BBC Unveils Newly Discovered Dr.Who Episodes 184
BigBadBus writes "Putting an end to months of speculation, the BBC announced at a press conference today that it had recovered 9 previously lost episodes of Dr.Who, from the Patrick Troughton era (1966-69). The episodes complete 'The Enemy of the World' and almost complete 'The Web of Fear' (leaving one episode outstanding). The episodes were found in a relay station in Nigeria by Phillip Morris; previously Nigeria had been checked and had returned 6 lost episodes in 1984. The episodes are now available from UK and US iTune stores and can be for pre-ordered from Amazon.co.uk"
The public paid for them, the BBC threw them away (Score:4, Interesting)
and now they want to charge for them. Making them available via Bittorrent would be the moral choice.
Re:The public paid for them, the BBC threw them aw (Score:5, Insightful)
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Having "lost" the episodes turns out to be lucrative for them, perhaps...... if they ever find them, they can make a killing selling them for $$$
You think a person having taped the episode, will have a high enough quality rendition for them to use? I doubt it.
Re:The public paid for them, the BBC threw them aw (Score:5, Insightful)
Any quality is better than no quality.
Re:The public paid for them, the BBC threw them aw (Score:5, Informative)
They've done a lot of work on previous DVD releases repairing and restoring from multiple sources. One series was reconstructed using a B&W film copy for the detail with the colour from a betamax home recording. End result was pretty good.
Re:The public paid for them, the BBC threw them aw (Score:5, Informative)
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You think a person having taped the episode, will have a high enough quality rendition for them to use? I doubt it.
I've seen some of the other 'found' episodes and the quality is quite bad, yes.
Real fans only...
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I highly doubt they would be prosecuted just for coming forward. Going after someone for taping a show for their own use would be massively bad PR. If they started selling copies I'm pretty sure the BBCs lawyers would be onto them very quickly.
Not sure what would happen if they put it on bittorrent or similar.
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I'm not 100% sure of how it works in Britain, but I think the way it works is that there is a tax/fee on recording media that then gets passed to an organization that dishes out the money to copyright holders based on a measure of popularity. If you bought a blank VHS tape you have already payed for the right to make copies of any video content that you have obtained legally. The terms of use for those copies are pretty strict, but they are legal.
If a person made a private copy of a BBC program and then sha
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I'm not 100% sure of how it works in Britain, but I think the way it works is that there is a tax/fee on recording media that then gets passed to an organization that dishes out the money to copyright holders based on a measure of popularity. If you bought a blank VHS tape you have already payed for the right to make copies of any video content that you have obtained legally. The terms of use for those copies are pretty strict, but they are legal.
We don't have a special tax on recording media in the UK, a
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... but the copyright for the work in question will expire in 3-6 years.
[ROLF] Bwahahaha! Tee hee hee! Oh! My spleen! Hahaha! Copyright will expire. Oh, that's priceless... Hahaha.
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Suppose a person taped that missing episode at that time for themselves. Would they get a share of the profit they make for archiving their stuff for 50 years or would they be prosecuted for theft if they came forward? Copyright is very strange. I suppose it depends on the local laws. It seems there is a statute I recall from grade school called "Finders keepers, losers weepers".
The US Supreme Court weighed in on this in the case of "Keepers vs Weepers". Justice Scalia penned a fierce dissent against the Supreme Court's 8-1 decision in favor of "Weepers", on the basis of the "I gots mine" theory and insisting that the principle of "screw the rest of you's" overrode all other laws.
Grade school law. (Score:2)
It seems there is a statute I recall from grade school called "Finders keepers, losers weepers".
I find this perfectly typical of what passes for legal reasoning on Slashdot.
I suppose it's worth adding that the expiration of copyright does not give you ownership or access to primary sources. It does not fund conservation or your digital restoration project. It does not fund distribution.
