Of the 253 episodes of "Doctor Who" that were produced in the 1960s, 108 no longer exist in the BBC Television Archives due to an archive purge in the 1970s. The most recent episode to be recovered as of 2006 is a print of the 1965 episode "The Daleks' Master Plan: Day of Armageddon", returned by a former BBC engineer in January 2004.

I have always wanted to check out this series but a 108 missing? Damn. What a travesty.

Doctor Who's not the only show that suffered

Yip, vast swathes of the Troughton era are seemingly lost.



Seems pretty wrong-headed, a lot of the 70s BBC archive purges were driven by the cost of videotape (an emerging technology) which were wiped and recycled but these were presumably 16mm films. I guess there's some chance people took them home rather than them ending up in a skip - occasionally episodes of lost classic TV series crop up in private collections.

(On a 'Who' note - The Cybermen return this evening, I'm not especially hopeful)

The archive storage area is actually a bit of a joke.

In London, the main room has a leak in the roof and water occassionally pisses through. Great!

Digitising the archives is considered too expensive, although all of the new material based in Scotland is now going to be archived to a large digital storage system as they have decided to now go "tapeless". The same will probably apply to the rest of material stored in the UK.

punch_the_lion wrote:

Of the 253 episodes of "Doctor Who" that were produced in the 1960s, 108 no longer exist in the BBC Television Archives due to an archive purge in the 1970s. The most recent episode to be recovered as of 2006 is a print of the 1965 episode "The Daleks' Master Plan: Day of Armageddon", returned by a former BBC engineer in January 2004.

I have always wanted to check out this series but a 108 missing? Damn. What a travesty.

I'm more pissed about the deletion of Not Only... But Also episodes.

With Dr Who, I think the lost episodes add to the cult appeal.

they also destroyed footage of the Albert Alyer Quintet from 1966 (which they never even broadcast), Sonny Rollins and Max Roach from the same yr and who knows what other gems, but yes truly depressing about Doctor Who episodes being lost.

About 25 years ago they had a big push to find all the "lost" episodes and I think they've recovered just about all there is to find (which was quite a bit, esp the Troughton stuff that we are lucky to have), although that Dalek's Masterplan episode was a great surprise. I really thought there were no more to be found, so there's still a chance others have fallen through the cracks. I think we now have at least audio of every Who story ever.

Shame about everything else that has been lost by the Beeb.

I'm wondering how this Cybermen thing will start out tonight. Will it be a parallel Earth or is it just Mondas and they've completely stolen all there is to steal from Marc Platt's "Spare Parts"? Am I the only nerd who has noticed how much RTD has lifted from the best stories in the audio/book ranges of The Wilderness Years?

I'll stop now.

Despite what most americans think, the BBC are actually complete cocks and not really very good at much.

The occasional wildlife documentary maybe, radio 3 sometimes, but other than that, spoon fed dross in the most part.

Rodabod wrote:Digitising the archives is considered too expensive, although all of the new material based in Scotland is now going to be archived to a large digital storage system as they have decided to now go "tapeless". The same will probably apply to the rest of material stored in the UK.

Not quite true. The 'digital library' planned for BBC Scotland will only hold about a years-worth of material. It'll probably get dumped to tape after that, though whether that's going to be digital videotape or computer tape is not yet clear. I did a month's work experience in the BBC Scotland Information and Archives dept as part of my MSc last year. The 'tapeless building', which the impending move to Pacific Quay is often talked of as, is as seen from a production point of view, all new footage will be digitised upon ingest. The archives will still be full of tapes, which will be digitised on demand. From an archivists point of view, tape provides a handy degree of standardisation. With a digital archive, finding software that will play the stored files will be the major headache in the future. The BBC as a whole does have an ongoing programme of refreshing its archives onto new media when the original media's integrity becomes threatened. At the moment, Digi-Beta is the preferred 'archival' format. When it goes, it is conceivable that the archives will be digitised to server-based storage.
I'd say that about 95% of the libraries time is spent ministering to the short-term needs of the newsroom and programme production departments. They just don't have the time or resources to function like a real archive, which would involve practices like aclimatising tape before and after use.
On a positive note, when HDTV becomes the norm the existing archive material will all look shit in comparison, and nobody will care.

dave-sidca wrote:The 'digital library' planned for BBC Scotland will only hold about a years-worth of material. It'll probably get dumped to tape after that, though whether that's going to be digital videotape or computer tape is not yet clear. I did a month's work experience in the BBC Scotland Information and Archives dept as part of my MSc last year.

Haha!

I am actually working on the Pacific Quay project just now which is in the design phase.

It's interesting to hear your opinions - was that based on the BBC or Siemens?

I've been comparing HD at the moment actually and to be honest, it's a little bit disappointing, although we'll have to see what sort of bitrates it is broadcast at...