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WIPED AGAIN

Wiped! Updated Edition 2013

ADD NOTE TO THE BBC RECORDS PAGE THAT LINKS TO THIS REVIEW

Richard Molesworth's Wiped! Doctor Who's Missing Episodes (Telos Publishing Ltd; 2010 and its Updated Edition 2013) is a remarkable study into and commentary on the sad reality surrounding the fates of the many lost episodes of Doctor Who.

We at BroaDWcast Towers are quite familiar with much of the BBC paperwork that Richard refers to in his tome (we've had access to many of the same documents whilst undertaking the research for this very website; and both this author and the site are acknowledged in book), so we'd like to throw down a few observations and comments of our own, focussing mainly on those instances where we've drawn widely different conclusions to those drawn by Richard, or where Richard may have overlooked something.

This shouldn't be considered as a criticism of Richard's work, as that certainly is not the intention; if anything, what our observations demonstrate is that when you give the same "evidence" to two people for study, you quite often do get different results.

NOTE: The page numbers cited here are for the 2013 Updated Edition.


  • 47 / 118: The War Machines: the serial was film-recorded twice, once in 1966 and again in 1967 or 1968 (Richard isn't always consistent with the date), which was supposedly to furnish the ABC in Australia with a new set of film prints.
BBC paperwork records that this second set of film recordings – the request sheet for each of the four episodes says "THIS TRANSFER TO OBTAIN 2nd NEG" – was ordered on 7 May 1968 and struck on 26 May 1968, by which time the ABC had already completed the repeat of this serial around the main regions.
Richard surmises that the second recording was struck for Australia because the ABC's print of part two had disappeared … or it may have been done for Nigeria. But the Nigerian prints came from New Zealand, and the NZBC already had its prints by then: in fact, they were viewed by the censor on 7 May 1968, the same day the films were ordered!
Two days after the negatives were physically created the last of the main six regional broadcasts took place in Australia, which means the ABC's set of prints can't have been incomplete. The new negatives and any prints that were struck from them certainly can't have been for the ABC's benefit.
One important factor that's hard to reconcile, is that the print of episode two that was recovered in Australia in 1981, and the ex-New Zealand print of the same episode recovered from Nigeria in 1984 were different: the NZ / Nigeria print was slightly zoomed-in, and contained less picture than the Australian copy. This difference could only occur if the two sets of prints were from different sets of negatives. If the ABC received their prints in January 1967 (which is when they were assessed by the censors) and the NZBC received their prints in May 1968, and these were from different telerecordings, then the 1968 negatives would have been the third set to be created. If so, why does the paperwork record them as being a "2nd NEG"?
Maybe the term "2nd" shouldn't be taken literally, and this re-recording might have been a second set for Enterprises use, so they had two from which to create sales prints. (Of course, this doesn't answer why Enterprises should need two negatives of this serial. Did they also have these "2nd" negs of other serials?)
To summarise, the 1966 first negative was for Australia's benefit; another negative was made in late 1967 (zoomed-in) which was supplied to New Zealand (and Barbados and Zambia?), while in May 1968 a "2nd" negative was stuck, possibly for back-up safety purposes prior to the original master tapes being wiped shortly after.


  • 64-65 / 73-76: For the Video tape Wipe Dates; Richard has generalised that these were wiped between 12/72 - 11/76.
Actually, this period of dates can be narrowed down even further. The New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation (NZBC) was offered PAL colour copies of Death to the Daleks in late 1974. (The first episode on video tape was assessed by the censors on 13 December 1974.) The only other colour Jon Pertwee stories subsequently offered to the NZBC in 1975 were those that existed in their entirety. Therefore, the original PAL tapes for the majority of the third Doctor stories (seasons seven, eight and nine) must have all been erased long before the offer to New Zealand at the end of 1974. This brings most of those Wipe Dates down by two years, to 12/72 – 12/74.