Re:The public paid for them, the BBC threw them aw (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:The public paid for them, the BBC threw them aw (Score:5, Insightful)
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BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the BBC is selling them. Their profits, believe or not, go right back in to the BBC! Why don't we just start giving away DVD's of the Top Gear while we are at too?
https://thepiratebay.sx/search/top%20gear/0/99/205 [thepiratebay.sx]
Individual episodes, easily converted to DVD for ya, for free.
This is the internet, if it can be digitized, you can find it for free generally.
Re:The public paid for them, the BBC threw them aw (Score:4, Insightful)
I think, by the end of the day, they WILL be available on bit torrent. So I wouldn't worry.
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and now they want to charge for them. Making them available via Bittorrent would be the moral choice.
They will be, give it a couple of days.
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At the time it was normal not to save TV shows. There was no home video market then, and for a long time not even really 'reruns'.
I'd bet that if you had some sort of time traveling box and went back to talk to people paying their TV tax then, they'd complain that the BBC would be wasting their money on all the storage of a TV show for no reason. Then you would have to fight some sort of robot men. At least I'm pretty sure how that would go.
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Oh, don't worry, they'll just extend the copyright term as they did for Mickey or Beatles. I mean there is still money to be made.
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If I recall correctly from the previous Dr. Who story on here, the episodes fall to the public domain 50 years after their production (so 2016-2019 for these episodes). So BBC is capitalizing on the last few years when they can make money off these. Yes, I'm disappointed too but not the least bit shocked.
http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/13/10/03/2232213/first-few-doctor-who-episodes-may-fall-to-public-domain-next-year?sdsrc=popbyskid
Are they releasing the lost episodes verbatim, or is some remastering involved? And if they are remastered, does that constitute a new original copyrightable work?
Re:The public paid for them, the BBC threw them aw (Score:4, Informative)
if they add something to it then yes.
The broadcasted version(or rather copy of the broadcasting) is the one that goes out of copyright.
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If I recall correctly from the previous Dr. Who story on here, the episodes fall to the public domain 50 years after their production (so 2016-2019 for these episodes). So BBC is capitalizing on the last few years when they can make money off these. Yes, I'm disappointed too but not the least bit shocked.
http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/13/10/03/2232213/first-few-doctor-who-episodes-may-fall-to-public-domain-next-year?sdsrc=popbyskid
Are they releasing the lost episodes verbatim, or is some remastering involved? And if they are remastered, does that constitute a new original copyrightable work?
According to the BBC facebook page, they are remastered. The trailer looks pretty good.
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You seem confused on the real intent of "the purge". It had nothing to do with freeing up space or reusing media or anything of the sort.
Didn't you ever wonder why the BBC archives have such a bizarre patchwork of content missing? Not entire years, or seasons, or shows, but just completely random, with concentrations in a few years/seasons/series, but even then not consistent.
The BBC purge had mo
OMG OMG OMG!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh my goodness I'm freaking out and waving my hands like a schoolgirl right now.
But seriously, the Web of Fear is one of my favorite classic Doctor Who episodes, despite the fact that the only available version is almost entirely an audio reconstruction with still-photograph accompaniment. Notably, this episode is where the much beloved stiff-upper-lip character Lethbridge-Stewart is first introduced. He is of course instantly recognizable even as part of an audio-only soundtrack.
As much as I enjoyed the 3rd (Jon Pertwee) and 4th (Tom Baker) Doctors, like everyone else, I'd go so far as to say that many of the 1st (William Hartnell) and 2nd (Patrick Troughton) Doctors' episodes were some of the most interesting and entertaining of the entire series, just as many of the most original and memorable episodes of Star Trek and TNG came during their first and second seasons. The more I watch the older episodes of Doctor Who the more I appreciate what they accomplished, especially in the context of the fact that the series started out in 1963 in seriously grainy black and white as basically a televised live-action play. So finding more old episodes is a big thing for me. I love 'em.
I'm also one of those weirdos who thinks the most recent few seasons of the show are boot-licking, Doctor-worshiping, ultra-melodramatic, vomit-inducing crap that caused Doctor Who to go from one of my favorite shows of all time to something I cannot physically stomach watching anymore. But I digress.
Hooray for more classic Doctor Who!
