Sixties Video Erasures
F. Jason Rhoden
Perhaps the imminent scholars amongst us, such as David Brunt, Andrew
Pixley, or Steve Roberts could answer this question, but when were the first
and last missing B&W Who erased from their original video tapes?
Do we know, for example, when "The Feast of Steven" ceased to exist, or when
the tapes for Marco Polo or The Space Pirates were wiped?
Yes, I know that, other than "Feast..." all of the others would have still
existed on telecine at the time of erasure, so these moments don't really
reflect the "end" for those missing eps. But it would be an interesting
insight, methinks, into sixties Beeb procedures.
Appreciatively yours,
Jason Rhoden
David J Howe
news:93otuj$3cv$1...@slb3.atl.mindspring.net...
Here's the text of the section on Junking from THE SECOND DOCTOR HANDBOOK.
David
--
da...@howeswho.co.uk
Visit Howe's Who: http://www.howeswho.co.uk
JUNKING
by Andrew Pixley and Jan Vincent-Rudzki
It was during Patrick Troughton's tenure as the Doctor that the destruction
of Doctor Who material began at the BBC. During the 1960s, it was policy to
retain the master 405 line videotapes of programmes for a few years, and
then once the programme had been repeated the tapes could be erased by an
electromagnet for re-use recording another show. Some episodes would be
retained, generally as 16mm film recordings of the type used to sell BBC
programming to other countries (film being an international standard whereas
videotape was not).
On 13 December 1966, a Retain Order from Television Enterprises Sales was
placed on all the Doctor Who serials up to and including The Gunfighters -
this included the untransmitted pilot and a number of episode such as The
Waking Ally which had been made on film. Around this time, Retain Orders
were sent to the Videotape Library on an almost weekly basis to ensure that
the most recently screened episodes - such as The Power of the Daleks and
The Highlanders - were not wiped, at least not before 16mm films could be
made of them. Although the paperwork is inconsistent (some episodes are
listed for wiping more than once), it would appear that the first Doctor Who
tapes to be wiped were those for The Highlanders soon after 9 March 1967,
barely a month after their BBC1 transmission (The Underwater Menace episodes
1 and 2 were similarly labelled for wiping, but seem to have escaped erasure
at this point).
The first mass erasure of Doctor Who tapes appears to have been on 17 August
1967, less than a year after the Retain Order was issued. 80 episodes from
the pilot to The Gunfighters were targeted for wiping (although probably
only 78 of these were erased at this point). Some entire stories were
deleted at this time (e.g. Marco Polo, The Romans, The Ark) while others
were partially wiped (e.g. The Reign of Terror, The Dalek Invasion of Earth
and seven episodes of The Daleks' Master Plan including The Feast of
Steven). Part of the reason for this may have been the arrival of new
technology; from late 1967, Doctor Who would be recorded on the higher
definition 625 line tape from The Enemy of the World episode 3 onwards. BBC1
would continue to transmit on 405 lines up until November 1969, with the 625
line tapes standards converted for broadcast.
The only episode known to be marked for wiping in 1968 appears to be The
Abominable Snowmen episode 4 on a document dated 4 March - although this
does not seem to have occurred at this time. However, other paperwork shows
that the tapes of The Evil of the Daleks were erased in August 1968 just
after their BBC1 repeats (and despite a Retain Order issued on 1 August that
year). Most of the remaining Hartnell tapes were destined for the same fate
on 31 January 1969 when 25 more tapes were wiped (including the second
episode of Inside the Spaceship, the fourth episode of The Reign of Terror,
Planet of Giants, the third episode of The Dalek Invasion of Earth, the
first and last episodes of The Crusade, the third episode of Galaxy 4 and
the first episode of The Myth Makers). Nine Troughton episodes were also
marked for deletion, along with The Tenth Planet episode 4, yet it seems
that all these tapes survived for a few more months.
17 July 1969 saw authorisation to wipe The Chase: The Executioners, the last
three episodes of The Daleks' Master Plan and The Mutants: The Expedition.
On 21 July, the tapes and films for a number of Troughton instalments from
The Underwater Menace through to The Space Pirates (i.e. both 405 and 625
line tapes) were listed on a junking document - a sign that the age of
monochrome for BBC1 was shortly to come to an end. September saw a few
Troughton episodes that had escaped the July purge re-assigned to a new list
(editions of The Underwater Menace, The Faceless Ones, The Abominable
Snowmen, The Ice Warriors, The Web of Fear and all The Tomb of the
Cybermen), with eight other shows joining them in October (The Tenth Planet
episode 4, The Ice Warriors Five and Six, The Enemy of the World episode 1
and episodes 1,3,5 and 6 of The Web of Fear).
