The Web of Fear
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| Story Code: QQ / Season 5 | UK Airdate: 3 Feb to 9 Mar 1968 | Doctor: Patrick Troughton |
| 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 | Dec 68 | b/w |
| Hong Kong | Mar 70 | b/w |
| Singapore | Jul 70 | b/w |
| New Zealand | Jun 71 | b/w |
| Gibraltar | Jul 73 | b/w |
| Zambia | Nov 73 | b/w |
| Nigeria | Feb 75? | b/w |
- The Hong Kong prints were sent to Singapore almost immediately after transmission, where they were assessed on 6 May 1970 and it would appear viewed by the censor on 27 May (as indicated by hand-written text on the surviving film cans).
- Singapore subsequently sent the films to Nigeria in late 1974, from where all but episode 3 were recovered and returned to the BBC in 2013.
- The sale to Gibraltar was actually "back-catalogue", as they had already started screening Jon Pertwee stories by this time.
- The New Zealand prints were likely disposed of by the end of 1974. (The NZBC's rights to screen the story had expired on 31 March 1974.)
- The ABC in Australia returned its prints to the BBC on 4 June 1975.
- The BBC held a print of part one as early as late 1976. (This print may have been the one returned from Australia in 1975, or it may have been an unsold print that was "on the shelf".) It was in the process of being junked when it was saved from that fate in 1978 (but see COPY B below).
- See also the Troughton Junkings page.
TWO NEGATIVES
- A set of telerecordings for the episodes was made on or shortly after 4 April 1968. The ABC submitted the film prints they had acquired to the government censors on 5 June 1968, and these were viewed and assessed on 11 and 12 June 1968. So it is highly likely that the ABC's prints came from the April telerecordings. BUT:
- The two existing prints of episode 1 are from two different negatives; and despite having been bicycled several times the print recovered from Nigeria was slightly the better of the two. The other print (held by the BBC as early as 1976) had a bad scratch that had transferred from the negative. Why were there different prints, and which was the earlier of the two?
- If the "1976" one was the earliest, it may have been a "test" copy, struck to quality-check the negative, which was then rejected due to the imperfection and a second negative and print was run off; for some reason the "test" print was retained.
- If the "1976" print was made later, the first set would have gone to Australia between April and June 1968, with the 'new' telerecording struck a few years later, with those prints being sent to Hong Kong, New Zealand, Gibraltar and/or Zambia. Since the NZ print had censor edits to it and was junked in 1974, the uncut "1976" print of part 1 could only have come back from Gibraltar or Zambia.
COPY B
- As seen in the YouTube clip below, the recovered Nigeria print of part five had the words "Copy B" written onto the leader in Chinagraph. What's not known is when this notation was applied to the print: it was either at source (i.e. by the BBC) or added by one of the subsequent broadcasters.
- If the former, it might reflect that it's the second print that was struck: "Copy A" went to Australia, "Copy B" to Hong Kong, "Copy C" to New Zealand", etc.
- If the latter, it was added during its progress along the bicycling chain, but it’s not clear what it represents since none of the known broadcasters would have needed to denote it in that manner.
- One possible answer is that the ABC had two sets of prints of certain stories – Copy A and Copy B – intended for regional screenings, as had been the case with the previous batch of episodes to go to air (The Savages to The Faceless Ones). But as it turned out, the run of stories The Tomb of the Cybermen to The Wheel in Space was not scheduled to air in different regions on the same day, so the "unused" Copy B of each episode was sent to Hong Kong.
- If that is correct, then the "1976" print (see above) would certainly have been made after the two Australian prints (Copy A and Copy B) had been struck (in April 1968), which further supports that the "1976" print of episode 1 had been returned from Gibraltar or Zambia.
- But if "Copy B" was written on in Nigeria, who knows what it might signify!
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