United States--1985

Variety, Sept. 25, 1985

Lionheart sales brochure, circa 1985

• January 1985: The Time Meddler and The War Machines are found in Nigeria and returned to the BBC. The BBC quickly adds these two serials / eight episodes to the forthcoming US syndication package. The sale to the US of the entire "back catalogue" of all the older serials is reported to have earned the BBC £4.5 million.
• 9-10 March 1985: A marathon of the new Pertwee stories airs on WHA, Wisconsin.
• May 1985: 146 stations in the US have purchased the series, exposing 70% of the population of the United States to the series. (Similar reports in industry journals dated a few months later, such as Screen International in August 1985, state it as 144 markets reaching 77%.)
• 21-24 July 1985: BBC Enterprises and Lionheart staged a three-day television sales festival at the Cable Beach Hotel in Nassau, the Bahamas, for programme buyers from nine Caribbean countries, at which it sold Doctor Who, part of a total package worth a quarter of a million pounds.
• 28 August 1985: USA Today publishes a two page article on Doctor Who fandom. (see at below right)

• A 10-minute promotional video is produced (presumably) by Lionheart, chiefly as an 'electronic press kit' for selling the series to PBS broadcasters; some stations aired it as a "behind the scenes" feature, sometimes during pledge-drives. The video contains clips from the forthcoming package of Hartnell and Troughton episodes; there are no clips from Season 22, which has only just aired in the UK:
  • CLIP: PBS DOCUMENTARY:

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• 7 September 1985, the 17 repackaged William Hartnell stories go into syndication, debuting on the New Jersey Network:

WILLIAM HARTNELL

USA Today, Aug. 28, 1985

17 stories, 76 episodes (also in "movie length" omnibus editions):

A	An Unearthly Child	4
B	The Daleks	7
C	Inside the Spaceship	2
E	The Keys of Marinus	6
F	The Aztecs	4
G	The Sensorites	6
J	Planet of Giants	3
K	The Dalek Invasion of Earth	6
L	The Rescue	2
M	The Romans	4
N	The Web Planet	6
Q	The Space Museum	4
R	The Chase	6
S	The Time Meddler	4
X	The Ark	4
Z	The Gunfighters	4
BB	The War Machines	4

- The stories are also edited into compilations, with the cliffhangers between stories removed, and new title cards and closing credits created, sometimes displaying a 1984 or 1985 copyright date.

- It has been reported (refer DWB issue 43, dated May 1987) that the Hartnell to Troughton regeneration sequence from The Tenth Planet was edited onto the end of The War Machines and the start of The Dominators, although no off-air copies of such broadcasts are known to exist, which suggests it was not true.

- Some stations (such as KTCA) played a slide show with voice over introduction ahead of each episode to explain that the black and white episodes of Doctor Who starring William Hartnell were "produced in the 1960s ... and captures the vision and technology of its time"!

• CLIP: ON SCREEN INTRO TO HARTNELL EPISODES

• The latest Colin Baker stories are also syndicated by the end of the year:

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COLIN BAKER (Continued)

Six stories, equivalent of 26 half hour episodes (also in "movie length" omnibus editions):

6T	Attack of the Cybermen	4
6V	Vengeance on Varos	4
6X	The Mark of the Rani	4
6W	The Two Doctors	6
6Y	Timelash	4
6Z	Revelation of the Daleks	4

• 26 October 1985: New Jersey is also the first to screen the season 22 Colin Baker stories. These air on NJN mixed in with the new run of Hartnells and Troughtons. Other stations screen the stories from November, but most stations across the country don't air them until the new year.
• Some stations that purchase the Hartnell, Troughton, Pertwee and Colin Baker as a package deal, prefer to schedule the newer Baker stories first, followed by the other three Doctors in order.