Wiped Reviewed

Wiped! Updated Edition 2013

Review by Jon Preddle

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

We at BroaDWcast are quite familiar with much of the 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 the book), so we'd like to throw down a few observations and comments of our own, focussing mainly on those instances where our interpretation of the same paperwork differs, and where we've drawn widely different conclusions to those drawn by Richard, or where Richard may have overlooked something. A couple of factual errors are also highlighted.

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 different people to study, you quite often get different results.

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

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• 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; in fact, they were viewed by the New Zealand censor on 7 May 1968, the same day the films were ordered! So the new negatives were certainly not made for Nigeria or New Zealand's benefit.

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 taken 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 quite so 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 particular serial. Or did they also have these "2nd" negs made for 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, perhaps because the 1966 and 1967 ones were damaged, or maybe safety back-ups were made just in case ahead of the original master tapes being wiped.

• 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 a few months later in early 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 the last foreign station to buy each story 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. And the record of the sale wasn't registered until after broadcast.

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.

Therefore, some of the stories which have been assigned a possible Renewed Expiry Date into 1976, 1977, 1978 or 1979 probably weren't granted a renewal at all; the very last recorded "sale" may have occurred well within the first and only five year period, but the clearance information relating to the final country that purchased the serial wasn't entered into the clearance records (back-dated) until after the sales rights had expired.

• 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 on the same day that the rights to sell that story 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.

• 120-122: Our own take on the distribution paths of these stories is on our Bicycling Chains page. It's unlikely that Singapore and New Zealand shared that many prints. Gibraltar's print may have come from Singapore.

• 123-126: FOREIGN LANGUAGE VERSIONS. We have to disagree with much of what is stated on these pages.

As Richard outlines, to assist with the creation of foreign language dubs the BBC created "Music / Effects" (M&E) tracks, which was a separate magnetic tape containing just music and sound effects with no dialogue. This tape was supplied to foreign language dubbing facilities, together with a transcript of the episode "as broadcast" so the dialogue could be translated, and a viewing print of each episode in English to assist with lip-synching. At no stage in the process was a negative of the episode supplied, as Richard has claimed.

The only foreign languages for which this process was done were Spanish, Arabic, Farsi and Thai. For the first two languges, new dialogue tracks were recorded in professional dubbing studios (in Mexico and Beirut, Lebanon respectively). The new dialogue track was later combined with the M&E track to create a single audio track (this was done at either the BBC or the dubbing studio). The BBC created fresh telerecording negatives with the new soundtrack from which sales prints were struck. But creating foreign dubbed negatives was only ever done for the Spanish and Arabic languages. For the Thai and Farsi dubs, no master negatives and prints with those foreign language tracks were manufactured because the BBC could not sell those language dubs elsewhere.

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 correctly 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.) But the fact that there is no record of any Farsi and Thai prints ever being held by the BBC suggests that those prints never existed; instead, the broadcasts in those countries were done by muting the existing English soundtrack on the supplied prints and playing the separate pre-recorded dialogue sound tape with the M&E track in synch during broadcast. (In Thailand (and possibly also Iran) programmes were often simulcast in Thai and English, with the English soundtrack broadcast over the radio.)

On transmission in Thailand at least, there would be three machines running:

1) film projector with the original film with optical soundtrack in English

2) audio player with the M&E sound track

3) audio player with the separate dialogue sound track

with all three being synched and playing together.

An alternative would be for 2) and 3) to have been combined at the dubbing stage, so there'd be just two components running together during broadcast (and therefore one less machine to break down during transmission!):

1) the original film with optical soundtrack in English

2) the combined M&E and dialogue sound track

If Iran didn't simulcast in English, they would simply turn off the English sound track and broadcast only the Farsi dub. Since there was no physical film print with dubbed optical soundtrack to be supplied to the BBC per contractual obligations, none were returned to the BBC. But the BBC did hold negatives and some prints of the Arabic and Spanish dubs, some of which were still held in 1976 when the Lively Arts documentary was being prepared (see below).

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.

The Spanish Version code given to all the Doctor Who stories is 45699. But this code might apply not to the serial, but to the series. (If the code applied to each story, shouldn't there be more than just that 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 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 in the Quick Guide to Doctor Who memo 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 (see 123-126 above.

• 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.

