of 1:1 Dalek props for anyone returning episodes - all made by 3rd parties, as the BBC maintains its stance that they wont pay for any recoveries... (Which is totally understandable; indeed for them to start paying would I think be a bad thing, as it would ignite more hoaxes, but also could end in real missing episodes not being returned as their custodians seek more and more money...)

[SGalisa]

According to the Doctor Who books published decades ago, most of the missing episodes were put on videotape that got taped over by the BBC for a next ep or program (something like that). So, unless someone else somewhere in the world taped it on VCR or even has an audio version of the eps, the eps are completely lost forever.

I had heard some eps were found on audio and an animation version is being done to fill in some of the gaps.

[cosmichobo]

According to the Doctor Who books published decades ago, most of the missing episodes were put on videotape that got taped over by the BBC for a next ep or program (something like that). So, unless someone else somewhere in the world taped it on VCR or even has an audio version of the eps, the eps are completely lost forever.

I had heard some eps were found on audio and an animation version is being done to fill in some of the gaps.

Ok, let me fill in some blanks, though I'm not an expert by any means.

Doctor Who (1963-89) studio sessions were recorded on videotape, and "OB" (Outside Broadcasts) were recorded on film. The material was then edited together onto a video Master tape for UK broadcast. These tapes (both Masters and raw footage) were indeed then re-used for other recordings, but first they (Masters only) were transferred by "telecine" to 16mm film to be used for overseas sales (as different countries used different video formats, film was the one universal option).

(The one exception to this was "The Feast of Steven", an episode of "The Dalek Masterplan" which was aired on Xmas Day in the UK, and was only ever intended for local airing. As such, there is no hope of this episode ever being seen again.)

When the BBC sent the 16mm film copies around the world to foreign broadcasters, it was with instructions that the episodes were either to be returned to the BBC, destroyed, or forwarded to another broadcaster/s once they had finished airing them. As such, at that point we had 16mm copies of all but 1 part of a story, located in the BBC's archives (presumably a complete list), in BBC Enterprises' archives (as required for sales), and overseas broadcasters' archives (limited to the episodes they decided to buy/were sent as "viewing prints" to temp them to buy...).

Then during the 70's, the BBC decided to destroy all but a few select episodes of their massive archive of tv shows... (for reasons that made sense at the time, kind of) Over at least 5 years a fairly random path of destruction was weaved with basically nearly every episode being tossed in the bin...

Then one day a young fan started screaming in the hallways of the BBC when he learned what they were doing, and so the junking stopped, and recovery began. Enterprises was able to restore some missing episodes, but most of the rest of what is now available was recovered from overseas broadcasters who thankfully had not destroyed their copies.

A small amount of recovered episodes however weren't from those sources - they were from fans... And it became known that when the BBC were junking the 16mm reels of film, some employees were saving them from the bin and taking them home! This method of saviour is equally random however, and there is no way of knowing what episodes were saved (other than those that have already been recovered). The hope is, however, that there are more out there, hence the Radio Times appeal for people to check their personal film collections to see if they indeed possess a missing episode.


To directly address your comments...

Audio recordings of every missing episode exist. Several people came forward in the 90's (I think) with audio recordings they had made of the show, which have allowed the BBC to release missing episodes in audio format, but also both the BBC and fans have used the audios to create "reconstructions" using off-air or behind the scenes photos to replace the missing visuals.

The BBC have only released 2 "recons" - The Ice Warriors (2&3), and The Tenth Planet (4) - both during the VHS era, however fans have now created recons for every missing episode. Starting in 2006 the BBC instead now opt to pay for animated replacements of missing episodes, with a statement that they can only afford to animate 2 episodes per release. The Invasion was the first, with missing eps 1 and 4 animated, followed recently with The Reign of Terror. Tenth Planet 4 is in the works, and recently leaked news tells us that The Moonbase is next, with eps 1 and 3 to be animated! (Yay!)

Worth a mention here, is that YouTube contains amateur animation attempts, some of which are quite good. Indeed - the forever missing Feast of Steven has been animated by someone and uploaded to YouTube, and it's fun viewing, IMO.

Sadly, the likelihood of a videotaped off-air recording of a Doctor Who missing episode being found is next to zero. Video recorders were simply far too rare during the 60's, and tapes cost so much, that like the BBC, most video recorder owners re-used their tapes. Further, the only example that comes to mind regarding video recordings of missing episode/s was from about 20 years ago, but the recordings were too badly deteriorated to make out the visuals (and from the audio, it turned out to be the existing episode of The Space Pirates).

