I did. At least, I am pretty sure I did. I have very distinct memories of watching the Dr and Jamie running around the underground, and being terrified of the some sight of the yeti. And of Lethbridge-Stewart. As opposed to the cybermen walking down the steps of St Pauls, and coming out of the manhole covers– I’ve had those images in my head for decades, but am certain I never saw them on tv. That’s one reason I am so excited. Though I wouldn’t have bothered posting it if it hadn’t worked so well with Corey’s posts.
What were thinking of, the BBC apparatchiks who wiped these and many, many other tapes? Most bureaucracies are magpies, keeping useless stuff for ages. It takes a special mindset to destroy the key record of your institution´s work.
I think that’s pretty standard for the time. When I was in 2nd grade I was on Truth or Consequences with the Dixieland band that was organized with a bunch of kids from the Baldwin Hills School orchestra, playing behind a curtain while contestants guessed our ages, and I was hoping there was some record of it, but apparently the vast majority of programming from that era has been wiped.
“Doctor Who is not unique in this respect, as thousands of hours of programming from across all genres were destroyed by the BBC until 1978, when the corporation’s archiving policies were changed. Other high-profile series affected included Dad’s Army, Z-Cars, The Wednesday Play, Steptoe and Son, and Not Only… But Also.[2] The BBC was not the only British broadcaster to carry out this practice; ITV regional franchise companies also destroyed programmes, including early videotape episodes of The Avengers.[3]”
The BBC was not the only British broadcaster to carry out this practice; ITV regional franchise companies also destroyed programmes, including early videotape episodes of The Avengers.
Right up there with dismantling Colossus and shutting down Black Arrow.
Britain seems to have not so much a death wish but a meh wish.
@7: In the case of the early computers, they were more interesting in building the next (better) computer than preserving the previous one as a historic relic. I have a certain amount of sympathy for that view. For almost all purposes, a newer computer is a more than acceptable substitute for the old one. An old episode of Dr Who, on the other hand, retains considerable value as entertainment even if you also have access to more recent episodes.
Well, I’m not a Dr. Who person – which is not an implied judgment about the show beyond the fact that there are only so many hours in the day, etc. – but Nigeria! That’s wonderful. Next thing you know an autograph manuscript of King Lear is going to be found in Timbuktu.
SusanC@9: Actually, the old computers were torn down and the engineers and scientists who built them sworn to secrecy on Churchill’s orders because of post-war security paranoia. The people who wound up building the ‘next (better) computer’ were the Americans.
In point of fact Tommy Flowers tried to get funding after the war to build a new commercial computer, but nobody in a position to provide a loan believed it was possible. And he couldn’t tell them he’d already built one or shown them the design, because of the Official Secrets Act.
I read somewhere that the master recording tapes were expensive, so the practice was to erase old master tapes and re-record. Maybe someone will come up with a way to recover the layers of erased data?
Maybe someone will come up with a way to recover the layers of erased data?
hurrah for the digital palimpsest
I remember seeing this first time round, and I almost don’t want to watch it because I loved it SO MUCH as a kid. It probably came at that time of life when you can get the most out of this kind of thing: old enough to extrapolate a bigger and better story, a whole universe, from the black and white images on the tiny screen, not too old to be familiar with that process. It seemed liked magic. I wonder whether it still will?
It really was a different world. Even the idea of film criticism was avant-garde (at least, so it appeared to someone growing up in the provinces), and TV was in a lower category again. And there were only a handful of channels, so they wouldn’t waste airtime on reruns (I think this was different in the US).
So, of course, once the program went to air, they would reuse the tapes, which were expensive, rather than save them for no apparent purpose.
