The Doctor Who Video and Audio FAQ
Written by Dominic Jackson
Last updated August 18th 1997
The Doctor Who
Video and Audio FAQ
This page is undergoing an extensive facelift, but the old version is still
provided until this process is finished
This page will look best when viewed under a graphical browser — appearance
with Lynx untested!
A version with images is also available — click here.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The purpose of this FAQ is to explain the survival of many pieces of rare
Doctor Who material, either video or audio, or to explain why certain
episodes are considered untransmittable from the master copies currently
held by the BBC. I have presented it in the form of common questions and
answers. I’m anxious for feedback on this FAQ so please let me know what
you think of my efforts!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contents
What are these missing episode audios I keep hearing about?
I keep hearing that a complete colour version of The Ambassadors of Death
exists. If this is the case, why haven’t the BBC colourised the serial and
released it on video?
More Than Thirty Years in the TARDIS contains a brief extract subtitled as
The Mind of Evil, but it’s in colour. I thought the story only survived in
black and white?
What is so wrong with The Faceless Ones episode 3 that the currently
existing print is considered untransmittable?
Bearing in mind that it’s now highly unlikely colour versions of the black
and white only Pertwee episodes will turn up, is there any chance that the
black and white versions will be computer colourised somehow?
I hear loads of rumours about private film collectors who have missing
material but won’t surrender it. Is there a grain of truth amongst them
all?
What are these cine-clips I hear about? How do they differ from normal
clips?
What are these “behind the scenes” pieces of footage from the sixties and
seventies that are referred to by people?
Q. What are these missing episode audios I keep hearing about?
During the original broadcasts of the Hartnell and Troughton episodes,
some more dedicated fans would place their reel-to-reel tape recorders
near the TV speaker and record the soundtrack of the episode (it should
be noted that, although primitive sets did exist, home video recording
was almost unheard of at this time). Bearing in mind the quality of
the components making up both the TV sets and the tape recorders, it is
not surprising that the sound quality of many of these recordings is
absolutely awful! Some of the best quality recordings of this type
were made by James Russell, and were used by the BBC for the release of
their four Doctor Who — The Missing Stories audio tapes (these were The
Evil of the Daleks (1992), The Macra Terror (1992) and The Power of the
Daleks/Fury From the Deep (released together in 1993). None of these
tapes are still available in the UK, and only the first two were
released in the US). Most of these fans started taping around the time
of The Myth Makers and for many years audio recordings of the missing
portions of The Reign of Terror, The Crusade and Galaxy 4 were simply
not known to exist. (A very poor quality copy of the audio track to
Marco Polo was known about, taped by Richard Landen, who did also have
complete audio recordings of The Crusade and Galaxy 4 but had kept them
back as potential bargaining ammunition).
A major breakthrough came in 1994, when a fan called Graham Strong
approached the BBC with very high quality audio recordings of most
episodes from The Dalek Masterplan :Volcano (episode eight) to The
Dominators. There are several gaps in the Strong collection – these
are The Dalek Masterplan :The Abandoned Planet (episode eleven), The
Celestial Toymaker (which Strong thought at the time was “a silly
story”) and The Gunfighters. Strong had actually taped Doctor Who
right from the first episode, albeit with a cheap second-hand tape
recorder which did not have a good quality microphone, but later wiped
most of his early recordings for re-use (three episodes survived
unwiped, but they are of poor quality and are of existing episodes
anyway; namely The Sea of Death, Strangers in Space and The Space
Museum although part of World’s End also survived). He had also
approached the BBC before about his recordings, when the hunt for
missing episodes was at its peak, but had been told that they were only
interested in video material at the time. Later however, the
newly-formed Doctor Who restoration team became interested and borrowed
Strong’s tapes, which were transferred to DAT (Digital Audio Tape) by
Paul Vanezis and are retained by the BBC for future use. The quality
of Strong’s recordings was so high that some were even superior to the
soundtracks on the telerecordings of existing episodes held by the BBC,
and his recording of The Tenth Planet episode 2 was used to redub the
film print. This quality stemmed from the fact that Strong had a good
quality tape recorder (which he bought early in December 1965) and he
discovered a way to connect his tape recorder directly to the
television, thus producing the recordings of outstanding quality that
became known as the “crystal clear” recordings.
