Chile
CHILE is on the west coast of the South American continent.
Profile
| Country Number (30) | 1969 | FIRST and SECOND WAVE |
| Region | South America | |
| Television commenced | 1957 | |
| Colour System | 1972 | NTSC |
| Population | 1969 | 8.5 million |
| TV Sets | 1969 | 40,500 |
| Population | 1980 | 10.65 million |
| TV Sets | 1980 | 1.225 million |
| Language/s | Spanish | Dubbed |
Television Stations / Channels
Chile began its television service in 1957. In 1969, the country had two national broadcasters. In 1979, there were five.
Doctor Who aired on Universidad Católica de Chile, Canals 13, 8 and 5. It later also aired on Red del Norte (aka Telenorte), via microwave link-up with Canal 13.
Colour transmissions began in Chile in 1972 using the NTSC broadcast system.
A short run of subtitled Tom Baker stories was available on the satellite station Uniseries in early 2002.
Language/s
The principal language of Chile is Spanish.
DOCTOR WHO / EL DOCTOR MISTERIO IN CHILE
Chile was the 30th country to screen "El Doctor Misterio", and second in South America. It was the third and last to broadcast the series in Spanish during the 1960s (see Selling Doctor Who).
BBC Records
Chile is named in the list of 27 countries in The Making of Doctor Who (1972 Piccolo edition).
A December 1973 memo records sales to "Chile – Channels 8 and 13".
Chile is not listed in The Seventies, or The Handbook.
The Eighties - THE LOST CHAPTERS records a sale of "(23)" stories (by 10 February 1987).
In DWM, Chile is identified in 28 story Archives: K, L, N, Q and R for Hartnell, and all 23 stories from 4A to 4Z for Tom Baker.
Stories bought and broadcast
WILLIAM HARTNELL
Twelve stories, 56 episodes:
| 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 |
| N | The Web Planet | 6 |
| Q | The Space Museum | 4 |
| R | The Chase | 6 |
Chile therefore bought the standard package of GROUP A, B, C and D of the William Hartnell stories dubbed into Spanish.
The programme was supplied as 16mm black and white film prints with Spanish soundtracks.
Origin of the Prints?
Mexico and Venezuela were the previous two Spanish-speaking countries to screen the Hartnell episodes in the late 1960s. Mexico had retained its set of prints, so Chile may have received its set directly from Venezuela or acquired a fresh set from the BBC.
TOM BAKER
23 stories, (the equivalent of) 98 episodes, although the stories did not air in the correct order.
| 4A | Robot | 4 |
| 4B | The Sontaran Experiment | 2 |
| 4C | The Ark in Space | 4 |
| 4D | Revenge of the Cybermen | 4 |
| 4E | Genesis of the Daleks | 6 |
| 4F | Terror of the Zygons | 4 |
| 4G | Pyramids of Mars | 4 |
| 4H | Planet of Evil | 4 |
| 4J | The Android Invasion | 4 |
| 4K | The Brain of Morbius | 4 |
| 4L | The Seeds of Doom | 6 |
| 4M | The Masque of Mandragora | 4 |
| 4N | The Hand of Fear | 4 |
| 4P | The Deadly Assassin | 4 |
| 4Q | The Face of Evil | 4 |
| 4R | The Robots of Death | 4 |
| 4S | The Talons of Weng-Chiang | 6 |
| 4V | Horror of Fang Rock | 4 |
| 4T | The Invisible Enemy | 4 |
| 4X | Image of the Fendahl | 4 |
| 4W | The Sun Makers | 4 |
| 4Y | Underworld | 4 |
| 4Z | The Invasion of Time | 6 |
Chile therefore bought the standard package of Tom Baker stories that was packaged for the North, Central and South American markets by Time-Life Television.
The programme was supplied as NTSC colour video tapes with Spanish soundtracks.
Curiously, some of the Chilean episode titles differ from those used in Mexico - see the Spanish page for a list of the different translations.
Mexico was five days ahead of Chile in screening the Tom Baker episodes.