Re:OMG OMG OMG!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh my goodness I'm freaking out and waving my hands like a schoolgirl right now.
But seriously, the Web of Fear is one of my favorite classic Doctor Who episodes, despite the fact that the only available version is almost entirely an audio reconstruction with still-photograph accompaniment. Notably, this episode is where the much beloved stiff-upper-lip character Lethbridge-Stewart is first introduced. He is of course instantly recognizable even as part of an audio-only soundtrack.
As much as I enjoyed the 3rd (Jon Pertwee) and 4th (Tom Baker) Doctors, like everyone else, I'd go so far as to say that many of the 1st (William Hartnell) and 2nd (Patrick Troughton) Doctors' episodes were some of the most interesting and entertaining of the entire series, just as many of the most original and memorable episodes of Star Trek and TNG came during their first and second seasons. The more I watch the older episodes of Doctor Who the more I appreciate what they accomplished, especially in the context of the fact that the series started out in 1963 in seriously grainy black and white as basically a televised live-action play. So finding more old episodes is a big thing for me. I love 'em.
I'm also one of those weirdos who thinks the most recent few seasons of the show are boot-licking, Doctor-worshiping, ultra-melodramatic, vomit-inducing crap that caused Doctor Who to go from one of my favorite shows of all time to something I cannot physically stomach watching anymore. But I digress.
Hooray for more classic Doctor Who!
They started playing Doctor Who from the start here (Australia) a while back, and I really enjoyed it. One episode was entirely set in the tardis where the tardis seemed jammed and was trying to tell them something and they had to figure out what it was. And the hand to hand combat fighting was absolutely awful. And the Dalek's spaceship wobbled on the string it was suspended on. Awesome stuff :) Unfortunately The timeslot ended up conflicting with meal times and hungry kids aren't compatible with TV watching, so i gave up watching it. This was before I had a PVR or anything.
Re:OMG OMG OMG!!! (Score:4, Funny)
One episode was entirely set in the tardis where the tardis seemed jammed and was trying to tell them something and they had to figure out what it was. And the hand to hand combat fighting was absolutely awful. And the Dalek's spaceship wobbled on the string it was suspended on. Awesome stuff :)
Don't forget the time they filmed a gecko and claimed it was a crocodile.
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But at least The Doctor saved a few quid on his TARDIS insurance.
C'mon, that was funny!
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Or the green bubble wrap that was suppose to be a transmorphism into an alien host.
http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130529205252/the-league-of-utter-disaster-chaos-and-insanity/images/d/d3/Bubblewrapmonster.jpg [nocookie.net]
captcha: exploits
Hey, don't knock the bubble wrap. The Ark in Space was one of the best episodes they ever made! Epic as usual.
Funny how many classic Doctor Who episodes I would class as "favorite" or "best". I had the same thing happen when I first discovered the show just a few years ago. The BBC was showing a marathon of Eccleston and Tennant episodes. Every episode was so good I thought they were just showing highlight episodes or "fan favorites". I was severely disappointed when I went online to look for more episodes
Re:OMG OMG OMG!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
They started playing Doctor Who from the start here (Australia) a while back, and I really enjoyed it. One episode was entirely set in the tardis where the tardis seemed jammed and was trying to tell them something and they had to figure out what it was. And the hand to hand combat fighting was absolutely awful. And the Dalek's spaceship wobbled on the string it was suspended on. Awesome stuff :) Unfortunately The timeslot ended up conflicting with meal times and hungry kids aren't compatible with TV watching, so i gave up watching it. This was before I had a PVR or anything.
Sounds like "Edge of Destruction", the third episode. A short two-parter, but great. Fortunately you can find all the existing classic episodes and reconstructions on torrent sites these days.
Every time I restart the series from the beginning I'm always amazed that the Daleks are introduced already in the seven-part second episode (The Mutants). One of the greatest things about the old stuff is that it was more of a serial format, where if they needed seven, eight or nine 23-minute parts to tell the complete story then that is how many parts were made to tell that story. Which resulted in quite a few "episodes" of classic Doctor Who that are really more like awesomely epic multi-threaded 2-hour and 3-hour movies. The modern "wrap it up in a single 41 minute episode or leave a cliffhanger for next season" seems incredibly lame and creatively limiting by comparison.
