Sierra Leone

SIERRA LEONE is a small country situated on the west coast of Africa.

Profile

Country Number (23)	1967	FIRST WAVE
Region	Africa	Commonwealth
Television commenced	1962
Colour System	1978	PAL
Population	1966	2.25 million
TV Sets	1966	1,050
Language/s	English

Television Stations / Channels

Sierra Leone began its television service in 1962.

There is just one television station: Sierra Leone Television (SLTV), a government-owned commercial broadcaster. At the time that Doctor Who aired, the number of viewers was only a few thousand in a total population of over 2 million.

Colour transmissions began in 1978 using the PAL colour broadcast system.

Language/s

The principal broadcast language of Sierra Leone is English.

DOCTOR WHO IN SIERRA LEONE

Sierra Leone was the 23rd country to screen Doctor Who; it was the eighth in Africa (see Selling Doctor Who).

BBC Records

The Seventies records a sale of "(13)" stories by 28 February 1977, which is an error. The Handbook correctly identifies 14: G, M, N, P, Q, T, U, W, X, Y, Z, AA, BB, CC.

In DWM, Sierra Leone is identified in 22 story Archives: the same 13 as above, plus A, B, C, E, F, H, L S, for Hartnell, and YYY for Pertwee.

Other BBC records indicate that Sierra Leone bought the same four Pertwees that were supplied to Malta, Sri Lanka and Swaziland, around 1978/79 after the introduction of colour broadcasts.

Stories bought and broadcast

WILLIAM HARTNELL

25 stories, 111 episodes (but played in an incorrect order):

A	An Unearthly Child	4
B	The Daleks	7
C	Inside the Spaceship	2
D	Marco Polo	7
E	The Keys of Marinus	6
F	The Aztecs	4
G	The Sensorites	6
H	The Reign of Terror	6
J	Planet of Giants	3
L	The Rescue	2
M	The Romans	4
N	The Web Planet	6
P	The Crusade	4
Q	The Space Museum	4
R	The Chase	6
S	The Time Meddler	4
AA	The Savages	4
BB	The War Machines	4
CC	The Smugglers	4
T	Galaxy 4	4
U	The Myth Makers	4
W	The Massacre	4
X	The Ark	4
Y	The Celestial Toymaker	4
Z	The Gunfighters	4

Sierra Leone therefore bought GROUPs A to F of the William Hartnell stories, with the exception of one story; The Dalek Invasion of Earth had been withdrawn from sale during 1967 while Terry Nation was trying to sell his Dalek spin-off series to American networks.

The programme was supplied as 16mm black and white film prints with English soundtracks.

Origin of the Prints?

Kenya was the previous African country to screen the series; both Kenya and Sierra Leone were distribution countries of TIE (Programmes) Ltd, so it’s possible that Sierra Leone (which was also the last of the Commonwealth African countries to screen the stories spanning A to L) was supplied with the same set of prints used in Kenya.

All the other Hartnell episodes might have been supplied from Barbados, the only other TIE (Programmes) Ltd client to air stories from GROUP F (season three).

JON PERTWEE

Four stories, 18 episodes:

AAA	Spearhead from Space	4
RRR	The Three Doctors	4
UUU	The Time Warrior	4
YYY	The Monster of Peladon	6

The latter three serials would have been supplied as PAL colour video tapes with English soundtracks. Swaziland aired the same four serials in early 1978.

Transmission

WILLIAM HARTNELL

The series commenced on Wednesday, 12 April 1967, at 8.15pm. The timeslot changed to 7.35pm from 19 July 1967, then to 7.05pm or 7.00pm from 16 August. There was a two-week break during October; the 26th and last episode of the run – presumably The Keys of Marinus part six - played on 18 October 1967.

Four weeks later, on 13 November 1967, the series recommenced, now on Mondays, with a slot starting at 7.40pm for the first episode but dropping back to 7.25pm for all others.

This run of episodes lasted 56 weeks, with the final episode airing 2 December 1968. As far as can be determined, no episodes aired on Christmas Day 1967, 1 April, 22 April, 5 August 1968.

There were also 15 weeks when no paper was available. There are 43 episodes to account for, which means that there were at least 13 weeks during which Doctor Who didn't screen. There is the possibility that The Dalek Invasion of Earth did screen (which reduces the number of 'extra' episodes by six); the moratorium on selling Daleks stories ended by the end of December 1967, so The Dalek Invasion of Earth could have been made available to Sierra Leone in 1968.

On Friday, 24 July 1970, a final run of 36 episodes aired; Sierra Leone was one of only three countries (the others being Barbados and Zambia) to screen just GROUPs A to F Hartnells.

The first episode to be named in the papers was part three of The Massacre, The Priest of Death on 18 December (although it seems the episodes that week was actually The Sea Beggar). All the episodes from 8 January 1971 onwards were named.

From this, it is clear that Sierra Leone Television aired the stories out of order, presumably mistaking the story production codes as reflecting the story order: they started with AA, BB, CC, then went to T through to Z.

The final episode was part four of The Gunfighters, on 26 March 1971.

Fate of the Prints?

Sierra Leone was the final English-speaking Commonwealth country in Africa to air William Hartnell episodes of Doctor Who.

In 2011 it was confirmed that SLTV still possessed (some of?) their prints long after transmission, but that the building in which the films had been stored for over twenty years had been destroyed utterly during the civil war conflict that devastated the country between 1991 and 2002. It is unclear whether the BBC had contacted SLTV during their intensive search for missing episodes in the mid-1980s; if so, then SLTV must have replied in the negative, despite them holding 20 plus episodes, many of which were missing:

The stories with missing episodes confirmed to have been destroyed were:

• Galaxy 4
• The Myth Makers
• The Massacre
• The Celestial Toymaker
• The Savages

(Presumably the prints of existing stories The Ark and The Gunfighters were also destroyed.)

JON PERTWEE

We have been unable to find details on the airdates for the four Jon Pertwee serials. Colour was introduced in 1978. The same set of four stories aired in Swaziland in 1978, Malta in 1979 and Sri Lanka in 1984 (and also 1980?), we can assume they aired in Sierra Leone around the same time, say 1978/79/80?

There is no clear record that Sierra Leone screened Doctor Who again.

TV listings

Generic listing, Sierra Leone Daily Mail 1968

TV listings have been obtained from the Freetown newspaper, Daily Mail.

1960s

Listings initially gave the series name as "Dr Who", "Dr WHO" or "DR WHO". Some of the billings print the title as "Dr No"!

No episode titles are given until the December 1970 to March 1971 run. It appears that the TV listings were pushed out of sync by one week between 12 February 1971 and 19 March 1971, as there are two listings for "The Bomb" (29 January and 12 February) but none for "Johnny Ringo" (which should be 19 March).

The 18 December 1970 listing said: "DOCTOR WHO: Science fiction serial starring William Hartnell. Tonight: The Priest of Death".

1970s

From 1971 onwards, the Daily Mail discontinued publishing TV listings; the airdates for the Pertwee stories have not been determined.

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