This still left early stories either with no audio at all known to
exist or only very poor quality copies. The final gaps were plugged in
1995 when another fan, David Holman, came forward with his own high
quality recordings of many episodes. Holman began recording Doctor Who
with Marco Polo using a good quality microphone (and managing to keep
the other people in his house quiet for nearly a year’s worth of
Saturdays!). He continued to record well after Strong had lost
interest and it is believed his collection extends up to Frontier in
Space episode three. Whilst the quality of his recordings was not as
high as Strong’s they were far superior to the other copies of some
episodes, particularly Marco Polo. Some small problems were found with
Holman’s recordings: he had edited the episodes together into
compilations, and quite often the overlap sections would be missing and
have to be patched in from other fan recordings before the audio of the
complete story can be released.. It is assumed that Holman did this to
make the stories “flow” better – it seems unlikely he was trying to
save tape as several of his reels have a few blank minutes at the end.
Some of his episodes were also recorded too loud and some distortion
occurs however this can be overcome with modern digital technology.
Holman’s collection included Galaxy 4 as well, and so the current, very
fortunate state of affairs was reached, whereby high quality audio
recordings of all missing Doctor Who episodes are known to exist. The
restoration team also borrowed Holman’s tapes to allow the BBC to have
copies.
In the couple of years since the initial rediscovery of these audio
recordings other fans have taken both sets of recordings and have
increased the sound quality even further using the latest digital
technology. Some problems still remain as artefacts of the time when
the recordings were made; for example Strong’s recording of The Savages
:4 suffers from a brief burst of static probably caused by interference
from an improperly suppressed electrical source. These audios are
freely available through fan channels for the cost of tapes and return
postage. They are also the source of the soundtracks for the latest
telesnap reconstructions. One thing that should be cleared up however,
is that Holman and Strong recorded every episode of Doctor Who (with
the exceptions listed above) during the periods they were taping the
show. They didn’t magically predict which episodes would be missing in
30 years’ time and only record them! Of course, only the recordings of
episodes no longer extant in the BBC archives are of interest (with a
few exceptions such as the aforementioned Tenth Planet :2) as, although
the quality might not always be as good, it is far simpler to use the
soundtrack of the film prints for episodes which do still exist. One
further use of the audio recordings is to dub over clips which are
either silent or have an incorrect soundtrack (some clips from The
Power of the Daleks episodes 4 and 5 fall into this category) or to
help in the restoration of material known to be missing from prints of
episodes recovered from overseas (as in the case of the recent BBC
Video release of The War Machines).
Most recently audio recordings made by another fan (David Butler) have
come to light. They are of similar quality to Holman’s recordings but
Butler did not edit episodes together so his recordings are complete.
It seems he only recorded the first and last episodes of a serial but
the recordings are still useful (the reconstruction of The Invasion
episodes 1 and 4 uses Butler’s audio of episode 1 and Holman’s audio of
episode 4).
Q. I keep hearing that a complete colour version of The Ambassadors of Death
exists. If this is true, why haven’t the BBC colourised the serial and
released it on video?
It is true that a complete colour version of The Ambassadors of Death
exists. This was recorded off air from WNED Channel 17 Buffalo, an
American PBS station for a gentleman named Tom Lundy in 1977. This
broadcast was in colour and the serial was one of the very first Doctor
Who stories shown by the station. On a technical note, the story was
recorded onto Betamax tape, not U-Matic as was long rumoured in
fandom! Ian Levine later obtained U-Matic copies of all Lundy’s tapes
and these were the versions supplied to the BBC for restoration (and
are the source of the long-held fan myth that the original recordings
were made on U-Matic tape).
[Six screen grabs from the colour Ambassadors showing the varying degrees
of colour faults - hard to describe so check out the version of this FAQ
with images if you want to see them!]
Unfortunately, the recording machine was in Toronto (it seems Lundy
paid a friend up there to tape the serial for him, and later bought
copies of other colour Pertwee serials off other people) and was
attempting to record a New York station — it’s not surprising therefore
that the signal was weak. This manifests itself as “rainbows” of
colour, most of the time fairly weak and superimposed over the original
colour picture (see the images – they’re worth 6000 words
altogether!). The only episodes not to suffer excessively from this
are episodes 1 and 5 (the interference is still present but is not
nearly so noticeable). The original 2-inch PAL colour transmission
tape for episode one survives and it is far superior in quality to the
off-air version of the episode, hence there is no need to colourise
this episode. Episode 5 has also been restored to colour by the BBC
Restoration Team and has been broadcast on BBC Prime. Episode 6 has
also been restored, however it suffers from a brief burst of rainbowing
near the beginning of the episode and so is only suitable as a source
of colour clips. The colourised versions of episodes 5 and 6 have been
transferred to D3 digital videotape and have been given to the Film and
Videotape Library at Brentford, however episode 6 is apparently only
usable with the permission of the Archive Selector. The vaults of WNED
17 have already been searched; nothing has been found.