Richard's principal understanding (outlined in his opening four paragraphs) is that the master list (tabulated on pages 190-197) was a complete inventory of the film holdings at Enterprises and the Film Library compiled by an unnamed researcher in advance of the Lively Arts team going to look at material to use in the Whose Doctor Who documentary and that they took this already-annotated list with them (i.e. "We have compiled a complete list of the various surviving episodes of Doctor Who that you hold, and we'd now like to have a look at them today, please"). Whereas, our principal understanding is the exact opposite, that the team went along with a blank list of all episodes made to date that they had themselves compiled but had no idea what was still available (i.e. "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 notations on the master list were added by the two Lively Arts researchers, Ben Shephard and Bridget Cave, after they had been to Enterprises.

We won't cover this line by line, page by page, but our main points of difference are:

The master list was typed on "24.11.76" as is notated at the foot of the last page. Next to this are the initials "TC/BS/SB" which, in standard clerical and typing shorthand, are to identity the author/s and typist: these initials stand for Tony Cash (who was the producer of the documentary), Ben Shephard (one of the principal researchers), and Sue Box (Cash's secretary and the typist). The list was therefore compiled by and for Cash and Shephard and typed up by Box. So much for an "anonymous compiler"! (Incidentally, Shephard gets one passing mention on page 195 of the book, but Cave isn't named at all!)

We think the list was notated by the Lively Arts researchers Ben Shephard and Bridget Cave at the time of their visit to both locations, so those episodes marked with a "black box" drawn around with a pen (as described on page 189) are just the prints they would have had ready access to look at on the day(s) they visited Enterprises and the Library (the master list of episode and story titles was typed up on 24 November 1976, and some of the episodes were viewed that day according to a separate set of documents written by Shephard, referred to on page 195, while Cave assessed a selection on 26 November 1976). For those stories in which they were interested in seeing, but for which no viewing copies were held – such as The Dalek Invasion of Earth and The Chase (see below) – these are marked with an asterisk (*), which Richard doesn't mention.

Inside some of these "black boxes" are the pithy remarks written by Shephard and Cave describing their comments as to the suitability of the episode in the documentary, and not comments made by the ("unknown") person at Enterprises who drew up the list, as Richard offers at the top of page 190. (Richard does however state on page 195 that it was perhaps Shephard who made those remarks.) (See also DWM issue 330 (specifically pages 20-21) which goes into quite some detail about the making of the Lively Arts programme, and identifies more of Ben Shephard and Bridget Cave's "pithy" comments that adorn the master list. It was Cave who blasted The Web Planet part six, declaring it to be "abominably bad, resembles Christmas panto with beetles" in her viewing notes, which she had shorthanded to just "VERY BAD - PANTO" on the master list (also page 190).

The episodes marked with a "NO" appear to be ones which Shephard and Cave had 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 / can't 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 necessarily refer to the physical status of the film but that the researchers were saying "NO" to extracting clips from the negative or print of 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. Richard doesn't mention that this, like many of the episodes, has the letter "N" written next to it; all the episodes marked "N" correspond directly with the episodes listed on the January 1977 memo in which the Lively Arts team requested the negatives (see page 199); "N" must mean "Negative". But the master list 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 notations are contradictory: how could there be a TR but also no print?

To make some sense of all this, we need to identify the probable sequence of events by which these various memos and notations were written. What probably happened was this: the researchers viewed episode two at Enterprises (and drew the "black box" on the master list to indicate such). They later requested the negative (per the 1977 memo and the letter "N"), but Enterprises responded that the negative had been "scrapped". The researchers therefore decided not to take any clips from the positive print, so wrote in "NO PRINT" to mean "we can't use the print", and since the negative was gone, they also wrote in "NO NEG" to mean "we can't use the neg". (The negative for part one of this story was also gone, but they did lift a clip from the positive to be used in the finish programme, the only instance in which the positive rather than the negative of a Hartnell story was used for sourcing a clip.)

The notations against episodes of The Chase are similar: although none of them have the black box marking, all six are notated with "TR". Episode one also has "NO PRINT" and "NO NEG". Episodes one, two and five all have the "N" mark, and also appear in the 1977 list requesting the negatives. Of these, only part one is recorded as being "scrapped". No clips from the serial made it into the finished documentary. From this we can conclude that although the team didn't actually watch any episodes (hence no black boxes), since it was a Dalek story they wanted to use clips sight unseen, and thus they requested the negs for three episodes (per the 1977 memo). Ultimately it was decided not to feature clips from this serial, so the master list was marked "NO [to taking clips from the] PRINT" and "NO [we can't use the] NEG". (All six negatives were found in 1978, so the "scrapped" part one must have been stored elsewhere and unavailable at the time of the Lively Arts visit – see note below.)

