The Tenth Planet

Story Code: DD / Season 4	UK Airdate: 8 Oct to 29 Oct 1966	Doctor: William Hartnell
First airings by location	UK Repeats / Foreign Cable and Satellite	Previous Story / Next Story

This story aired in the following three countries. They are listed in chronological order according to airdate. (Refer also to Selling Doctor Who for expanded airdates.)

A new Doctor Who is Required!; The Times, 6 August 1966

Australia	Jun 67	b/w
New Zealand	Aug 69	b/w
Singapore	Apr 72	b/w

• The Tenth Planet was the first story made in the fourth production block, and as such was not included in any package of stories on offer; the latest package included up to The Smugglers only. Serial DD and all subsequent serials would be part of the next run of stories to be offered. When the Dalek stories were withdrawn from sale by agreement between the BBC and Terry Nation (from late 1966 to the end of 1967), the sale of this story and The Power of the Daleks to Australia had already been completed.

• It is thought that the BBC withdrew The Tenth Planet from sale at that time as well, as it might have felt that it couldn't offer Hartnell's final story without Troughton's first to follow-on, or it had decided that it was preferable to sell the new Troughton stories as a discrete package featuring the same lead actor, than to force foreign stations to have to purchase one single Hartnell story. This is particularly true when we see that the three countries after Australia to buy The Highlanders hadn't screened any Hartnell stories for several years! (Uganda and Hong Kong had both stopped screening Doctor Who with The Rescue in 1967, while The Time Meddler was the last story to be seen in Singapore in 1966!). The BBC may have felt it was unnecessary to force foreign broadcasters who hadn't seen any first Doctor episodes for several years into buying Hartnell's final 4-parter as part of a package that consisted of 22 Troughton episodes.
• The serial was eventually made available again in early 1968, by which time Barbados was about to complete its screening of the season three serials, and may have been too late to accept an offer of an extra serial. (Or was maybe never offered it? See note below about Caribbean...)
• The first new sale was to New Zealand, who censored the serial in June 1968. (The serial was the last in a total package of 44 William Hartnell episodes, starting with The Space Museum.)
• For reasons unknown, two further countries still screening season three stories did not acquire this story: Zambia did not acquire the serial to play after The Smugglers in October 1968, and Sierra Leone did not have it for broadcast in September 1970. (Was the story available only to countries in Australasia because of the original sale to Australia, and not elsewhere, such as Africa and Caribbean (see above)?)

• New Zealand sent its film prints of this serial to Singapore on 10 January 1972. The sale to Singapore was actually "back-catalogue", as they had already started screening Jon Pertwee stories by this time.
• The regeneration sequence from part 4 was used in the 5 November 1973 edition of Blue Peter. The print was never returned to the film library.
• It's very likely that the ex-New Zealand / Singapore prints had been returned to the BBC by 1973, and these were the same ones that were made available to Blue Peter.
  • CONSPIRACY THEORY: It's possible that the Blue Peter editors actually chopped out the regeneration sequence from the original film print rather than making a copy. They binned the butchered print afterwards...
• By the end of 1976, the BBC only held prints of the parts 1,2 and 3. These prints may have been ones struck in 1968 after the sale to New Zealand but which sat on the shelf unsold, or they had been returned from Singapore in 1973 (just in time for Blue Peter to use them -- see above).

• The ABC in Australia returned its prints to the BBC on 4 June 1975.
• In 1982, a print of part 2 was found in the possession of a film collector, who had "acquired" the film from the BBC at some point in the 1970s; this may well be the ex-Australian print, which would mean the existing prints of 1,2 and 3 were indeed the ex-New Zealand / Singapore ones.
• See also Hartnell Junkings

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