Right, reruns were rare — I don’t think any Dr. Whos got repeated till well into the seventies. Remember, in the early 60s on british tv a good deal of drama was just broadcast live to air — so even taping them was a step up (the US differed, because the market was much bigger, much earlier, and broadcast had to be aligned to some extent with time zones — hence the fact that there are lots of recordings of sitcoms from the 50s in the US, and hardly any from the UK (Hancock is an exception). Radio was worse – regarded as completely ephemeral; whereas, again because of the need to cater to local times zones and markets, a good deal of drama and comedy from the 30s still exists in the US. My daughter listened to all 40 hours or so of Chandu the magician, in the space of 3 weeks one summer: http://www.otr.net/?p=chan
I have vivid memories (which I believe to be real ones) of hunkering down behind the sofa during the scarier bits of the Pyramids of Mars episodes. I was seven, and we were living in Darlington for a year (you didn’t get BBC in Ireland unless you lived in Dublin or close to the border). I didn’t have any more encounters with Dr. Who culture for three decades, thanks to not living in the right places when I was a teenager, and not watching much TV afterwards. And it wasn’t until I read a piece about Doctor Who in the LRB a few years back that I realized that hiding behind the sofa was a well established cliche of popular culture.
If I had to speculate, and to continue John Quiggin’s comment, I’d say that at the time TV shows were thought of as more like stage performances than like films. And who thinks of keeping a stage performance?
And I’m with Alison P about re-watching. I do remember it being one of the more scary series, but even then I was just getting to the age where the Yeti looked just a little silly and the settee could stay against the wall.
(Oops, failed to close the tags properly, and made a number of other errors; please feel free to drop my previous comment, and delete this parenthetical note.)
@21. The very first episode of Dr Who ( “An Unearthly Child”) was repeated on the following Saturday (30/11/63). Too much international news, on the 23rd.
Yay! I’ve seen the fragments of Web of Fear and Enemy of the World that were available previously (from -cough- sources) and both seemed like interesting episodes, so I’m really looking forward to seeing these. Plus, the BBC is actually releasing them in streaming form at a very fair price (unlike their old DVD prices).
According to Wikipedia, while the loss of the original videos was just a matter of recycling, the actual loss of the episodes mostly happened when the film copies were dumped in the early 70s. Apparently, it was largely a matter of the switch from b&w to color, combined with very good actor fees for rebroadcasts, and a disagreement over who ought to be keeping archival copies (not that nobody thought there ought to be archives, just that no one actually had a clear mandate to keep archival copies). While Doctor Who wasn’t rebroadcast at home, it was licensed out for foreign broadcast, so it existed in film copies up until tv switched to color and the organization that managed sending out the film copies decided nobody was going to bother paying the fees for b&w Doctor Who anymore, at which point they tossed the film copies because they didn’t have space to be an archive.
I’m a huge Doctor Who fan – since 1971 – but I can see why the BBC wiped tapes they didn’t think would ever be seen again.
I mean, back in the 70s the 21st Century was all about jetpacks and holidays on the Moon – not forty-somethings like myself watching 50 year old TV programmes on TV screens several feet wide and Tweeting about it to friends.
Still, the Doctor meeting Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart – it’s like finding footage of Stanley meeting Livingstone…
{ 30 comments }
Anderson 10.11.13 at 10:26 pm
Just in time for Corey Robin to give us a new epilogue to his series!
Tom Slee 10.12.13 at 12:53 am
Who else saw the original showing?
Harry 10.12.13 at 1:21 am
I did. At least, I am pretty sure I did. I have very distinct memories of watching the Dr and Jamie running around the underground, and being terrified of the some sight of the yeti. And of Lethbridge-Stewart. As opposed to the cybermen walking down the steps of St Pauls, and coming out of the manhole covers– I’ve had those images in my head for decades, but am certain I never saw them on tv. That’s one reason I am so excited. Though I wouldn’t have bothered posting it if it hadn’t worked so well with Corey’s posts.
So, Tom. What are you doing this November 23rd?
James Wimberley 10.12.13 at 1:53 am
What were thinking of, the BBC apparatchiks who wiped these and many, many other tapes? Most bureaucracies are magpies, keeping useless stuff for ages. It takes a special mindset to destroy the key record of your institution´s work.
godoggo 10.12.13 at 2:42 am
I think that’s pretty standard for the time. When I was in 2nd grade I was on Truth or Consequences with the Dixieland band that was organized with a bunch of kids from the Baldwin Hills School orchestra, playing behind a curtain while contestants guessed our ages, and I was hoping there was some record of it, but apparently the vast majority of programming from that era has been wiped.