  • 113-114: We have to question the idea that the rights for every 1960s story were renewed when the first five year period expired.
What Richard has overlooked is that some of the foreign stations may have purchased the broadcast rights during the initial five-year rights period, but held off transmitting the story for one or two years, during which time the rights had expired. If the sales contract stipulated that they could air the story within a period of, say, three years, the fact that the rights period itself may have expired before then doesn't impact when the serial could go to air. It's a sales rights period, not a broadcast rights period.
The NZBC received tapes of Death to the Daleks in 1974, but didn't air it until 1976. Although the Zambia TV station didn't air the final three Patrick Troughton stories until 1976, they may very well have bought the rights in 1974 to screen within three years. If that was the case, this means the rights for that serial weren't extended to 1979 as Richard has proposed. On that basis, we think that the only stories to definitely have had been granted a second five-year renewal were those of the first three seasons, plus the handful from other seasons that were still being offered for sale in 1975, and thus notated as such on the Quick Guide to Doctor Who as tabulated on pages 129-138.
The extension dates are also mentioned on pages 171, 173-174. There is no evidence that all those stories identified were extended by a further five years.


  • 114: Richard wonders whether the "last chance to buy" sale of Fury from the Deep to Gibraltar falling on the same date that the rights expired was deliberate.
Sorry, but that doesn't make sense: The "sales" dates that Richard refers to throughout the book are not the dates that the stories were sold. As far as we know none of the paperwork that actually cites the sales dates (i.e. when money was handed over after being invoiced) exists; the only surviving sales information is the Clearance History Sheets (tabulated across pages 385-410) which records not the date of sale (as Richard has stated throughout the book) but the dates on which the BBC's Commercial Rights division notified the various departments under their administration – those that that dealt with Equity, writers' agents and the Musicians' Unions - that a sale had been made. This notification (and thus the date entered into the clearances records) could have been written up and sent days, weeks or months (maybe even years!) after the actual "sale" was contracted / paid for. Therefore, the fact that the division that dealt with Equity was advised of the sale of Fury from the Deep to Gibraltar fell on day that the rights expired is purely coincidental!


  • 115-116: Richard concludes that the commercial viability of the whole initial run of Patrick Troughton episodes was seemingly adversely affected by the non-availability of The Power of the Daleks following that story being withdrawn from sale from 1966 to 1967.
Given that sales of the series had already dropped dramatically before the Troughtons became available indicates that the poor sales of those serials had nothing to do with foreign broadcasters not being able to screen his debut as the second Doctor. If anything, it was business as usual at the BBC.
If we tabulate the sales of the last two William Hartnell stories and the first two Troughton serials, plus the story that started the "second" full package of Troughton stories (The Abominable Snowmen), we can see that only two of the six countries regularly buying the series at the time dropped the series with Hartnell's penultimate story, while two "new" countries picked up the series with The Highlanders and one with The Abominable Snowmen. But it must be noted that of these "new" sales, Uganda and Hong Kong had previously shown Hartnells up to The Rescue, while Gibraltar and Nigeria had previously aired up to The Time Meddler; it's clear that not being able to show The Power of the Daleks had little effect on the sale of Troughton stories to those countries:
CC DD EE FF NN UU Notes
Australia Australia Australia Australia
Barbados
Zambia Zambia Zambia had stopped after CC then returned to the series with FF after a 18 month gap
New Zealand New Zealand New Zealand New Zealand
Sierra Leone
Singapore Singapore Singapore purchased FF (and NN) before DD and EE, which it picked up as a separate "back-catalogue" package many years later, which is why Singapore has not been included under those two stories in this table
Hong Kong Hong Kong stopped after L then returned to the series with FF after a two year gap
Uganda Uganda had stopped after L then returned to the series with FF after a 20 month gap
Gibraltar Gibraltar had stopped after S then returned to the series with UU after a six year gap
Nigeria The sales to Nigeria were regional, so although a previous broadcaster had stopped after S, a different broadcaster came new to the series with NN
While it's certainly clear that sales of Troughton's episodes during the late 1960s were poor compared to the sales of the first William Hartnell packages, there was still a "regular" group of four customers still buying the series, and the number of sales was comparable to those of William Hartnell's final run. And although a small group came back to the series after dropping it years earlier, that The Power of the Daleks was not available was not a factor in their dropping the series when they did.