Transmission
WILLIAM HARTNELL
SANTIAGO (Canal 13)
The series started on Sunday, 5 January 1969, at 5.30pm on channel 13 in Santiago. During March and April, the starting time jumped around a bit – from 5.30pm, 5.43pm, 6.30pm, 5.50pm – until it stabilised as 6.00pm from 27 April.
From 19 October the start moved to the much earlier time of 1.35, 1.15, 1.30 or 1.00pm.
There were no episodes on four of the weeks during the run, which ended on 15 March 1970. There was a two week gap in June 1969, which - if our episode allocation is correct – is midway through The Aztecs. (There is, of course, no absolute certainty that the serials screened in strict story order. For instance, in Mexico, each serial aired in a seemingly random order...)
59 airdates have been identified for 56 available episodes, which suggests that at least three episodes were pre-empted during the 14 month run.
A SALE OF TWO CHILES??
BBC Records have two separate sales of the same twelve stories recorded for Chile: the twelve stories were first "sold" by 22 October 1968, and again by 27 May 1969. The second sales date certainly corresponds with the 5 January 1969 to 15 March 1970 Santiago screenings, but one can see, at a stretch, how the first sales date could also apply to those airdates, if the rights were paid for in advance of screening, and there was a delay in the delivery of the films.
There was certainly no other airdates on Canal 13 found before or after the ones noted. But since there were regional screenings of the Tom Baker stories, on Santiago's Canal 13 and again on Canal 5 in Concepción, it is entirely possible that the Hartnells also had regional screenings, with each of the two recorded sales being for one of the regions – i.e. Universidad Católica bought the rights for just one screening in one region, then decided later to purchase a second set of rights for another region.
However, we did check Concepción newspapers for 1968 to 1972, but could not find any additional listings for "Doctor Misterio". Did the series instead screen from another major city in Chile?
Interestingly, the "second" sale to Chile is dated the same as the "Cancelled" sale to Dominican Republic: 27 May 1969. This can't be a coincidence. What may have happened was Chile and Dominican Republic both purchased the series at roughly the same time, and as such the regional fees payable were scaled accordingly, with the second purchaser paying a slightly lower rate than the first purchaser. But when Dominican Republic cancelled its purchase, Chile had to pay the full cost, and the second of the two "sales" is simply Chile's payment of the "cancelled" balance.
Alternatively, since the same set of episodes aired in Costa Rica from June 1971, a country that is not named in the records, the "second" sale recorded as "Chile" might actually be for "Costa Rica", but it's a bit hard to accept that this wasn't noticed at the time!
A second alternative is that Chile "sold" its unaired "second" sale to Costa Rica...
Fate of the Prints?
The prints were probably bicycled to Costa Rica, where they aired from June 1971. (It's possible the films went to Dominican Republic first, but were sent on to Costa Rica unaired after the sale to that country had been "cancelled".)
TOM BAKER
The Tom Baker episodes aired on a regional basis – we have airdates for the Santiago (Channel 13) and Concepción (Channel 5) runs. (There may have been others across the country.)
SANTIAGO (Canal 13)
A run of 24 colour episodes commenced on Wednesday, 9 May 1979 (only five days after the Baker episodes debuted in Mexico), airing episodically, week days at 5.45pm, without interruption, ending on 11 June 1979.
Six stories aired, of which only five can be identified:
- unknown 4 parter
- El Planeta del Mal
- La Venganza de los Hombres Metalicos
- Robot
- El Experimento de Sontaran
- Las Semillas de la Ruina
Six months later, on Sunday, 6 January 1980, the series returned (at 3.00pm), now playing in the omnibus "movie" format rather than episodically. Again, the stories did not air in the correct story order. There were 27 weeks uninterrupted, but only 23 stories to account for. The run ended on 20 July 1980.
The billings do suggests that The Ark in Space, Pyramids of Mars, The Brain of Morbius, The Hand of Fear and The Face of Evil were repeated, which actually accounts for five "extra" episodes!