The rest of the story is similarly afflicted with colour blurs.
Episodes 3 and 4 are very badly affected, as here the rainbows are so
strong that the entire colour signal has been lost, and even if the
rainbows could be removed the resulting picture would have very little
original colour left (see images). Removing the rainbows is in itself
a very difficult task – the biggest headache is that they are rarely
static and their nature changes from scene to scene (sometimes they are
diagonal lines across the picture, sometimes they are vertical bars).
This means that any algorithm to remove them must be capable of
self-adaptation – a difficult thing to program. All attempts so far to
remove the colour interference patterns have so far been unsuccessful
although the BBC do retain a copy of the raw colour version of the
serial, derived from the original Betamax tape (although several
generations removed from it). The restoration team would still like a
better quality copy of episode 5 to work from and are very keen to get
in touch with Tom Lundy himself, however he seems to have disappeared.
If you have a contact address for him, Steve Roberts would very much
like to hear from you!
Despite the picture interference, the raw colour version of the serial
is very watchable. In particular, the sound remains perfect throughout
(even when the picture interference is strongest in episodes 3 and 4)
and the quality of episode 5 is much better than the black and white
version both in terms of sound and picture quality.
Q. More Than Thirty Years in the TARDIS contains a brief extract subtitled
as The Mind of Evil, but it’s in colour. I thought the story only survived
in black and white?
No complete colour episodes exist from this serial. However three
brief colour clips from episode six do still exist. They are:
DESCRIPTION DURATION
(MINS, SECS)
From the beginning of the episode (including opening titles)
3'58"
to Yates telling the Brigadier where the missile is.
From Jo bringing in a meal for Barnham to Benton's phone ringing
0'21"
From the Doctor finding the body outside the process room to the
Doctor saying "Good grief, it's stronger than ever now!"
0'15"
NOTES:
1. Timings are for PAL (European/Australian) video, the overall
duration in NTSC (North America) is 4'36".
2. On most fan copies, the picture breaks up during the first and
last few seconds of each clip. The picture element of the last
clip breaks up before the Doctor speaks his line.
3. It has been rumoured for some time that a longer version of the
final clip exists, including the Keller Machine going wild. These
scenes are not present on any fan copies nor were they on the
version supplied to the BBC for restoration.
4. Originally the raw colour footage was used to colourise the
appropriate sections of the black and white telerecording of the
episode, held by the BBC Film and Videotape Library, in the same
manner as the three complete Pertwee stories. This was done in a
hurry and the result (extracts from which were used on both More
Than Thirty Years in the TARDIS and the UNIT Recruitment Film
broadcast before episode six of the 1993 UK repeat of Planet of
the Daleks) is not very good. The quality of the raw footage is
excellent (almost as good as Terror of the Autons) and the
original BBC copy has since been unearthed and a straightforward
standards conversion done on it. The results are said the be
highly satisfactory. This new standards conversion will be used
to colourise the black and white footage again, to be included as
a short bonus on the end of the BBC Video release of The Mind of
Evil in May 1998.
5. By the time the serial was broadcast in colour on WTTE it is
highly probable that the original BBC colour tapes had already
been wiped or destroyed.
6. For full details of all the clips known to exist from missing
episodes of Doctor Who, see Steve Phillips’ clips article.
[Six screen grabs from the colour clips from The Mind of Evil episode six]
The colour extracts survive by pure chance. Tom Lundy, the originator
of the colour versions of Doctor Who and the Silurians, The
Ambassadors of Death and Terror of the Autons, had a full off-air
colour version of The Mind of Evil which he had taped in c. 1978, off
WTTE Chicago. However he did not like the story very much and decided
to reuse the tapes he had originally recorded it on. It should be
pointed out that this was at a time when video tapes could cost almost
US$30 per one hour tape and many of these early home video users reused
tapes as they simply couldn’t afford to buy any more blanks. In 1983,
Lundy destroyed his colour copies of episodes one to five by recording
over them with an American football match. He also decided to record
over episode six (which was on a different tape) sometime in 1983
although it is not known what replaced the episode on the tape.
