So Steve, what’s this ‘Restore Doctor Who’ button about?
Very basically, it shows Python Lord’s support for the work to restore Doctor Who. We’re for all efforts to restore and preserve our televisual and movie history, but, due to our special interest in Doctor Who, we’ve singled these efforts out.
Restore Doctor Who? What needs restoring?
It seems easy to assume that all fans of Doctor Who are aware of the gaps in the televisual history of the programme, but I’ve learned this is not the case. By the same token, it would be wrong for me to assume the reader of this text is a long term fan like myself. You may be a new fan to Doctor Who, or even a friend of mine who’s interest in Doctor Who has been sparked by my stories, or a Ranma 1/2 fan who liked ‘Cursed Time’... So anyway, Doctor Who’s history is incomplete. Episodes are missing. If at all possible, we want to find copies to get them returned to the BBC so that all Who fans can enjoy them again.
Missing? What happened to them?
From my research into this subject, here’s how I understand the story. A few details may have gone astray with time, but I believe the basic story is correct. (Feel free to correct me if you have information I’ve forgotten or may not have had in the first place.)
Many programmes at the BBC were sold to overseas television networks for broadcast, as they are today with shows like ‘Blackadder’ and ‘Red Dwarf’. During the 50s and into the 70s/80s, the medium often used to send these programmes to other lands was 16mm film. This was used because not all countries had adopted videotape yet, and film was a universal broadcast standard.
The procedure was most often this way. A programme would be recorded on videotape and broadcast by the BBC from the same. The Engineering department would later take the videotape and make a telerecording of the programme. A telerecording was a film copy of the videotape made by playing the video on a special flat screen and pointing a 16mm camera at the screen to record it. It sounds moderately primitive, but it worked quite well. From that film print, a number of copies would be struck and then distributed to the different countries that bought the product. On the film can sent out was a label, which directed the foreign television network to either destroy the print when their term to broadcast the episode ran out, or return the print to the BBC.
Oh, so most of those prints were destroyed by those networks.
Surprisingly enough, not really. Many were returned to the BBC. The down side of this is that the BBC started running out of places to put these returned films. To help illustrate this, the first six seasons of Doctor Who (1963-1969) consisted of 253 half hour episodes (if I’ve done my sums right). While I don’t remember how many countries it was being sold to at the time, for sake of argument, we’ll say it was 10. So, 10 copies of each episode means 2530 individual film cans. Add in that Doctor Who was not the only programme being sold in this manner and perhaps you can see how storage could be a problem.
According to accounts, film cans were stored everywhere at the BBC: stacked high down hallways, on top of file cabinets in offices, in vaults, everywhere. In the early 70s, the fire brigade visited Television Centre and saw the conditions there. Obviously tall stacks of film cans down hallways was a fire hazard and the BBC was told to clean things up for safety’s sake.
So they did. A woman was put in charge of cleaning up the mess. I believe she worked in an arm of the BBC that was distributing these prints over seas, but I could be mistaken. She began destroying film prints.
First, this is what she was told to do. Another point to consider is that, in many cases, the BBC no longer had the rights to broadcast these prints either. The manner in which contracts between the BBC and actors only allowed for a certain amount of time, about 10 years, before the BBC’s rights to broadcast their performances lapsed. At which time, new contracts could be struck (presumably this was to protect the actors in a long running programme to be trapped by old contracts). Also, the BBC had started broadcasting in colour in 1969/1970, and old black and white programmes were considered to have little value. At the same time, did they need 10 copies of every episode? Not really. Destroying a few to clean things up seems understandable.
However, it was not kept to just a few. Prints were systematically gathered together, film unspooled from the reels, sliced, and burned. This was all very well documented, but those documents have since been subject to their own ‘junking’ and are now incomplete, making it difficult for researchers to tell what was destroyed and what is simply missing. This woman’s crime is not that she destroyed film prints of old television shows. That was what she was told to do. Her crime was that she made no effort to see if any other departments at the BBC wished to keep a copy of an episode for posterity, or indeed that other copies existed elsewhere. If she had 10 copies of an episode, it was well within the bounds of her command to destroy 9 of them. Often enough, all 10 were destroyed. Their is no rhyme and reason behind what was destroyed and what wasn’t. It seems to have been done at whim.
In her defense, the BBC did not have a central archive at this time, nor was it required to by law. So she didn’t have one place to go to ask if they wanted a copy of something.