I wish somebody today had the balls to start some new shows using the old serial formats and the same kind of shoestring budget special effects they used to use. If they had decent actors and compelling stories it would be an absolute gold mine.
Re:OMG OMG OMG!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:OMG OMG OMG!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
And they din't use the sonic screwdriver as a deux es machina to get out of any tricky situation, rather than the Doctor using his intelligence and wits. Today, the screwdriver is a euphemism for lazy, sloppy writing. No wonder John Nathan-Turner got rid of it in 1982!
Indeed a good point. If I remember right it wasn't even introduced until episode 42 (Fury From the Deep) and used quite sparingly for the most part. Of course, since the Doctor has now transformed into Magical Space Jesus, he doesn't even need his now ridiculously powerful and versatile sonic screwdriver to work miracles. He can just stand up on a rooftop or a rock and tell a whole alien battle fleet to run away, and instead of him being immediately reduced to a pile of smoking ashes the powerful aliens actually run away! Isn't that great?
Aaaaand that pretty much sums up why I can no longer watch any new Doctor Who. Or Bond films, for that matter. Same phenomenon. So many things these days have become caricatures of themselves with no substance beneath the immaculate surface.
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And they din't use the sonic screwdriver as a deux es machina to get out of any tricky situation, rather than the Doctor using his intelligence and wits. Today, the screwdriver is a euphemism for lazy, sloppy writing. No wonder John Nathan-Turner got rid of it in 1982!
Indeed a good point. If I remember right it wasn't even introduced until episode 42 (Fury From the Deep) and used quite sparingly for the most part. Of course, since the Doctor has now transformed into Magical Space Jesus, he doesn't even need his now ridiculously powerful and versatile sonic screwdriver to work miracles. He can just stand up on a rooftop or a rock and tell a whole alien battle fleet to run away, and instead of him being immediately reduced to a pile of smoking ashes the powerful aliens actually run away! Isn't that great?
Aaaaand that pretty much sums up why I can no longer watch any new Doctor Who. Or Bond films, for that matter. Same phenomenon. So many things these days have become caricatures of themselves with no substance beneath the immaculate surface.
While I can basically agree about what you are saying, I think you are missing out on the new bond films. Danial Craig is a more realistic James Bond then any ever before and the movies seem to capture a more truer essense of what it would be like spying, then the bond movies with cheese galore before him.
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He can just stand up on a rooftop or a rock and tell a whole alien battle fleet to run away, and instead of him being immediately reduced to a pile of smoking ashes the powerful aliens actually run away!
In that particular instance, the alien battle fleet ran away as part of their ruse. The Doctor's arrogance was used against him.
There are a lot of complaints you can level at new NuWho, particularly deus ex machina resolutions, but the writing is a tad more sophisticated than you seem to think.
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And they din't use the sonic screwdriver as a deux es machina to get out of any tricky situation, rather than the Doctor using his intelligence and wits. Today, the screwdriver is a euphemism for lazy, sloppy writing. No wonder John Nathan-Turner got rid of it in 1982!
Fuck John Nathan Turner and everything he did on Doctor Who. His tenure is directly responsible for the decline in viewers, immature sappy idiotic plot lines, and the eventual cancellation of the show. He took it from it's top rating during Tom Baker and trashed it with his arrogance. Talk about someone not listening to the fans. It was only that very last McCoy season when Turner had already abandoned the show that things started getting back on track, but by then it was too late.
Turner's sins:
- Replac
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Re:OMG OMG OMG!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
They turned him into a trickster God. A bit different from what came before and what you want perhaps but I quite like a lot of the stories of the Doctor as a trickster God.
Re:OMG OMG OMG!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
They turned him into a trickster God. A bit different from what came before and what you want perhaps but I quite like a lot of the stories of the Doctor as a trickster God.