However for some reason he did not rewind his tape all the way and
hence the first four minutes of the episode were left intact. At the
time it is almost certain Lundy had no idea he was destroying the only
colour copy of the serial in the world. As for the colour Ambassadors
of Death, Ian Levine had obtained colour U-Matic copies of Lundy’s
tapes and was able to supply the remaining minutes of the recording to
the BBC.
Q. What is so wrong with The Faceless Ones episode 3 that the currently
existing print is considered untransmittable?
This episode, although rumoured to exist as early as 1985, was finally
returned to the BBC in April 1987. The same person returned The Evil
of the Daleks :2 a month later. The print had suffered badly in the
hands of the film collector who returned it, and had been played often
on an old and badly-maintained projector. As a result the film had
physically snapped several times and had been crudely sellotaped back
together. These breakages resulted in the loss of perhaps four frames
each time the film broke, and the sellotaped portions were now even
more likely to stick in the projector and break again. This continued
abuse has left the print with many small jumps where a few frames are
missing, but also with some rather large jumps where upwards of half a
second of material is missing (it is possible these result from even
more severe projector damage such as a rip or even punching the
sprocket teeth through the film – see the screen shots which are taken
from consecutive frames as they appear on the currently held print).
Such jumps would be completely unacceptable in a transmission situation
and hence the print is currently classified as untransmittable. It is
possible that some of these jumps could be overcome with morphing
techniques, however this has yet to be tried and as the cleaning up of
this episode wouldn’t render the entire story transmittable, such a
project probably won’t be given very high priority unless BBC Video
should take an interest in releasing the two episodes that exist of the
story. Some of the damage, such as the sprocket holes, could be
cleaned up fairly easily, which would still leave the jumps, but these
alone might not prevent the episode being released on video – so if you
want them, speak up!
[Two screen grabs from consecutive frames of The Facelees Ones episode 3 as
they appear in the currently held print]
Q. Bearing in mind that it’s now highly unlikely colour versions of the
black and white only Pertwee episodes will turn up, is there any chance that
the black and white versions will be computer colourised somehow?
The main problem with computer colourisation is that it’s very
expensive – the current rate is around US$2000 per finished minute of
programme. Actually this works out at only $1.33 per frame, but with
25 frames per second the costs tend to mount up rather quickly. The
technique usually carried out is to have a human operator colourise one
frame and then to allow the machine to interpret this frame and the
colour information in it, and to try to apply it to the next frames,
until the operator judges that the results are no longer satisfactory
and the process is stopped and repeated. Such a process was used
during the colourisation of Doctor Who and the Silurians to overcome a
colour fault on the NTSC tape similar to those on various episodes of
The Ambassadors of Death, around the junction of episodes five and six,
and a sample of The Ambassadors of Death has been colourised in this
way. The results are very impressive, but the deciding factor is the
cost, and it is doubtful that a video release of The Ambassadors of
Death, for example, would give BBC Worldwide a return on its outlay of
$200,000 to have the four episodes of the serial that cannot be
colourised in the conventional way, restored to colour. Further
evidence for this is in the decision to release The Mind of Evil on BBC
Video in May 1998 in black and white format. Perhaps $50,000 would not
be too much to pay if colourising one episode in this way allowed an
entire serial to be released in colour, as in the case of Planet of the
Daleks or Invasion of the Dinosaurs. However it must be remembered
that the computer colourisation process has its limitations – where
there is no original colour source (such as an off-air recording) to
work from, the original colours can only be approximated to, not
matched exactly. This would especially be the case for something like
a computer colourisation of all six episodes of The Mind of Evil where
only a few minutes of original colour footage exist, together with a
handful of colour production stills. The biggest company of this kind
is American Film Technologie whose services have already been used by
the restoration team (see above), however all their computers are in
storage at the time of writing.
Q. I hear loads of rumours about private film collectors who have missing
material but won’t surrender it. Is there a grain of truth amongst them
all?