A third run of Tom Baker stories, now playing episodically -- and again with each serial playing in a completely random order -- commenced on Canal 13, on Tuesday, 10 February 1981, airing weekdays at 11.50am, as part of children's programming under the banner "FESTIVAL INFANTIL", which ran from 11.50am to 1.10pm. "El Doctor Misterio" was one of several programmes, the others mostly cartoons, that aired during that 80 minute timeslot.
The first serial is identified in El Mercurio as The Invasion of Time, but five days later, The Android Invasion is billed for the next four dates, which means either the series started two days earlier without being billed in the newspaper, for two of the dates two episodes of The Invasion of Time aired back to back, or that particular 6-parter was actually replaced by a 4-parter.
(According to this online schedule for 20 February 1981, the episode that day was from The Android Invasion, but the print listing in El Mercurio did not agree.
Of note, that same online resource has a second listing for "Doctor Misterio", from 1.30pm to 2pm, on a regional channel called Red del Norte, which, until 1988, also rebroadcast live from Santiago's Canal 13 via microwave; it's possible that this was a delayed repeat of the same episode that aired on Canal 13 a few hours earlier.) (Further history of Telenorte can be read here.)
The next three serials were named in the papers, but between 2 March and 6 March there must have been at least one pre-emption, or a 6-parter played and the first billing for Planet of Evil on 9 March is wrong.
From Monday, 9 March 1981, "FESTIVAL INFANTIL" was reduced from 80 minutes to just 60 minutes, screening from 12 noon until 1pm.
From 13 March there was a 28 episode run without any published story titles. Assuming there were no pre-emptions (there were no listings available for Good Friday), this block was made up of seven 4-parters, or four 4-parters and two 6-parters.
The next three serials are identified by one single listing each in the paper. The run concluded with a final un-named 4-parter, with the last episode on Friday, 15 May 1981.
Depending on the mixture of 4-parters and 6-parters during the untitled 28 dates, this 1981 run was made up of either 16 or 17 serials, which means six or seven serials did not air at all.
It's possible there was a further run later in 1981 or in 1982 that included the "missing" serials; but so far we have yet to find further listings.
It's worth noting that Time-Life lost its Latin American distribution rights to Doctor Who in April 1981 (see United States--1981 for more on this). Was this mid-1981 repeat run a "last gasp" by Canal 13 to use up those rights before they expired, but not all serials could be aired in time?
CONCEPCIÓN (Canal 5)
A week after the 1979 Santiago run started, Canal 5 in Concepción commenced episodic screenings on weekdays from Monday, 14 May 1979. The start times were all over the place, with 5.47, 5.52, 5.42pm, etc, listed.
If the Preview in the 11 May 1979 paper is accurate, the first serial appears to have been Genesis of the Daleks rather than Planet of Evil, which suggests Canal 5 might have played the stories in a different order to those on Canal 13 – and therefore suggests there may have been two sets of tapes in use by the two channels, rather than one being shared by both.
The run concluded on Friday, 15 June 1979, which covered 25 episodes, one more than Canal 13 had. There were some dates for which the billings did not include a listing for the series; only 20 listings clearly identify the series as being on. Since Canal 13 in Santiago had aired 24 episodes, it is likely that Canal 5 aired the same.
The series returned to Canal 5 six months later, on Sunday, 13 January 1980, a week after the Canal 13 screenings; these were the same omnibus editions.
Comparing the two separate runs, it appears that – with just the one clear exception (Underworld vs The Robots of Death in March) - the same story order was adopted by both channels. It's therefore possible to extrapolate what aired on the dates in which no story title is given for each station.
Once again Concepción has one more airdate than Santiago; so was there a pre-emption, or is the lack of TV listings on 24 January significant? Or was the billing on 20 June a printing error, and the run actually ended on 13 June with The Sun Makers as had been the case for Canal 13?
Since there was a run of episodes in 1981 on Santiago's Canal 13 (see above), it's possible there was also a further run on Canal 5 to use up the rights, but we did not find (yet) any newspapers for that region that covered that period of dates.
As noted above, a short run of Tom Baker stories - subtitled rather than dubbed - was available on the satellite station Uniseries during 2002.