Yeah, that pretty much sums it up in one sentence. They turned a fun sci-fi show that happened to mainly star a quirky character called the Doctor who likes to travel to strange places and get himself into trouble and solve mysteries into a show that is almost entirely _about_ the Doctor, and changed the character so drastically he might as well be called Magical Space Jesus. You can practically see the stars in the eyes of every other character who looks at him or talks about him, as if he's the love child of Rassilon and Yahweh. Blech.
I'm glad there are lots of people who are enjoying the new show but as far as I'm concerned it is no longer Doctor Who and the character bears little resemblance to what the Doctor was as a character for the ~45 years prior to the Matt Smith seasons. It was a sad day when I realized that I just couldn't handle watching my favorite show anymore. I'll probably never find a true replacement either. Doctor Who has been quite a unique show from the very beginning.
Of course I am also one of those who hold the remarkably unpopular opinion that Man of Steel was a silly abomination directed by someone who is apparently incapable of comprehending what the Superman archetype is even supposed to represent, and that the new Star Trek films are dramatic but hollow imitations of things that already exist, but again I digress. Oh, look, explosions and lens flares 'n stuff!
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You forgot to say, "get off my lawn." :-) But I agree with you. I wish the entertainment industry would make new characters and franchises when they want something "fresh" and "edgy", instead of re-branding and re-purposing a perfectly good existing franchise into something completely different.
The funny part is that I have at least a couple decades to go before I should have even _started_ to become an old fogey who hates everything new. So there is either suddenly something seriously wrong with me after a couple of decades of enjoying absolutely everything, including some of the most awful sci-fi and fantasy imaginable, purely because it's sci-fi and fantasy, or there is something drastically wrong with the way this new stuff is being written.
Since I have no problem enjoying (and re-enjoying) ne
Re:OMG OMG OMG!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:OMG OMG OMG!!! (Score:4, Funny)
The Cylons may have had a plan, but the writers were making it all up the night before filming.
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What about the first few seasons of the rebooted BSG? That was undoubtably an improvement on the original, took a vacuous but fun space opera into new territory as a dark and edgy SF psychodrama. "33" was one of the most sublime SF TV experiences that I've had in my life. Such a pity they ruined it towards the end... actually, that's unfair. They didn't ruin it, but it did drop dramatically in quallity.
You probably meant this for SirGarlon, but as for me I really couldn't get into the new BSG. Not necessarily because it was poorly written but because of the endless, unrelenting "edgy" ultra-melodrama. It just burnt me out after a few episodes, after I realized it was going to be like that for the whole series. That's one of the aspects of the new Doctor Who that I couldn't stand. When shows go super edgy and dramatic at the cost of everything else it's just not fun anymore. It becomes incredibly monotonou
Nope, very fair! (Score:3)
The new BSG was probably the single best sci-fi series I've watched in the last couple decades. But wow ... what an *awful* way to close it out!
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They turned him into a trickster God. A bit different from what came before and what you want perhaps but I quite like a lot of the stories of the Doctor as a trickster God.
Yeah, that pretty much sums it up in one sentence. They turned a fun sci-fi show that happened to mainly star a quirky character called the Doctor who likes to travel to strange places and get himself into trouble and solve mysteries into a show that is almost entirely _about_ the Doctor, and changed the character so drastically he might as well be called Magical Space Jesus. You can practically see the stars in the eyes of every other character who looks at him or talks about him, as if he's the love child of Rassilon and Yahweh. Blech.
I'm glad there are lots of people who are enjoying the new show but as far as I'm concerned it is no longer Doctor Who and the character bears little resemblance to what the Doctor was as a character for the ~45 years prior to the Matt Smith seasons.
