Missing Misterio
THE MYSTERY OF THE MISSING MISTERIO
There is something amiss with sale of Dr Misterio to Central American and South American countries.
The big mystery is, did Dr Misterio actually screen in all the countries purported to have purchased the series?
BBC Records list the following Central and South American countries and when a payment was made for having the rights cleared for use of the incidental music featured in the first 23 Tom Baker stories, Robot to The Invasion of Time:
| Ecuador | by December 1978 |
| Chile | by February 1979 |
| Mexico | by February 1979 |
| Venezuela | by February 1979 |
| Brazil | by March 1979 |
| Guatemala | by March 1979 |
The February 1987 memo covered in The Eighties - THE LOST CHAPTERS records sales to the following Latin American countries:
| Chile | 23 stories |
| Costa Rica | 1 story |
| "Dominica" | 7 stories |
| Guatemala | 24 stories * |
| Honduras | 24 stories * |
| Nicaragua | 24 stories * |
[* We feel sure that 24 should be 23, as that was how many Baker stories were in the package.]
Of note, only Chile and Guatemala appear in both lists, when in fact they all should. Why are the other sales of Dr Misterio missing? Nicaragua and Costa Rica should certainly be listed in the music payments register – or is it simply that their payments hadn't been recovered at the time these records were compiled? And Mexico should be in the 1987 memo.
Airdates from 1979 have been located for Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico and Nicaragua only. Newspapers have been checked from 1978 to the mid-1980s for the other countries (with the exception of Honduras, for which only 1984 onwards have been accessed).
But Dr Misterio is missing from the others. Sure, it's possible that the series aired outside the date ranges we searched, but with 98 episodes to find, even if stripped five days a week, it is hard to believe that we couldn't find at least one listing even when viewing months at random.
The BBC records might be wrong. We don't necessarily know what the "by Month/year" data was recording. Given that Time Life handled sales to Latin America as well as North America, it is possible that the bulk sold the series to all countries that they handled distribution for in Latin America. There is no certainty that an actual sale took place. These may have all been prospective customers.
And how do the music payments actually work? A fee may have been paid in advance – and were recorded in the music payments register. But the sale of the series might not have been completed and gone ahead. The fee would have been refunded.
Is there any significance in the fact that Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica all lie in a belt in very close proximity to one another? These countries would have been able to receive television transmissions from their neighbours. Even if a country did not buy the series for broadcast, was rights clearance payment payable on account of cross-border transmissions? Guatemala and Honduras lie between Mexico and Nicaragua, two countries for which airdates have been located.
BBC records are known to be incomplete / inaccurate / out of context, so sure we may be completely overlooking the obvious here! But there is still a mystery here...
- The BBC records are wrong / inaccurate / incomplete / being taken out of context
- For those countries where no airdates have been found, the sales were never finalised, ad the music payment was refunded
- Although some countries did not buy the series, they had to pay simply for the fact that their neighbours did
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