A very old chestnut, this one. Careful research by various people has
revealed that many of the rumours circulating in fandom over the years
are with only a very slight basis in fact. Such rumours are for
example, that a private collector has some or all of The Macra Terror
(almost certainly confusion with some amateur-shot clips from this
episode, which were rediscovered in 1996 after being held by a
prominent fanzine editor for many years) and that William Hartnell was
given a print of The Dalek Masterplan :The Feast of Steven after it was
transmitted (he was actually given a portion of The Dalek Invasion of
Earth which later found its way to the BFI). Other rumours are much
harder to conclusively dismiss: they include the long-held belief in
fandom that the fourth episodes of The Dalek Masterplan and The Tenth
Planet were stolen from the Blue Peter office in November 1973. The
evidence for this is thin: certainly The Traitors was signed out from
the Archives for Blue Peter to use clips from, and despite repeated
memos to the person who signed the episode out (who went by the name of
J. Smith!) the print was never returned to the Archives. It is certain
that The Tenth Planet episode 4 was obtained from BBC Enterprises –
there is no evidence that the Archives ever had a copy of the episode.
Furthermore, Enterprises were continuing to sell the story abroad until
1974 (although this does not necessarily mean that the print of episode
4 was returned to them after Blue Peter had finished with it; they
would have retained a master negative to strike new prints from, before
this and any other prints they held were destroyed when the sales
rights ran out). This is an example of how fan rumours can take a
known fact and compound the slight mystery surrounding it, to suggest
something that was not in fact the case is a certainty.
The purpose of this FAQ is not to dismiss out of hand every fan rumour
of the past 20 years, but to counter suggestions that material exists
but is just out of reach, which is not really the case. Private film
collectors are a notoriously insular bunch, and it takes some time to
be accepted into their circles before they will reveal what they have.
Some material has indeed been recovered from private collectors (The
Reign of Terror :6, The Faceless Ones :3, The Evil of the Daleks :2,
The Abominable Snowmen :2, The Wheel in Space :3 and an unedited copy
of The Dominators :5) but it seems unlikely that reports of up to 80
missing episodes existing in private hands are true.
Q. What are these cine-clips I hear about? How do they differ from normal
clips?
A reel of footage, almost certainly shot by a fan pointing his 8mm cine
camera at a domestic TV set during the original transmissions of the
Hartnell and early Troughton episodes, was rediscovered in April 1996.
Because of the differing frame rates of the cine camera and the TV
screen, the images on the film are afflicted with some interaction
between the camera shutter and video scan of the TV which is seen as
dark lines that slowly move up the picture, plus typical 8mm vignetting
(darkening of the images towards the corners of the screen). The
resolution of the camera is poor and hence the images lack detail when
compared to professionally-copied clips. Many of the clips are very
brief, lasting no more than a few seconds and some last less than half
a second and are of course silent.
The reel is of interest however because of the material included — many
classic scenes are only preserved as moving images in this way. Such
treasures include Steven’s leaving scene (The Savages episode 4), the
prelude to the regeneration sequence (The Tenth Planet episode 4),
early shots of the new Doctor in the TARDIS (The Power of the Daleks
episode one) and scenes of the Doctor inspecting the pilot’s office
(The Macra Terror episode 3). See the images version of this FAQ for
some screen grabs of these. Some stories such as The Myth Makers and
The Savages have the only known existing TV material from them
preserved in this way. See Steve Phillips’ clips article for full
details on what the reel contains, and what other clips are known to
exist from missing episodes.
Since its initial rediscovery, the footage has been cleaned up as far
as possible by many fans, mostly those also involved in the telesnap
reconstructions project. The first fan copies were transferred to
video at 25 frames per second (fps), which was about a third too fast
in places (this could be established as the reel also contains many
scenes from existing episodes, particularly The Chase). It was slowed
down to c. 18fps by Michael Palmer who also removed various tints from
the raw footage. The other obvious thing to do was to mate the clips
up with the correct audio track and this was recently done by Mal
Tanner. Due to the poor quality of the footage, the BBC Archives have
not formally expressed an interest in obtaining a copy, however some
Betacam copies are floating around (just in case, apparently!) and the
footage is used in many fan reconstructions, particularly Bruce
Robinson’s The Savages and Michael Palmer’s The Tenth Planet episode
four.