(US based off-air recordings of Pertwee episodes were of interest in the 90's as a way of re-claiming the colour signals, as whilst b&w copies all of Pertwee's stories survived the junking, many of his colour prints were destroyed. This however is no longer an issue thanks to a former BBC technician pointing out that what was believed to be random interference on Pertwee's b&w episodes was in fact the colour coding information, allowing colour to be restored to many of his stories.)

The best book to read about the subject of missing WHO is "Wiped!".

This information may not be 100% accurate, but gives you a pretty good picture of what happened...

[cosmichobo]

There is currently all kinds of pandemonium in Missing Episode circles, as a rumour persists that a "cache" of films has been uncovered in an African country, which may/may not including Doctor Who episodes...

Apparently another WHO forum was given permission by the BBC to break the exciting news (ie that episodes had been found), but then at the last minute said NO, but not before that site made some suggestive hints of a big discovery... Now another site is following the story, but claiming there is some legal talk going on between the BBC and the cache owner (be them private or a tv station no one knows), thus no official word as yet. And of course, as a further wrapping of "ways to get out of proving there ever was a discovery", the cache is supposedly in very bad condition, and possibly not properly catalogued...

It's really the perfect hoax, as everyone wants to believe... But it's just so far over the top after having had no massive finds since 1991... I for one, wont believe it til it's announced on the DoctorWhoNews page...

And another rumour, this time from Australia, cites an ex-patriot UK actor to have recorded several episodes on an early VCR in 1970-2, including at least part of Fury From The Deep... This sounds even more of a hoax, but there was 1 known case of home video capturing pre 1970's Doctor Who - just not a missing episode... The question to arise from this rumour, if it turns out to be true, is what would the BBC do if they obtained the footage, as off-air recordings are unlikely to be used as a source for a DVD...

[cosmichobo]

The African "Hoax" has built to a real climax now, with the BBC releasing a statement:

...We cannot confirm any new finds.

I think it's rather odd for the BBC to take this step...

Part of the hoax revolved around a massive shipment from Africa in 2011 to the UK of many rolls of film stock. Apparently people handling the shipment believed it contained Doctor Who episodes. The recipient of the shipment however have followed the BBC's lead, and released a statement via Facebook, advising that the shipment was not commercial stock - it was indigenous footage needing to be archived.

It's hard to let this one go, mostly because of the size of it and the desire to hang on to the dream that up to 90 missing episodes were about to be recovered... But it certainly seems unlikely now.

[cosmichobo]

*** Rumour # 8482746592 ***

And this one has teeth!

The Radio Times (website), and several UK newspapers are all claiming that the BBC have potentially recovered ALL of the missing episodes from Ethiopia!

RT said that 2 episodes (Troughton ones) would shortly be made available online for download, following a press screening on Tuesday/Wednesday. This however has since changed to "later this week".

This of course follows the "90" episodes rumour that's been going on all year.

Problem is... only 77 Hartnell episodes aired in Ethiopia...

[cosmichobo]

I've just heard that if the above rumour really does have truth, then we're likely to see 97 missing episodes reduced to around 20... with basically nearly everything returned to some degree; major exception being Dalek Masterplan...

[rushy]

I call hoax...

RogueCyberman has been banned on GallifreyBase.com (largest WHO forum I know of), for trying to promote his £25,000 reward scheme... (Um, well or other reasons)

I don't know how serious he really is... he claims to be a wealthy 24yo... Must be damn wealthy to be offering so much money for the recovery of Doctor Who eps...

What concerns me the most is that he claims that he wont hand any recovered episodes over to the BBC...

And now the claims of having found someone with a stash of missing episodes...

I certainly believe people out there have more missing episodes - 2011 proved that reality - but I doubt there's a lot in one place...

Meanwhile since the late 70's, people have been hoaxing the discovery of missing episodes... usually involving some kind of time factor - Oh, yes I can show you the episode but not until my friend's dad gets back from China...

Given the way RogueCyberman's story seems to be unfolding, it sounds like he is giving himself plenty of room to avoid ever actually proving a word of what he says...

--

And he's getting a lot of flack from everyone for his main sponsor - a softcore porn blog of Doctor Who fans...

Even if it isn't a hoax, I wouldn't give him jack squat and neither would any other serious Whovian.
Doctor Who belongs in delicate hands, not money-grubbing morons.