Jeff H 10.12.13 at 4:25 am
From the Wiki article on the missing episodes:
“Doctor Who is not unique in this respect, as thousands of hours of programming from across all genres were destroyed by the BBC until 1978, when the corporation’s archiving policies were changed. Other high-profile series affected included Dad’s Army, Z-Cars, The Wednesday Play, Steptoe and Son, and Not Only… But Also.[2] The BBC was not the only British broadcaster to carry out this practice; ITV regional franchise companies also destroyed programmes, including early videotape episodes of The Avengers.[3]”
NomadUK 10.12.13 at 6:20 am
The BBC was not the only British broadcaster to carry out this practice; ITV regional franchise companies also destroyed programmes, including early videotape episodes of The Avengers.
Right up there with dismantling Colossus and shutting down Black Arrow.
Britain seems to have not so much a death wish but a meh wish.
John Quiggin 10.12.13 at 6:28 am
Better clear out some space behind the sofa!
SusanC 10.12.13 at 7:42 am
@7: In the case of the early computers, they were more interesting in building the next (better) computer than preserving the previous one as a historic relic. I have a certain amount of sympathy for that view. For almost all purposes, a newer computer is a more than acceptable substitute for the old one. An old episode of Dr Who, on the other hand, retains considerable value as entertainment even if you also have access to more recent episodes.
bill benzon 10.12.13 at 9:38 am
Well, I’m not a Dr. Who person – which is not an implied judgment about the show beyond the fact that there are only so many hours in the day, etc. – but Nigeria! That’s wonderful. Next thing you know an autograph manuscript of King Lear is going to be found in Timbuktu.
bill benzon 10.12.13 at 9:39 am
And, oh, you realize that Nigeria has the 3rd largest film industry in the world, and that it’s almost all digital.
NomadUK 10.12.13 at 9:40 am
SusanC@9: Actually, the old computers were torn down and the engineers and scientists who built them sworn to secrecy on Churchill’s orders because of post-war security paranoia. The people who wound up building the ‘next (better) computer’ were the Americans.
chris y 10.12.13 at 9:53 am
In point of fact Tommy Flowers tried to get funding after the war to build a new commercial computer, but nobody in a position to provide a loan believed it was possible. And he couldn’t tell them he’d already built one or shown them the design, because of the Official Secrets Act.
Peter T 10.12.13 at 12:45 pm
I read somewhere that the master recording tapes were expensive, so the practice was to erase old master tapes and re-record. Maybe someone will come up with a way to recover the layers of erased data?
Harry 10.12.13 at 1:04 pm
Oh — its on itunes, along with Enemy of The World.
Alison P 10.12.13 at 1:11 pm
Maybe someone will come up with a way to recover the layers of erased data?
hurrah for the digital palimpsest
I remember seeing this first time round, and I almost don’t want to watch it because I loved it SO MUCH as a kid. It probably came at that time of life when you can get the most out of this kind of thing: old enough to extrapolate a bigger and better story, a whole universe, from the black and white images on the tiny screen, not too old to be familiar with that process. It seemed liked magic. I wonder whether it still will?
Harry 10.12.13 at 4:47 pm
Find an appropriately aged kid to watch it with, and, as JQ says, make sure there is space behind the sofa.
Substance McGravitas 10.12.13 at 7:32 pm
It’s through the loss of information that you establish new bureaucracies to figure out what went on.
John Quiggin 10.12.13 at 7:38 pm
It really was a different world. Even the idea of film criticism was avant-garde (at least, so it appeared to someone growing up in the provinces), and TV was in a lower category again. And there were only a handful of channels, so they wouldn’t waste airtime on reruns (I think this was different in the US).
So, of course, once the program went to air, they would reuse the tapes, which were expensive, rather than save them for no apparent purpose.
Katherine 10.12.13 at 10:03 pm
I happened to catch Neil Gaiman on the radio today saying that his vast underground world created in Neverwhere could be described as a Web of Fear.
Coincidence? I think not.
