The Gunfighters
From BroaDWcast
Revision as of 02:28, 8 April 2012 by Jon Preddle (talk | contribs)
| Story Code: Z / Season 3 | UK Airdate: 30 Apr to 21 May 1966 | Doctor: William Hartnell |
| First airings by location | UK Repeats / Foreign Cable and Satellite | Previous Story / Next Story |
This story aired in the following countries. They are listed in chronological order according to known airdate. (Refer also to Selling Doctor Who for expanded airdates.)
| Australia | Jan 67 | b/w |
| Barbados | Apr 68 | b/w |
| Zambia | Jul 68 | b/w |
| Sierra Leone | Mar 71 | b/w |
| Singapore | Mar 73 | b/w |
- The sale to Singapore was actually "back-catalogue", as they had already started screening Jon Pertwee stories by this time. Singapore had received its prints for all the other season 3 stories from New Zealand, but where did its copy of The Gunfighters come from? If the NZBC didn't have a copy (see below...) did the BBC provide another set?
- The prints held by Sierra Leone were likely destroyed when the TV station was bombed during the 1991-2001 civil war.
- The Gunfighters was the only serial of this batch that was not purchased by New Zealand. Although the prints were not entered into the NZBC's film register, and there is no record of the serial being assessed by the censors, it is (albeit remotely) possible that the films were received, but that the serial was rejected at an earlier stage in the process, and never got as far as being entered into the film register. (Was it rejected by the programme purchasers because it didn't meet their quality control guidelines? Was it the song?)
- The fact that the BBC retained its negatives of this story (and The Ark) but not of any other season 3 stories is very odd.
- CONSPIRACY THEORY: Did the timing of this late sale to Singapore have anything to do with the retention of the negatives? The BBC probably still retained all the negatives of season 3 but were planning to junk them when the sale of the back half of the season came from Singapore by the end of 1971. When New Zealand confirmed they could supply prints of the majority of the serials, but not of the western, the BBC went ahead with junking the negatives, but kept The Gunfighters (and The Ark?) in order to make prints for Singapore. They simply never got round to junking the negatives afterwards, and these were still held by 1978.
Reissue
- The serial was reissued by the BBC in late 1985, and sold to:
| United States | from Sep 85 | b/w |
| Canada | 1990s | b/w |
| New Zealand | Aug 00 | b/w |
- For this reissue, the cliffhanger lead-in to The Savages was removed.