Honestly I felt like this was by far worse near the end of David Tennant's reign. While the story was that he was starting to (mistakenly) buy into his own greatness, he should never have been able to do half the stuff he did in the first place. Snap his fingers to close the door to the tardis? The trickster god indeed. To me it seems like Matt Smith's doctor relies too much on the sonic screwdriver and seems to be able to intiimidate his opponents way too easily, but David Tennant in my mind is more th
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Honestly I felt like this was by far worse near the end of David Tennant's reign. While the story was that he was starting to (mistakenly) buy into his own greatness, he should never have been able to do half the stuff he did in the first place. Snap his fingers to close the door to the tardis? The trickster god indeed. To me it seems like Matt Smith's doctor relies too much on the sonic screwdriver and seems to be able to intiimidate his opponents way too easily, but David Tennant in my mind is more the Magical Space Jesus Doctor than Smith's. Having said that, I greatly enjoy the most recent episodes with the right expectations. :)
At the time I thought (and still think) that Tennant had done a marvelous job during his tenure as the Doctor and just accepted all the weirdness at the end as giving him a good send-off. But I think you're right in that it was already at that time the writers were going down the road of turning the Doctor into Magical Space Jesus. Sadly I even bought into the Matt Smith version of the Doctor for a few episodes despite some uneasiness, until about halfway through his first season when it finally dawned on m
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Too bad the Time Lords are sealed away so nobody can really give Doc a sense of hierarchy. (Well, there's the Shadow Proclamation...but face it, they're the U.N.)
I quite enjoyed Eccleston and Tennant, but the new Smith writers are terrible.
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They turned him into a trickster God.
It even has a name: Cartmel Masterplan [wikipedia.org]. I quite like Sylvestor McCoy's take on it-- it made a nice change from the sixth doctor rubbish.
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New episodes are there because old episodes just aren't broadcast anymore. Sure some of us remember old Dr Who on television but it was tricky to do so regularly if you weren't British. I don't think I saw an entire story line from start to finish until the new series with Eccleston.
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Are you mad!?!?!?!?
You forgot "human-lauding".
There were more "brilliant"s (or synonyms) in every Tennant-era program than in a whole series of The Fast Show. Barf!
Give me Sylvester McCoy any day over that, with his "You
Glad (Score:5, Informative)
By about 11.50pm GMT the news had broken and links to iTunes gone up. Amazon links a short time later and then YouTube material. I put the iTunes and Amazon pre-order links on my website (see link in my signature)
Sadly, I think the following quote from the BBC shows their contempt for us. This is from one of the papers that broke the embargo:
"Asked whether viewers might also see the recovered episodes, without having to pay Apple £1.89 per episode or £9.99 to download the complete stories, BBC Worldwide said licence-fee payers had already enjoyed a chance to watch the programmes in the late 60s"
Don't they realise that WE might have wanted to watch this stuff again at some point?
Re:Glad (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure they'll air them at some point in the future, but for now there's a cost for remastering the episodes, and so I'd say it's fair for the beeb to try and recover some of the cost through iTunes/Amazon.
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It's not fair for them to try a collect more money off these from BBC license payers. These people are paying BBC right now for content.
But they aren't paying now for past content, but for new content. Heck, back when these episodes were broadcast, people loudly complained about wasted fees when the BBC dared to rebroadcast anything.
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It's not fair for them to try a collect more money off these from BBC license payers. These people are paying BBC right now for content.
But they aren't paying now for past content, but for new content. Heck, back when these episodes were broadcast, people loudly complained about wasted fees when the BBC dared to rebroadcast anything.
Absolutely. Plus, for those in the UK, it helps defray the cost of the BBC by selling media to anybody who wants it.
In a time when content providers are being criticised for not providing content I find it a little odd that the BBC is being criticised for doing just that.
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By "we" I was speaking collectively. I wasn't born until 1971, but the sentiment echoed time and again by hundreds of people is the same: we paid for those episodes, technicians, actors and other production staff slaved over them, and some bean counter years later decided they were worthless. No one stopped to think that some people might have wanted to see them again.