None of the episodes of The Dalek Invasion of Earth are marked with black boxes, and yet the subsequent January 1977 memo includes a request for the negatives for parts two, five and six (all of which also have the "N" written beside them), and from which extracts were used in the final broadcast documentary; clearly the negs did exist, and this supports the notion that while the team didn't preview any of the episodes (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, there are five episodes which the January 1977 memo records as "scrapped", and yet the negatives for all five were found to be held by Enterprises in 1978. Rather than these negatives being returned from overseas (as Richard suggests, despite the fact that no foreign broadcaster would ever need negatives in English) it is possible that in late 1976/early 1977 those five negatives had been taken from their usual racks in the film store and placed elsewhere to await junking, and the film record cards 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" may have been the area in which Ian Levine later found all the negatives for The Daleks bound up and awaiting junking…

• LIVELY ARTS - OUR CONCLUSION: The master list tabulated across pages 190-197 is not a summary of the total Enterprises holdings in late 1976 compiled by an anonymous researcher (as Richard puts it), but is merely a checklist and shortened summary of the longer detailed viewing notes made by researchers Shephard and Cave. The ones "boxed" are just the ones (i.e. positive viewing prints) the two had the time to actually sit down to watch on-site on the two or three days they visited Enterprises, i.e. 24-26 November. They didn't get to view The Ark parts one and two, which is why those two were not "boxed". As we said at the top of this section, Richard has it the wrong way round: the black boxes and TR notations weren't on the master list when Shephard and Cave 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 the historicals Marco Polo, The Reign of Terror, The Crusade and The Time Meddler); and since no foreign broadcaster ever needed to possess negatives in English, the telerecordings "found" in 1978 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 (specifically Bridget Cave, who viewed the episode on 26 November 1976) 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: Richard bullet-points possible explanations for the existence of print of The Web of Fear part one that was held in 1976, and discusses same on page 205.

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: Back to the big "NO" written against Invasion of the Dinosaurs (which is typed in the master list as being only a four-parter!): none of the missing Hartnell or Troughton episodes is marked to indicate such. As we've noted above, this "NO" might not mean that the tapes or telerecordings were gone, 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 the existing episodes of The Romans, The Enemy of the World and The Web of Fear, and from which clips do not appear in the finished programme. "NO" therefore must mean "No, we don't want to / can't use this" rather than "No, this doesn't exist".

Of note, Invasion of the Dinosaurs doesn't have the usual "TR" or "ORIG TAPE" notation next to it as do all the other Pertwees; lack of this notation ties in with the fact that the serial had been withdrawn from sale in 1974, and Enterprises might not have had viewing copies available for the researchers to look at, and since they had to view as much material as they could in the short time they had available (two or three days?), this "NO" might also mean "No, we can't watch this story today".

• 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..."

Taking our alternative conclusions 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..."

• GENERAL NOTE: The Lively Arts master list is covered with all sorts of scribbles and ticks and asterisks, so we may never really fully grasp the true meanings behind all the markings and notations on this paperwork. So, whilst Richard and we have taken a stab at deciphering what the document means, we could both be totally wrong!

• 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 particular episode of Wheel is named in the list of recommended clips, so that brief description could simply be identifying the story from which the Kennedy and Dalek "flashback" clip came rather than the title of the actual film print that Dicks had apparently seen.
  • An alternative is that what Dicks saw was episode 2, then held by the BBC but discarded soon after, and which ultimately resurfaced in early 1987…

• 211: The claim that The Celestial Toymaker part four found in the ABC's film vault had come from New Zealand via Singapore is probably 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.

Two screen shots from The Aztecs – not Marco Polo (page 328)

• 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 (at 8:45) and four (13:00) respectively – see our 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, in view of the fact that multiple screenings have been identified for Australia and Mexico only, most of the countries to buy the 1960s series did not exercise that option and aired the serials only the once. (Presumably the cost to purchase covered those multiple screenings.)

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

• 349: In the list of cuts made to The Highlanders, the dialogue "Take the chair" is actually "Take the strain". Although the typed report says "chair", the original handwritten viewing notes clearly say "strain" (and that is indeed what the actor is saying in the clip that survives); the mixed-up word is merely a misreading of the censor's handwriting by the typist.

• 351: The cuts made to The Invasion and The War Games by the Australian censors are as follows:
  • The Invasion 5: Reduce screams of children and reduce shots of policeman as he is killed by Cybermen.
  • The Invasion 6: Reduce the demonstration of the deadly machine against the Professor and a little later (at 15 mins) delete the blow to the Professors's head. Delete the death struggle and cries of the man killed by Cyber rays.
  • The Invasion 7: Delete dialogue - "Why not just kill him - he's caused us enough trouble already" "You forget Packer, he's our insurance".
  • The War Games 4: Reduce battle deleting throttling with rifle and stranglehold.