  • 116: The footnote on this page is from the original edition of the book, and hasn't been updated to reflect the new information regarding the timing of the introduction of Stored Field telerecordings presented in the footnote on page 47.


  • 118: No negatives were sent to the ABC or BBC Enterprises in Sydney. The BBC only ever supplied positives. If the ABC had any reason to acquire new prints, these would have been supplied to them by London, or by possibly by making their own dupes from the prints they already possessed.


  • 120 / 362: The principal language of Iran is Farsi, not Arabic. Although the NITV may have been sent copies of the dubbed Arabic prints, the broadcaster would have had to have made new dubs soundtracks into Farsi.



  • 123-126: FOREIGN LANGUAGE VERSIONS. We have to disagree with much of what is stated on these pages.
The BBC created "Music / Effects" tracks (M&E), which was a separate magnetic tape which contained just music and sound effects with no dialogue. The only components that would be sent to foreign broadcasters to enable them to make dubbed soundtracks was the M&E track, a positive print (with or without the original English sound track), and a copy of the "as Broadcast" script. They would not be furnished with any negatives. After the foreign language dub was made, the three components – film, M&E track, dialogue track - would be synched during broadcast.
The only foreign languages for which this process was done was Spanish, Arabic, Farsi and Thai. For the first two, these were made in professional dubbing studios (in Mexico and Beirut, Lebanon respectively). These language tracks were then sent back to the BBC who then created new negatives with the foreign soundtrack, which became the master copies from which prints were purchased by countries where that language was spoken. Each broadcaster didn't create its own set of dubbed prints, as Richard has claimed.
All the surviving Arabic prints were dubbed in the same Lebanon studio, as evidenced by the fact that all those prints have the very same Arabic voiceover at the start and end of episode; none of the surviving Arabic prints contains a narration that is different. Richard states that copies of these Spanish and Arabic films were supplied to the BBC per contractual agreement. Indeed, the BBC does hold copies of some of these prints to this day. The fact that no copies of the Farsi and Thai soundtracks exist, suggests that the broadcasts in those countries were done by muting the existing soundtrack and playing the separate sound tape in synch during broadcast, or the new dialogue may have been performed live rather than being pre-recorded. There was therefore no physical film print with dubbed optical soundtrack to be supplied to the BBC per the stated contractual obligations.
See our pages on the Spanish and Arabic versions for more detail on these dubs.


  • 125: Richard surmises that the BBC's paperwork regarding the "Spanish Version" is "wrong".
What he has overlooked is that the Spanish Version code given to all the Doctor Who stories (which is 45699) might apply not to the serial, but to the series. (If the code applied to each story, shouldn't there be more than just the one common number?)
Of note, that Spanish Version code falls between the code applied to The Highlanders (45674) and The Underwater Menace (45707); both stories were first sold to Australia by late 1967 – which is the same year of the first sale to a Spanish-speaking country, Venezuela, and close to when The Web of Fear, the last story to have the code written on its clearance sheet, was broadcast
Ergo, it's likely that when the Spanish dubs were completed, someone at the BBC handwrote the relevant code for the "Spanish Version of Doctor Who" on the pages of all the stories that were filed at the time - of which The Web of Fear was the most recent - perhaps on the (mistaken?) assumption that the code would be used for all future sales, even for stories not yet on offer. (As it turned out, the last story to be dubbed into and sold to Spanish-speaking countries was The Chase in 1969…)


  • 126 / 175 / 193 / 339-340: Richard's claim that the only reason the season one and two Hartnell negatives exist today is because they were sent back from Algeria is just plain wrong.
As noted above, the Algerian TV station would not have made its own Arabic dubs. Instead, they'd have been issued with copies of the generic Arabic prints that had been dubbed in Beirut and had been bicycled around the rest of North Africa since 1967. They certainly would not have been supplied with English negatives and English positives in 1973 in order to make their own dubbed copies, then sent back the English negatives and positives to the BBC for them to be "found" in 1978!
Those English negatives were always held by Enterprises – see THE LIVELY ARTS notes below.


