jd's Journal: Telefantasy Missing Episodes

As many televsion (and film) fans are aware, many early - and not so early - recordings have been destroyed over time. Ignorance has played a large part in this. The BBC, for example, famously claimed that nobody wanted to watch Black & White stuff any more.

We now know, of course, that this is completely untrue, and that the owners of said companies would have been able to figure this out if they'd bothered to go out and ask anyone.

However, not all hope is lost. Most, but not all. Every so often, a recording that has been missing, believed destroyed, surfaces. Once in a great while, it is a large haul, most times it is a single episode of some popular series.

Three missing episodes have surfaced, in recent years. Most famously, episode 2 of the Doctor Who story "The Crusades" was located in New Zealand. Not so famously, but just as significantly, episode 2 of "The Dalek Masterplan" has been recovered. This was found in January 2004, although there is very little publicly known. I have yet to see any comments even on the condition of this latest discovery.

In another series, The Avengers, a missing episode has turned up. "The Girl on the Trapeze" is a first season story, featuring Dr Keel (played by Ian Hendry). Steed (played by Patrick McNee) does not appear in this story. This is only the second story to have been recovered from the first season. As such, it is practically like gold dust. Accounts suggest that it's in good shape, but there is absolutely no word as to who is going to do the restoration work (if any is needed). Nor are the companies most involved with The Avengers (such as A&E) even remotely skilled in this area. This simply isn't their field. Unfortunately, it's not like you can get another master tape, if you destroy the only known surviving one.

This brings me to my next point. Restoration work of any kind is a specialist field. However, the number of specialists in it is very small, the resources they generally get are limited, and they have to split the time between restoration and doing stuff that pays them money.

This is a stupid, half-baked way to go about doing things. If collectors are out there, hoarding tapes, it's not terribly surprising. I'd not willingly hand over something unique, valuable and precious in the eyes of a great many people to the hands of people I'm not certain can do the job but where I am certain they'll try in ways that could be very destructive.

Now to my final point. It must be obvious (3 finds in 7 years is a pretty high ratio) that other missing material exists. Very very little from the British ABC, Thames TV, the BBC, etc, from before 1980 still exists. They even trashed their copies of the Apollo 11 moon landings!!!

What have they done to rebuild their collections? Well, they've threatened finders with copyright lawsuits. They've sent rather garbled letters to various TV studios (but never followed up on any of them). That's about it. No "finder's fee". The BBC will let the finder keep the original once it's been duplicated, but other TV and movie companies don't even do that.

In short, nobody is exactly making a determined effort to uncover those episodes still out there that might be salvagable. The ones who could - the corporations - are happy making loads of money off their newer products. Old lines don't really interest them, money-wise.

Smaller groups, and individual fans, have almost zero hope of finding anything. Unless they happen to live near a TV station. Some Dr Who stories have been discovered by accident in forgotten parts of archives, or even in trash bins outside. Nor does the average person have the money it would take to do the detective work it'd take to track down any episodes in the hands of collectors.

What hope, then? Probably none. Unless TV companies realise that although the past won't make them as rich as Bill Gates, the past is still desirable to viewers and would still make more money than doing nothing.