• 352: The Romans was not one of the serials sent from Australia to New Zealand in 1967.

• 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. (But see our notes about the date of the "2nd NEG" above).

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

• 366: Marco Polo aired in New Zealand in 1966 as well as 1967.

• 371-372: Richard has not detailed any of the cuts made by the New Zealand censors to The Evil of the Daleks, The Enemy of the World, The Web of Fear, The Wheel in Space and Doctor Who and the Silurians. Some of the footage cut from the latter two Troughton serials was subsequently recovered.
  • The Evil of the Daleks 4: Reduce fight between Jamie and Kemel.
  • The Evil of the Daleks 5: 16½ mins - Reduce fight to minimum.
  • The Enemy of the World 4: 3 mins – 'I want to be there to see his face when he dies' spoken by Negress. 11 mins - Reduce death scene with Negress, to absolute minimum, deleting the word 'Good!' spoken by man when he is told she is dead.
  • The Enemy of the World 5: 16½ mins - Delete man pulling girl's head back by her hair. 22 mins - Reduce close-up of man picking up iron bar.
  • The Web of Fear 1: 3 mins - 3 close-ups of hairy monster - delete, leave long shot. 6 mins - 1 close-up of hairy monster – delete. 7 mins - close-up of monster attacking man. 15 mins - dead old man covered in cob-webs – delete. 25 mins - delete man's cry, if possible.
  • The Web of Fear 2: 11 mins - Delete all close-ups of monsters during next 2 min sequence, reducing long shots to a minimum.
  • The Web of Fear 3: Delete prolonged close-up of face & claws of monster, coming in as he turns his back. Delete close-up of monster, coming in on closing credits.
  • The Web of Fear 4: Opening sequence with monsters, screams & old man being dragged along by monster. Delete all except quick glimpses of man being dragged along. 4 mins - Delete shot of recumbent human covered with cobwebs & a scream. 17 mins - Delete scream. Reduce following fight sequence between monsters & army to absolute minimum, deleting screams up to 20 mins. 22 mins - Delete close-ups of monsters & final attack on man.
  • The Web of Fear 5: 14 mins - Delete girl's scream & view of monster.
  • The Web of Fear 6: Delete close-up of man's blackened face with monster's claws around his throat. Delete shot of blackened corpse on ground.
  • The Wheel in Space 3: 17 mins - Delete close-up of man's face with open mouth & accompanying scream.
  • The Wheel in Space 5: 10 mins - Delete elbow jab, man's face being banged repeatedly against door, man's hands raised, shaped like claws, reducing fight sequence to minimum.
  • The Wheel in Space 6: 13 mins - delete close-ups of dead woman lying on floor.
  • Doctor Who and the Silurians 2: 1.08 reduce – dinosaur. 6.20 - delete dinosaur. 8.23 - delete heavy breathing. 10.07 - wounded Silurian - heavy breathing cut. 15.27 Woman screaming. Creature attacks farmer in barn – reduce. 20.55 reduce heavy breathing.
  • Doctor Who and the Silurians 3: 0.30 delete opening shot. 8.21 Creature wounded - heavy breathing sound very base-y.

• 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 dates from which the broadcast rights commenced, 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. The column heading should therefore be "Rights Commence From".

• 439-473: OVERSEAS SALES AND TRANSMISSIONS:

The column headed "BBC Sales Date" is not the date when contracts were signed or money handed over, but when notification of the (fully contracted or still pending) "sale" had been memo-ed to other departments within the BBC. To call these "sales" dates is misleading. The same series of dates are tabulated on pages 386-410, and correctly have the title "Prog Contr Advised", meaning this was the date on which the department that handled actors' contracts and clearances was notified of the sale so royalties could be determined per Actors Equity agreements.

• In the Notes section of the tables:
  • For Australia, Richard has a date for when the story "was purchased"; no, the dates he has cited are in fact that dates on which the episodes were viewed and assessed by the censor. (See same note regarding pages 352-354 above.)
  • For New Zealand, Richard has a date for when the films "arrived in the country"; no, the dates he has cited are in fact the date from which the screening rights commenced. The films had already arrived in country and in many cases been assessed by the censor prior to this date. (See note for pages 373-375 above.)

• 464: In the Notes section for The Abominable Snowmen Richard wonders what the notation "Exp 31/08/73" for New Zealand might mean.

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 (export) or destruction.)

We've noted what these various expiry dates are on the relevant Story Guide pages of BroaDWcast.

• 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? Does this mean the NZBC sent their prints back to the BBC? Or did the ABC have duplicates?

• 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.