[NEWS] Lost episode in New Zealand?

[Your Name]

This is from the Wairarapa News (printed for the region near the bottom of
the North Island of New Zealand). It was posted in another forum by
someone else, so I'm not sure when it was printed, but presumably this
week ...


Harley Street pupils hold key to lost Dr Who shows
--------------------------------------------------
Intergalactic Investigation: International film researchers
are chasing down a long lost Doctor Who episode that may
have screened at the former Harley Street School in the
1970s.

Harley Street School may have long since closed, but a
British researcher has discovered it may be at the heart of
an enduring international television mystery.

In the 1960s, a generation of British school children were
captivated by the onscreen adventures of their television
hero, Doctor Who, and it was not long before the Doctor
crossed hemispheres to fascinate New Zealand television
watchers.

The programme, produced by the BBC, was broadcast from 1964
in New Zealand, and it seems Masterton may have been the
final resting place of at least one of the characters
adventures.

British researcher and fan of the series, David Crichton,
says Doctor Who, like many British shows from the 1950s,
1960s and 1970s was not all archived. Over 100 episodes of
the programme, broadcast in the United Kingdom between 1963
and 1969, are thought to be lost forever.

Television was seen as an ephemeral medium and little or no
thought was given to retaining episodes of the series. The
BBC recorded on expensive videotapes which had to be reused
for other programmes. When they were wiped, the only copies
left would have been 16mm film copies made of the show for
overseas sale. Most of these were destroyed in the 1970s as
foreign broadcasters cleared their archives.

"These programmes remain missing to this day. A1though 106
episodes of Doctor Who are still missing, episodes do
periodically turn up in the hands of private collectors who
are entirely unaware that their collections may be unique,"
said Mr Cricbton.

One such incident, in 1999, led to the recovery of an
episode from a 1965 Doctor Who serial titled The Crusade,
which was owned by a film collector here in New Zealand. It
had been salvaged from an New Zealand Broadcasting
Corporation skip in the 1970s by a 18mm collector.

Harley Street School has recently become the centre of a
search for further missing episodes of the series. Sometime
between 1972 and 1974 a 16mm Doctor Who print was shown on
the school projector at the school.

"Rumours of this screening have been circulating among
Doctor Who fans for over 30 years, and I've recently been
undertaking some research to separate the fact from fiction
� I've contacted several hundred former pupils and staff
members, and I now have independent accounts of the Doctor
Who screening," said Mr Crichton.

According to the story, an interschool sports day between
Harley Street, Fernridge and Opaki schools in the 1970s was
organised, but the activities ended prematurely due to bad
weather.

The children were marched into the school hail and, as a
special treat, were shown two episodes of a missing Patrick
Troughton Doctor Who serial, The Macra Terror.

Though former teachers of the school that have been
contacted have no memory of the event there is also a
possibility that the screening took place as part of a
summer holiday programme or something similar.

Mr Crichton is appealing to Wairarapa residents to contact
him if they can remember the event.

I'd love to find out more details, like a fixed date, which
would be incredibly helpful for my research, and it is of
course my hope that we may be able to find out who supplied
the Doctor Who prints, and perhaps contact them to see if
they survived their �destruction' at NZBC and may still
exist today in someone's attic," he said.

If you remember seeing this film at the school or have any
information email David Crichton at david...@hotmail.co.uk
or contact Wairarapa News.

[The Doctor]

In article <YourName-300...@203-118-187-80.dsl.dyn.ihug.co.nz>,

Are they saying some episodes are in NZ?
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