  • 134: Richard says he has duplicated the text on the Quick Guide "word for word" – and yet he's missed the fact that serial GGG is written in the guide as "The Claws of Death"!


  • 138: Top of the page, Richard says several stories are labelled as being "Not Available" because the films may have already been junked.
As we've noted above, stories could have been sold within the rights expiry period but not gone to air until a year or so after the rights had expired; in the case of the Quick Guide to Doctor Who, the notation "Not Available" refers to the status of the sales rights rather than to the physical film prints.


  • 175: The Arabic positives of The Daleks held by Enterprises in 1978 could very well have been returned from Algeria ... or from Morocco ... or Libya ... or Jordan ... whereas the Arabic negatives that were being junked when Ian Levine visited would have been the ones held by Enterprises since 1967, the ones they were contractually bound to have copies of which were created when the Arabic soundtrack tapes came back from the studios in Lebanon.


  • 189-201: THE LIVELY ARTS: We have a copy of this same set of memos that Richard has accessed, and our own conclusions as to what the various notations on the paperwork means differs widely from Richard's conclusions. We won't cover this line by line, page by page, but the main points of difference are:
    • Richard has reasoned that the master list was notated by Enterprises and the Film Library as a complete inventory of their film holdings in advance of the researchers going to look at material to use in the Whose Doctor Who documentary. We think the list was notated by the researchers at the time of their visit to both locations, and those episodes marked with a "black box" drawn around with a pen (as described on page 189) are the Viewing Prints that they viewed, as those would have been the only prints the Lively Arts research team would have had ready access to be able to look at on the day(s) they visited Enterprises and the Library. For those stories in which they were interested in seeing, but for which no viewing copies and only negatives existed (these were held in the film vault, a separate location to where the viewing prints were) – such as The Dalek Invasion of Earth and The Chase – these are marked with instead with an asterisk (*), which Richard doesn't mention.
    • The stories which have had the black boxes are those for which the researchers actually viewed, and inside some of these boxes are the pithy remarks written by the researchers, describing their comments as to the suitability of the episode in the documentary, and not comments made by the person who drew up the list.
    • The episodes marked with a "NO" appear to be ones which they decided they didn't want to use in the final programme, rather than the comment being a reflection that the films didn't exist. Invasion of the Dinosaurs is marked this way – the "NO" might mean, "No, we don't want to use this in the programme" rather than "No, the videos or films don't exist" – see also page 196 below.
    • Likewise, the notations "No Print" or "No Neg" written against certain episodes doesn't refer to the physical status of the film but that the researchers were saying "No" to using any clips from the negative or print from the episode.
    • Case in point, Galaxy 4 episode two: this has a black box drawn around it which indicates the researches watched the episode. The handwritten notation inside the box says "TR", which means this was a telerecording as opposed to video. It also says "NO PRINT", and then in the next column it says "NO NEG" (as Richard points out at the top of page 194). But these statements are contradictory: how could there be a TR but also no print or negative? Ergo, the "No" isn't saying there was no print or no negative held, but that "no, we looked at this episode and we didn't find anything in it that we want to use in the documentary, therefore no we don't need to order the negative".
    • It's worth noting that none of the episodes of The Dalek Invasion of Earth are marked with black boxes, which by Richard's definition means no episodes were held at all, and yet the subsequent January 1977 memo includes a request for the negatives for parts two, four and five, from which some extracts were used in the final broadcast documentary; this supports the notion that while viewing prints were not held for this story (hence no black boxes on the master list), the negatives of this (and other stories of which Richard claims nothing at all was held) were safe and sound in the film vault.
    • With that thought in mind, the negatives for five of the episodes requested in the Lively Arts paperwork in 1977 are notated as being "scrapped", and yet the negatives were found to be held by Enterprises in 1978. It is possible that in late 1976/early 1977 the negatives had been taken from their usual racks in the film store and placed elsewhere to await junking, and the film record cards was marked "scrapped"; so, when Enterprises looked for the negatives in response to Lively Arts' memos, they saw the films weren't on the shelves and that the card was marked "scrapped", and didn't think to look elsewhere for them. The "elsewhere" was the room in which Ian Levine found all the negatives for The Daleks bound up and awaiting junking…
    • The master list tabulated across pages 190-197 is therefore not a summary of the total Enterprises holdings, but is a summary of the viewing notes made by the researchers. The ones "boxed" are just the ones they had the time to actually sit down to watch on-site. In essence, Richard has it the wrong way round: the black boxes and TR notations weren't on the master list when the researchers went to Enterprises, but were when they left Enterprises.
    • On this basis, Enterprises always had in its possession all the negatives for the first two William Hartnell seasons (sans Marco Polo, The Reign of Terror, The Crusade and The Time Meddler); and since no foreign broadcaster ever needed to acquire negatives in English, these films did not come back from Algeria or any other foreign broadcaster for that matter after 1976...