Harry 10.13.13 at 12:02 am
Right, reruns were rare — I don’t think any Dr. Whos got repeated till well into the seventies. Remember, in the early 60s on british tv a good deal of drama was just broadcast live to air — so even taping them was a step up (the US differed, because the market was much bigger, much earlier, and broadcast had to be aligned to some extent with time zones — hence the fact that there are lots of recordings of sitcoms from the 50s in the US, and hardly any from the UK (Hancock is an exception). Radio was worse – regarded as completely ephemeral; whereas, again because of the need to cater to local times zones and markets, a good deal of drama and comedy from the 30s still exists in the US. My daughter listened to all 40 hours or so of Chandu the magician, in the space of 3 weeks one summer:
http://www.otr.net/?p=chan
Harry 10.13.13 at 12:03 am
She was 8.
Henry 10.13.13 at 1:09 am
I have vivid memories (which I believe to be real ones) of hunkering down behind the sofa during the scarier bits of the Pyramids of Mars episodes. I was seven, and we were living in Darlington for a year (you didn’t get BBC in Ireland unless you lived in Dublin or close to the border). I didn’t have any more encounters with Dr. Who culture for three decades, thanks to not living in the right places when I was a teenager, and not watching much TV afterwards. And it wasn’t until I read a piece about Doctor Who in the LRB a few years back that I realized that hiding behind the sofa was a well established cliche of popular culture.
Tom Slee 10.13.13 at 3:56 am
If I had to speculate, and to continue John Quiggin’s comment, I’d say that at the time TV shows were thought of as more like stage performances than like films. And who thinks of keeping a stage performance?
And I’m with Alison P about re-watching. I do remember it being one of the more scary series, but even then I was just getting to the age where the Yeti looked just a little silly and the settee could stay against the wall.
Tom Slee 10.13.13 at 3:57 am
I guess Harry’s most recent comment said the same thing as mine. So now we keep even redundant comments for years.
Guy Harris 10.13.13 at 6:39 am
NomadUK@12: “The people who wound up building the ‘next (better) computer’ were the Americans.” I’m not sure what “the ‘next (better) computer'” was, but the first computer along the lines of what a Hungarian immigrant to the United States</a (and, independently, a British researcher involved in the development of Colossus) was built at the University of Manchester, as were the two after that.
Guy Harris 10.13.13 at 6:53 am
(Oops, failed to close the tags properly, and made a number of other errors; please feel free to drop my previous comment, and delete this parenthetical note.)
NomadUK@12: “The people who wound up building the ‘next (better) computer’ were the Americans.†I’m not sure what “the ‘next (better) computer’†was, but the first computer along the lines of what a Hungarian immigrant to the United States (and, independently, a British researcher involved in the development of Colossus) proposed was built at the University of Manchester, and the next one after that was built at Cambridge, and the one after that was also built at Manchester, so no need to give us Yanks too much credit here.
Jim Buck 10.13.13 at 7:10 am
@21. The very first episode of Dr Who ( “An Unearthly Child”) was repeated on the following Saturday (30/11/63). Too much international news, on the 23rd.
Charles S 10.13.13 at 10:42 am
Yay! I’ve seen the fragments of Web of Fear and Enemy of the World that were available previously (from -cough- sources) and both seemed like interesting episodes, so I’m really looking forward to seeing these. Plus, the BBC is actually releasing them in streaming form at a very fair price (unlike their old DVD prices).
According to Wikipedia, while the loss of the original videos was just a matter of recycling, the actual loss of the episodes mostly happened when the film copies were dumped in the early 70s. Apparently, it was largely a matter of the switch from b&w to color, combined with very good actor fees for rebroadcasts, and a disagreement over who ought to be keeping archival copies (not that nobody thought there ought to be archives, just that no one actually had a clear mandate to keep archival copies). While Doctor Who wasn’t rebroadcast at home, it was licensed out for foreign broadcast, so it existed in film copies up until tv switched to color and the organization that managed sending out the film copies decided nobody was going to bother paying the fees for b&w Doctor Who anymore, at which point they tossed the film copies because they didn’t have space to be an archive.
Shatterface 10.13.13 at 3:11 pm
I’m a huge Doctor Who fan – since 1971 – but I can see why the BBC wiped tapes they didn’t think would ever be seen again.
I mean, back in the 70s the 21st Century was all about jetpacks and holidays on the Moon – not forty-somethings like myself watching 50 year old TV programmes on TV screens several feet wide and Tweeting about it to friends.
Still, the Doctor meeting Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart – it’s like finding footage of Stanley meeting Livingstone…
Comments on this entry are closed.