In 1978, a Doctor Who convention requested a copy of a story from the Hartnell era, ‘Galaxy Four’, so that they could screen it at the convention. It had been destroyed about a month earlier, just after a clip was used in a documentary about Doctor Who. Around this same time, a record producer fan of Doctor Who, Ian Levine, obtained permission from the BBC to purchase film prints of old Who stories for his home use. As he tells the story, he walked into the department where the film cans were being stored, looked around and found the first Dalek story from 1963. All seven episodes were banded together with masking tape, with a note attached noting that they were ready to be destroyed. Needless to say, he got upset. When he asked why they were being destroyed, the answer he received was ‘Nobody wants them.’ ‘I want them,’ he enthused.
Soon after, in part due to Ian’s efforts, the junkings were stopped. The BBC set up an official archive and appointed Sue Malden (different woman), to be in charge of it. Her first act was to gather what was left together and see what was missing. At that time, over 200 episodes of Doctor Who was missing. At the time, that was around half of what had been broadcast. The original Star Trek ran for, what, 79 episodes? Imagine 35 missing. That’s a lot.
Luckily, a large number of episodes, mostly from seasons one, two and six were found in a vault that had previously been untouched. A few other episodes turned up here and there; in the mid 80s, a number of film cans, four Doctor Who episodes among them, turned up behind a file cabinet in someone’s office when they were moving. By 1983, the 20th anniversary of Doctor Who, the number of episodes missing was down to 134. Today, 1999, that number has dropped to 109, as an episode was returned in January. 109 is a lot better than over 200. Still, 109 is a lot.
Don’t think that this was some plot to destroy Doctor Who. This was happening to many BBC programmes, even other popular ones. I believe ‘Till Death Us Do Part’ (the original ‘All in the Family’) is mostly missing, and a few ‘Steptoe and Son’ episodes (the original ‘Sanford and Son’) still aren’t around. Nor was this solely a BBC problem. The first season of ‘The Avengers’ has only one episode still existing. American programmes from the 50s have gaps in their history as well.
At the time, preservation was unimportant. Home video recorders, while existing for decades, only became affordable and popular in the 80s. While selling copies of these stories is now quite profitable, at the time they were being destroyed, that market did not exist.
So, restoring Doctor Who is finding those 109 episodes?
That would be great. It seems unlikely. However, every time fandom seems to think no more episodes will ever be found, another pops up. So, hope still exists that more episodes will be returned to the BBC.
Restoring Doctor Who is more than just locating complete episodes. Clips from episodes are also important. Bits edited from episodes turned up in Australian archives and have been returned to the BBC. In some cases, these clips are the only remaining footage from an episode. Soundtracks for all the episode still exist, recorded by dedicated fans in the 60s and the BBC has copies of all these. Bits of episodes used in news programmes and interview programmes have been located in the archives and kept for posterity. One fan even pointed an 8mm camera at his television screen (an even more primitive telerecording) and saved some bits and pieces of Doctor Who in that way. While home video recording was not rampant in the 1960s, individuals did have them. While no missing episodes have turned up in this way, the BBC did find their coverage of the 1969 moon landing in this way, so they’re even interested in that. Even a few colour episodes that were only retained in black and white have been recoloured with advanced techniques. Fans use pictures and brief existing clips mated with the existing soundtracks to reconstruct episodes currently missing from the archive. All these efforts, and probably a few I’ve forgotten to mention, work to restore Doctor Who and are well appreciated.
Well, is there anything I can do?
Ah, that’s the tricky bit. It’s the same question I ask myself often enough. How do I help? To be honest, I’m not sure.
If you are interested in helping this process, the first step I can offer as a suggestion is to find out what’s missing. Clicking on the ‘Restore Doctor Who’ button should take you to a site with such a list. This way, you’ll know what’s being looked for. Other than that, I guess just keep your eyes open.
It’s my opinion (solely opinion right here) that there may be an episode or two in private hands. Thing is, chances are these people don’t know that the BBC would like to borrow their copy of whatever they have. That’s what happened in January; a film collector bought a print of ‘The Crusade: The Lion’ and showed it to family and friends, unaware that the BBC did not have a copy of the episode. A fan who was aware of this saw the print and he, along with the president of his local fan club, arraigned for the print to be lent to the BBC for copying. The owner was aware of it’s rarity. Chances are if (big if) other episodes are in the hands of private owners, its the same thing, they just don’t know the BBC wants a copy. If you are at least somewhat familiar with the list of what’s missing, you might be the person to bump into them and let them know the BBC wants to borrow their film.
The odds of this happening are admittedly slim, but you never know. Weird things happen all the time. If you can think of something you can do to help, why not do it? Better yet, tell me and if I can do it as well, then that’s two of us that can feel like we’re trying to help. :)
In summary, episodes of Doctor Who are missing. Any way of discovering these missing episodes, parts of them, or rebuilding these episodes is a worthy task in my book.
-Stephen M. Wolterstorff
3/11/1999
Also see:
Missing From The Archives
our site with details of many other programs with missing episodes.