  • 192: The notation written against The War Games is "YES TIMELORDS", not "NEG TIMELORDS". This means the researchers were initially interested in using a clip from part ten, although they ultimately did not use anything from the Doctor's trial in the final documentary.


  • 194 / 205: Richard bullet-points possible explanations for the existence of print of The Web of Fear part one that was held in 1976.
Applying Occam's Razor, the simplest explanation is that this is the same print that was viewed by the Lively Arts researchers in 1976, but by 1978 it had been designated for junking. The can was placed with a batch of films that had been returned from Hong Kong. When Sue Malden found the film in the pile, she erroneously assumed that it was part of the same consignment from Asia TV. (It's possible that the film print had actually been returned from Singapore (perhaps via Gibraltar?), and Malden miss-remembered which Asian station it was that was on the film can label...)


  • 196: The handwritten note "Missing" next to Doctor Who and the Silurians episode 7 most likely refers to the status of the negative, rather than the lack of any positive / viewing prints. (Was the film "missing" because like some of the Hartnells it had been removed from the stacks and relocated to await junking?)


  • 196: Regarding the "NO" written against Invasion of the Dinosaurs, as noted above, this might not mean that the tapes or telerecordings were not held, but that the Lively Arts researchers were simply not interested in using clips from the episode – indeed, there is also a "NO" written next to episodes of The Romans, The Enemy of the World and The Web of Fear which likewise do not appear in the finished programme. "NO" therefore might mean "No, we don't want to use these" rather than "No, these films don't exist".


  • 198: The opening sentence in the section at the bottom of the page headed THE LIVELY ARTS: WHOSE DOCTOR WHO - TAKE 2! reads: "Having drawn up their list of which episodes they thought existed at either BBC Enterprises or the BBC Film Library in late 1976, the next step..."
Richard's conclusion to this chapter is that the episodes in the master list (tabulated 190-197) were identified and notated prior to the Lively Arts team/s going to Enterprises and the Film Library to begin their research ("We have a list of all the episodes of Doctor Who that you have, and we'd like to have a look at them today, please"), whereas we think the team went along with a blank list not knowing what was available ("These are all the episodes of Doctor Who made to date, we don't know which ones you still have, but we'll look at as many as we can today, please"), and the black boxes and notations in them were thus written in after the team got back to their office.
Taking that alternative conclusion into account, that opening sentence could be rewritten to read "Having watched the available viewing prints at BBC Enterprises and the Film Library in late 1976, the next step..."