It should be pointed out that to preserve the full detail of the image
would have required equipment far more powerful than Michael Palmer and
Mal Tanner had available. However Mal in particular deserves
commendation for his careful research that pinned down accurately the
locations within the individual episodes of much of the footage and
enabled the appropriate audio track to be added. Some mysteries still
remain: the reel contains a short scene of the Hartnell Doctor talking
to himself; originally believed to have been from The Myth Makers it
now seems possible it is instead from The Dalek Masterplan. This
raises the question of who originally shot the reel: it was at first
believed to originate from Australian broadcasts but if the clip
referred to above is from Masterplan this theory cannot be true (the
Australian censors deemed Masterplan untransmittable, even if cuts were
made, presumably due to the grim nature of the story itself). Steve
Roberts, however, believes that the material does stem from Australian
transmissions and that this clip is not from Masterplan (evidence in
support of this theory is that the camera does not move at all between
episodes 1 and 2 of The Power of the Daleks – these were shown
back-to-back on the same day in Australia). The different sections of
the reel (containing clips from different stories, whether existing or
not) have different tints which could easily have arisen during the
telecine process (for example, the section containing clips from The
Chase has a pale brown wash over it, whilst the sections from The
Savages and The Power of the Daleks are strongly blue-tinted) and the
different sections seem to have been shot at different speeds (The
Chase clips are way off but The Macra Terror sections are almost at the
correct speed) which points to a clockwork camera (fondly remembered
for their variable speeds!). A possibility is that two cameras were
used (as a roll of film would only last four minutes or so) and that
the colour tints arise from shooting on different stocks of film
(possibly even some colour and some monochrome film stock).
Q. What are these “behind the scenes” pieces of footage from the sixties and
seventies that are referred to by people?
Several reels of footage showing work in progress on various stories
are now known to exist. There are three very common reels plus two
which are a lot rarer (one may not still exist). The common reels show
location work in progress on The Smugglers (shot on 16mm colour
Ektachrome film by the owner of the farm being used as the location,
durn. 2'37"), The Abominable Snowmen (shot on colour standard 8mm film
by director Gerald Blake, durn. 3'26") and The Daemons (believed to
have been shot by a local 8mm enthusiast in Aldbourne, the village
which appears on screen as Devil’s End, again on colour standard 8,
durn. 6'16"). Timings are for PAL (European/Australian) video. The
other reel reportedly shows studio work in progress on Fury From the
Deep which was shot by the director, Hugh David. The format and
duration of this reel are unknown and it is uncertain as to whether the
footage still exists – certainly there are far fewer fan copies in
circulation and, unlike the first two reels, which appeared on the
Mastervision release The Doctors – Thirty Years of Time Travel and
Beyond in 1993, no commercial release of this footage is available.
The final reel of footage shows the Emperor Dalek’s throne room from
The Evil of the Daleks episode 7 (there is also a brief sequence of
model Daleks trundling through the wreckage from towards the end of the
episode, which lasts 10 seconds and mostly shows two hands holding the
models.) Kevin Davies has seen this reel and confirms its existence.
The current fan versions of the first two reels circulating are very
high quality, and unlike the cine-clips from missing episodes the
footage does not suffer from cut-off to any great degree (as it was
shot in a conventional manner, as opposed to pointing the camera at a
TV screen!). However, the reel showing work underway on The Smugglers
does have footage of certain scenes that were used in the finished
programme, albeit from different camera angles.
[Screen grabs from The Smugglers, The Abominable Snowmen and The
Daemons reels]
Q. Is it true a “slash print” of The Wheel in Space episode 6 exists?
No! This is another very common misconception, which stems from the
earliest pirate copies of the episode that were floating around fan
circles. A slash print is an early working copy of a programme,
containing an unfinished soundtrack (missing things such as incidental
music and possibly sound effects) and also missing some visual effects
which would have been added in post production. Unlike many episodes
of the era, The Wheel in Space episode six was recorded directly onto
35mm film out of the studio, rather than videotape as was the more
normal case. The studio sound was recorded onto the optical soundtrack
of the film, as well as onto a separate 35mm magnetic film soundtrack.
The film was edited in the conventional way, with pictures and magnetic
sound being edited and then the sound mixed down onto another 35mm
magnetic film for use on transmission. The crucial point here is that
the edited film still contained the parts of the optical soundtrack
recorded from the studio, although it was never intended to be used.