PAUL McGANN
The 1996 TV Movie was available via the HBO OLE cable station in 1999.
TV listings
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← AIRDATES ...... (CLICK ICON TO GO TO TABLE SHOWING EPISODE BREAKDOWN AND AIRDATES - N/S = story title is Not Stated) |
1960s
TV listings have been obtained from the newspaper El Mercurio and La Nación from Santiago.
Listings give the title as "El Dr Misterio", "Doctor Misterio" or just "Dr Misterio".
The 5 January 1969 billing said it was a "nueva serie ciencia ficción" ("a new science fiction series"). Only three episodes of the entire run were identified by title, and these were the same titles that were used in Mexico. There were also brief plot synopses given for these, and intriguingly, these name the lead character as "Dr Who"!
A printing error gave the full title of part two of The Daleks as "La Selva del Terror: Los Sobrevivientes", the first four words of which were actually the title of part three of An Unearthly Child!
1979-1980
SANTIAGO
A preview feature in the 9 May 1979 issue of El Mercurio - "¡CUIDADO, MONSTRUOS, VIENE EL DOCTOR MISTERIO!" (Lookout! Monsters from Dr Who!") - was illustrated with a photo of the Anti-man from Planet of Evil. The article makes no mention of the fact that "Dr Misterio" had previously screened on channel 13 in the 1960s.
The first three episodes in this run are not titled, but the next five (!) are labelled "El Planeta del Mal"' (Planet of Evil); presumably the first story was actually a different four parter.
The next five are identified as "La Venganza de los Hombres Metalicos" (Revenge of the Cybermen), the first of which was most likely part four of Planet of Evil. A further error crops up on the 4 June episode, which should have been part one of The Seeds of Doom rather than The Sontaran Experiment.
For the omnibus editions starting from January 1980, the first was previewed with a statement that the series starred Tom Baker and Liz Shaw (!), and that the stories were based on the books written by Terrance Dicks!
Only thirteen of the adventures are identified by a title. The Brain of Morbius is listed twice - for 16 March and 22 June. There are also two listings for The Ark in Space; presumably these were repeats?
The story we know as Underworld is called "Bajo Mundo", whereas in Mexico it was "El Mundo Subterraneo". Revenge of the Cybermen is "La Venganza del los Hombres Metalicos", but in Mexico it was "La Venganza del Hombre Cibernetico" (which is in the singular). "La Cara del Mal" (The Face of Evil) was "La Cara del Demonio" in Mexico.
There are a few typographical errors in the listings: "Las Garras de Yeng-Chiang" is more likely to be the same as the Mexican title "Las Garras de Weng-Chiang", "los Alesios" is probably a misspelling of "los Dalekios". "Los Summakers" seems to be a misprint of the English title.
For the 1981 run, the listings generally used the title "El doctor Misterio". There were a few variations of the previously-used story titles, with the unusual spelling for "El experimentado de Sontanaran"; "Invisible enemigo" instead of the more grammatically correct "Enemigo Invisible"; and "El Mundo Subterraneo" rather than the previously used "Bajo Mundo".
CONCEPCION
TV listings have been obtained from the newspaper El Sur.
TV billings gave the title as "El Dr Misterio", "El Doctor Misterio" or just "Dr Misterio". Some of the listings name the lead actor as "Tom Baxter" or "Bazer"!
The 11 May 1979 issue had a preview feature; this gave the title of the opening story as "La Genesis de los Dalecios" (which is probably a typo of Dalekios, as is used elsewhere). However given that Planet of Evil opened the run on Canal 13, it's possible Canal 5 duplicated the same story order instead.
For the 1979 run, only one other story title was printed – "Semilla de Maldad", which is slightly different to the title that was used in Santiago and in Mexico.
For the 1980 run, the paper presented a unique title for the fourth Doctor's first serial: "Muerte de un Robot" (Death of a Robot), and from time to time they also printed the (or slight variations of) English titles: El Sur identifies The Invisible Enemy, The Robots of Death, The Face of Evil and Horror at Fang Rock in English.