  • 201: Could "the clip of the second Doctor meeting the Daleks in Victorian England" – i.e. The Evil of the Daleks - that Terrance Dicks apparently viewed in 1976 have actually been the closing moments from The Wheel in Space part six, in which Kennedy is killed by a Dalek? That episode of Wheel is named in the list of recommended clips, so that brief description could simply be identifying the story from which the original clip came rather than the title of the film print that Dicks had seen.


  • 211: The claim that The Celestial Toymaker part four found in the ABC's film vault had come from New Zealand via Singapore is incorrect. If anything, the missing "Next Episode" caption is due to an edit being made by one of the last regions - if not the last region - to repeat the serial in Australia, a cut made presumably because The Gunfighters did not air, or was being held over for a repeat run later in the year.
Perspective
  • 296: The Australian documentary was called "Perspective" (singular, not plural) – see our Australia TX 1971-1975 page.


  • 328: Only seven of the nine off-screen photos taken in Australia are from Marco Polo. The two close-up photos of the Doctor are both from The Aztecs, episodes two and three respectively – see the Australia TX 1965-1967 page.


  • 337: The 'CVP' notation is indeed the initials of the person who filled in the information: Cyril V Page worked in the BBC's sales / copyright department.


  • 339: While BBC sales contracts may very well have had a clause allowing for repeats, Australia and Mexico are the only two countries to exercise that option during the 1960s. Presumably the fees paid covered these multiple screenings.


  • 349: Marco Polo was also repeated during 1965 and 1966 in other regions in Australia, not just Adelaide.



  • 352-354: The dates in the column headed "ABC Arrival Information" are actually the dates on which the first episode of each story was viewed by the Australian government censor. The actual "arrival" dates into Australia would of course pre-date these.


  • 353: The text that appears in the last box in the line for The Smugglers has been misplaced; it should be in the last box in the row for The War Machines. The reference to 1967 should be 1968. (See notes about the "2nd NEG" on page 47 and 118 above).


  • 354: The Krotons was returned to the BBC on 9/6/76, not 9/6/75.




  • 373-375: The dates to which Richard has assigned the heading "Arrival Information" are not when the films arrived in New Zealand, but are the date from which the broadcast rights commence, i.e. the episodes could not be aired before these dates. In a number of cases, the films had been viewed by the censor long before the date that is cited, which means these cannot be arrival dates.


This is definitely the date on which the screening rights expire, as several other Troughton stories have the same date or one that is a few months later, a fact that Richard has not even mentioned! (This date is written in the NZBC / TVNZ film traffic records next to the story title, not in the column usually containing film disposal information, so "Exp" won't mean date of dispatch or destruction.)


  • 482: The ABC sent its prints of The Dalek Invasion of Earth to New Zealand in 1967 – so how could it be that the BBC held the ABC's print? Did the NZBC send their prints back to the BBC?


  • 517: There are quite a few additional sequences in the 71 Edit of Invasion of the Dinosaurs episode three, more than just the one that Richard has identified – and these have all been assembled into a "deleted scenes" package on the DVD.





Hungary

CLICK TO GO TO NEW SERIES INDEX
 {{{country}}} was one of the first to screen the new series:
● Date of first broadcast: 19 February 2006
● Station/s: Cool TV / TWIDW
See our New Series page for further details




CLICK TO GO TO NEW SERIES INDEX
 {{{country}}} was one of the first to screen the new series:
 
 
See our New Series page for further details


● ドクター・フー ("Dokutâ Fû")
● Start Date: 26 January 2006
● Station: ATV World | ● TWIDW
● Websites: Link to "official" sites if any - or YouTube clips in foreign language
● Notes: anything that needs mentioning otherwise remove


NEW SERIES

CLICK TO GO TO NEW SERIES INDEX
 Hungary was one of the first to screen the new series:
● Date of first broadcast: 19 February 2006
● Station/s: Cool TV/RTL Klub
See our New Series page for further details


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