By the end of 1969, it appears that the only monochrome episodes of Doctor
Who to exist on their original tapes were both versions of 100,000 BC: An
Unearthly Child, Dalek Cutaway: Mission to the Unknown, The War Machines,
The Macra Terror, Fury from the Deep and The War Games. Thankfully, at this
point, although the tapes had gone, the 16mm films for most episodes were
generally still in circulation around the globe from BBC Enterprises.
F. Jason Rhoden
David J Howe <da...@nospam-howeswho.co.uk> wrote in message news:h7V76.1662
> Here's the text of the section on Junking from THE SECOND DOCTOR HANDBOOK.
>
> David
Duh! Shoulda looked in the handbooks!!
Either way, thanks a lot for the rapid and thorough response. You kept me
from having to get up and go across the room. :) Fascinating and depressing
reading, particularly the last sentence: "Thankfully, at this point,
although the tapes had gone, the 16mm films for most episodes were generally
still in circulation around the globe from BBC Enterprises." Makes you wanna
cry, considering what we know happened in the 1970s!
Jason Rhoden
Richard Bignell
> Perhaps the imminent scholars amongst us, such as David Brunt, Andrew
> Pixley, or Steve Roberts could answer this question, but when were the
first
> and last missing B&W Who erased from their original video tapes?
>
> Do we know, for example, when "The Feast of Steven" ceased to exist, or
when
> the tapes for Marco Polo or The Space Pirates were wiped?
Yes, we do, and all being well there should be a whole feature on this
subject by the erstwhile Mr. Pixley in the next issue of "Nothing at the
End of the Lane".
Let me dig out the information and I'll repost a teaser and let you know
the first and last to go...
Richard
Richard Bignell
David J Howe <da...@nospam-howeswho.co.uk> wrote in message
> Here's the text of the section on Junking from THE SECOND DOCTOR
> HANDBOOK.
Andrew's forthcoming article will be a greatly updated, expanded and
corrected version of the information.
Basically, it seems that 'The Highlanders' 1-4 were probably the first
to be wiped around 9 March 1967 with 'Mission to the Unknown' and
'Fury from the Deep' being the final ones, arounf July/August 1974.
Sigh...
Richard
Paul E. Curtis
> This is sort of a pointless question, but one that
> interests me anyway...
>
> Perhaps the imminent scholars amongst us, such as David
^^^^^^^^
> Brunt, Andrew Pixley, or Steve Roberts could answer this
SHIT! Three reasonable, sensible, normal human beings are about to turn
into scholars! DON'T LET IT HAPPEN!!
--
--Paul (not very eminent) Curtis
not recommended for children or Republicans
Misha Lauenstein
"David J Howe" <da...@nospam-howeswho.co.uk> wrote:
> Here's the text of the section on Junking from THE SECOND DOCTOR
HANDBOOK.
> by Andrew Pixley and Jan Vincent-Rudzki
>
was
> placed on all the Doctor Who serials up to and including The
Gunfighters -
Okay. Maybe I don't understand something here, but I took the phrase
Retain Order to mean that the items should be retained. Then, later in
the article, it details that the episodes were destroyed.
Either a Retain Order has an expiry date (which I think would have been
mentioned in the article) or someone doesn't know the definition of the
word Retain.
Am I the only one who thinks this odd?
Misha
Sent via Deja.com
http://www.deja.com/
F. Jason Rhoden
Richard Bignell <ric...@bignell23.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:93pfem$tbi$1...@newsg2.svr.pol.co.uk...
Richard, does this last bit strike you as really odd?
By 1974, hadn't the beeb completely abandoned b/w recording several years
previous? And why would they want to erase over a 405 line tape (Mission),
if 625 was the broadcast format since 1970?
Seems to me like Mission, if not Fury as well, were wiped for absolutely no
reason (not really a big shock, is it?), as they couldn't really be reused.
Or was the Beeb simply junking old b/w tapes by that point, rather than
erasing them?
Thanks,
Jason Rhoden
David Brunt
>F. Jason Rhoden <jas...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
>> This is sort of a pointless question, but one that
>> interests me anyway...
>>
>> Perhaps the imminent scholars amongst us, such as David
> ^^^^^^^^
>> Brunt, Andrew Pixley, or Steve Roberts could answer this
>
>SHIT! Three reasonable, sensible, normal human beings are about to turn
>into scholars! DON'T LET IT HAPPEN!!