Because there is a physical offset of 12 frames between sound and
pictures on 35mm film (or 26 frames on 16mm), whenever the pictures are
edited the optical soundtrack runs on for a few seconds after the cut
into the beginning of the next shot (such an effect can be seen on the
raw versions of the recently recovered Australian censor clips, where,
because the edits to the original episodes had been made by physically
cutting the film and splicing it back together again, the soundtrack
contains a few seconds of sound from the portion of the programme
immediately following the cut) – and the sound for the new shot hence
starts slightly late. Also, because the optical soundtrack contains
only material recorded from the studio, it will not contain some music
and effects added in post-production.
The early pirated copies mistakenly used the optical track, instead of
the final mix magnetic master, hence the audio is unfinished and out of
synch with the picture edits – and thus was the myth of the slash print
born!
Q. What are the “Australian censor clips”?
When BBC Enterprises offered the Hartnell and Troughton episodes for
sale to overseas TV stations, the format was 16mm black and white film,
telerecorded from the original videotape that the programme was made on
and transmitted from (telerecording was a process of transferring a
video recording to a format that was then considered more durable and
easier to handle). The telerecording process produced a master
negative from which the appropriate number of prints could be struck,
depending on how many companies wished to purchase the programme in
question. The 16mm prints were then supplied to the TV stations that
had purchased the programme as their transmission masters. In the case
of Australia, strict censorship laws were then in force regarding what
could be shown on Australian TV and at what times of day, and all new
programmes had to be passed before the censors for review and if
necessary, editing, before the programme could be transmitted. In the
case of Doctor Who, the censors deemed that several scenes had to be
cut before the programmes could be transmitted – usually these were
scenes of “excessive” violence (such as fights or stabbings, or other
death scenes) had to be excised. This was done by physically cutting
the film and splicing it back together, and the censorship laws decreed
that all material cut had to be kept indefinitely in government
repositories. In 1996 two Australian fans, Damian Shanahan and Ellen
Parry, began researching the days of the by now repealed censorship
laws, and discovered paperwork pertaining to the material that had been
excised from early Hartnell episodes of Doctor Who broadcast by ABC TV
Australia – however they could find no evidence of the cut material and
it seems it was destroyed some time previously. They then found more
paperwork detailing cuts to later Hartnell, Troughton and Pertwee
episodes and when they followed the trail eventually came to the actual
film, which had been held in a government archive near Sydney. An
interview with Damian Shanahan can be found in Bruce Robinson’s Change
of Identity newsletter, issue 5.
Between this find and the original process of excising the material,
the original BBC Enterprises sales copies and the ABC Australia
transmission masters had been destroyed, leaving the cut material as
clips from episodes which no longer exist in their complete form. When
the BBC Archives, and in particular Steve Roberts, found out about the
material, they took swift action to recover it and after negotiating
some diplomatic obstacles, a copy of all the material was returned to
the BBC on a Digital Betacam (a broadcast standard) video cassette. As
the original means of editing the film prints had been simply cutting
and splicing them back together, no account had been taken of the 16
frame offset between the pictures and associated soundtrack present on
all 16mm film (originating in the distance between the parts of a
projector or telecine machine which reproduce the pictures and those
which deal with the optical soundtrack), hence there is an audible
click at the start of each clip and the soundtrack runs on for a second
or so at the ends of the clips. The find was very important in
providing clips from stories for which very little or no TV material at
all was known to exist (such as The Smugglers, The Highlanders and Fury
From the Deep) and for helping to fill known cuts in the prints of
existing episodes which had been returned from overseas (such as The
War Machines). As a result, only three stories are now left with no TV
material (such as a clip or an episode) known to exist from them: these
are Marco Polo, Mission to the Unknown and The Massacre. See Steve
Phillips’ clips article for full details. It is hoped that the longer
clips at least will make an appearance on the end of the BBC Video
release of The Ice Warriors in November 1998, meantime they play an
important role in fan reconstruction projects such as Richard Develyn
and Robert Franks’ The Smugglers, The Highlanders and Fury From the
Deep.
Q. Can you think of any other questions to add to this FAQ?
If so, mail me!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks to Robert Franks, Steve Roberts, Bruce Robinson and Graham Strong for
their help in compiling this FAQ.
This FAQ is written and maintained by Dominic Jackson. Please e-mail any
suggestions or corrections to dominic.jackson@virgin.net. Please feel free
to distribute this FAQ either in text or HTML format, but on the conditions
that you acknowledge me as the author and that you keep the end credits
section intact. Text © Dominic Jackson 1997.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Back home Images version