And I wouldn't say I was particularly imminent or eminent.
Or a scholar for that matter....
David
David Brunt
Misha Lauenstein wrote in message <93pst8$jvj$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>...
Nope.
And Andrew would really be the person to answer this. But.....
AIUI the original retain orders could be (and were) rescinded at any point
in the future. Some sheets appear to have a 'final' date to be retained
until (say, three years hence) and others are open-ended with no specified
period in which they'd need to be retained.
At some point somebody (presumably Innes Lloyd, or Peter Briant or Barry
Letts, or anybody) could have signed that those original orders were no
longer applicable and the tapes went onto the demagnetiser to be wiped. An
incoming producer could have a different view on the series' past than
their predecessor. For example, editions of 'Blue Peter' dating back to
1962 still exist because Biddy Baxter put in new retain forms for them when
their expiry came up. And this continued until her retirement, by which
time the Archives were routinely keeping them anyway. Of course, this
doesn't account for the episode of 'BP' which should have been retained
but also went missing over the years....
David
F. Jason Rhoden
David Brunt <D...@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:93scg1$j23$1...@uranium.btinternet.com...
>
> Andrew would really be the person to answer this. But.....
>
> AIUI the original retain orders could be (and were) rescinded at any point
> in the future. Some sheets appear to have a 'final' date to be retained
> until (say, three years hence) and others are open-ended with no specified
> period in which they'd need to be retained.
Would the retain order apply to the original videotape, or just the 16MMs?
Jason Rhoden
Richard Bignell
> Would the retain order apply to the original videotape, or just the 16MMs?
Just to make it clear, the existing documentation refers to what happened
to the original videotapes only. The paperwork does not cover the film
prints.
Richard
Keith McHugh
So far as I'm aware they could re-use the old 405 line tapes for 625 Low Band
(b/w) or 625 High Band (colour) recordings. Although what sort of quality
you'd get re-using a tape that was several years old I don't know. I'd heard
that an episode of "Blue Peter" had been recorded over one of the old b/w
Troughton stories, as the original tape label was still visible.
Keith.
Adam Richards
<keith....@btinternet.com> wrote:
>Jason,
>
>So far as I'm aware they could re-use the old 405 line tapes for 625 Low Band
>(b/w) or 625 High Band (colour) recordings. Although what sort of quality
>you'd get re-using a tape that was several years old I don't know. I'd heard
>that an episode of "Blue Peter" had been recorded over one of the old b/w
>Troughton stories, as the original tape label was still visible.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I have been told that the tapes they used
to record 405line and 625line PAL were essentially the same - 2"
quads. The tapes are the same; what's recorded onto them needn't
necessarily be the same. It's abit like the way you can record NTSC or
PAL on the same VHS tapes. Videoape is videotape is videotape, pretty
much - as long as it's the same width as the machine's tape-path and
will make contact with the recording heads in the proper way, you
should be able to record anything onto it, within reason.
(I'm not saying VHS is the same tape as what the BBC used - I've just
read the above paragraph back to myself and thought I'd better point
that out.)
======================================================
Adam Richards Ad...@roblang.demon.co.uk
Adam Richards
<Ad...@roblang.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Videoape is videotape is videotape, pretty
>much -
Classic spelling mistake! I'm just picturing someone trying to record
video pictures onto a "video ape". Sounds like something out of
"Brasseye", doesn't it?
CHRIS MORRIS: (to camera, in smug Jeremy Paxman style) "And here's
Tonga, our video-ape, with the day's news"
(TONGA appears: an ape dressed in a suit with an earpiece, grunting to
camera while pictures and newsreel footage play in a small box in the
corner of the screen)
TONGA, THE VIDEO APE: "Ooo-ooh! Aaaah aahhh! Huh huh huh!!"
======================================================
Adam Richards Ad...@roblang.demon.co.uk
Paul E. Curtis
> Adam Richards <Ad...@roblang.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> >Videoape is videotape is videotape, pretty
> >much -
>
> Classic spelling mistake! I'm just picturing someone
> trying to record video pictures onto a "video ape".
> Sounds like something out of "Brasseye", doesn't it?
I dunno...it reminds me of Victor Lewis-Smith's researcher, Brian the
Mammoth!
--
--Paul Curtis
not recommended for children or Republicans
P.S. "Fuck the President,
Fuck 'im in the ass;
Fuck the President's wife,
Fuck 'er in the ass;
Fuck the Senators and Congressmen
and their wives too!"