We forget how crude the television industry was fifty years ago. Here's a brief primer. Shows that were shot on videotape were captured on a 2-inch Ampex Quadruplex machine that recorded at 15.625 inches per second. A reel of two inch tape weighed about 14 lbs and was very expensive. Tape was in short supply at the BBC - at one point they had less than 16 reels available, so what typically happened is that after broadcast, the reels were placed in short-term storage to be erased (the tape decks didn't have
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Just a few points: It was actually BBC Enterprises in the 1960s and 1970s. TV shows were marketed under conditions but with one important addition; if the prints had exceeded their agreed sales target and weren't to be sent to another TV station, they were to be either sent back to the BBC or destroyed, and a certificate of destruction issued as proof. I suspect that many episodes were routinely destroyed as part of the sales agreement; it is cheaper to burn or thrown out t
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If you weren't alive (and therefore most likely not paying the license) when it first aired, then you weren't paying for it then, and have no rights to watching it now, unless you'd like to purchase a retroactive license. I'm sure the beeb would be happy to come around and collect 20+ years of back dues from you, adjusted for inflation.
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However in practise, it's assumed that everyone watches TV and thus you'll have to prove that you don't.
Not my experience - when I moved into a flat a few years back, a guy came round after a fortnight and asked if I had a TV, and I said no. Never heard from them again. Of course, I did use iplayer constantly, but you don't need a license for that.
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You don't need license to watch iplayer. You only need a license if you watch TV as it is broadcast live, so you can't watch any channel online live, but you can watch it later. See here [tvlicensing.co.uk] : "You need to be covered by a valid TV Licence if you watch or record TV as it's being broadcast."
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> I did use iplayer constantly, but you don't need a license for that.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought I had heard that you did still need a license *IF* you watched BBC content online. That would certainly seem to be the case from a moral perspective regardless of the legal technicalities - otherwise you're a parasitic freeloader on the content your neighbors are paying for.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought I had heard that you did still need a license *IF* you watched BBC content online. That would certainly seem to be the case from a moral perspective regardless of the legal technicalities - otherwise you're a parasitic freeloader on the content your neighbors are paying for.
You don't - see my comment above. Also, while I partially agree with your freeloader comment (of my 27 years of living in England, I have had a license for 24 or 25, and I was pretty hard up duri
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You'd think so, wouldn't you? Technically, you're right - you need a license if you watch or record programmes as they are being shown (no matter what device is used). However in practise, it's assumed that everyone watches TV and thus you'll have to prove that you don't.
They use very suspect, threatening and antisocial methods, but they *do not have the right to come round and demand to inspect your house*. They can get a warrant if they have cause to suspect, but just not having a licence isn't enough.
http://www.televisionlicence.info/tvl/warrant [televisionlicence.info]
Basically in reality, if they hear or see a live TV, or you say something stupid to them.
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Did you keep copies of them? If so, the BBC would like to take brain tissue samples of about 97 more episodes.
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Nah, I appear to have re-used the tapes.
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"Asked whether viewers might also see the recovered episodes, without having to pay Apple £1.89 per episode or £9.99 to download the complete stories, BBC Worldwide said licence-fee payers had already enjoyed a chance to watch the programmes in the late 60s"
No, WE DID NOT! Here in the suburban US, I find myself surrounded by Dr. Who fans younger than myself who, when shown the classic series, just want to see more and more (except for the Tennant-only fangirls, but I don't count them as fans of the show).
I was born in the late 70s. So, exactly how old ARE the BBC Worldwide execs who penned that opinion? And do they have their secretaries print their e-mail so they can read it?
So you demand that the BBC give you these episodes for free despite never having paid a single cent - or rather penny - of licensing fee?
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Well duh! Of course they do! That's the mentality today. No one should have to pay for anything because producing something doesn't cost anything.
Along the same lines, people shouldn't be allowed to make oodles of money from their products. They should be forced to give it over to the unwashed masses because "it's the moral thing to do."
It's called entitle
Why should I care? (Score:2)
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I watched many many episodes of doctor who in the early 1980's and loved them at the time, but recently I tried watching some of these classics and found that they are just too unbearably slow. However the new doctor who episodes from the past decade are completely awesome, top notch, gra
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I watched many many episodes of doctor who in the early 1980's and loved them at the time, but recently I tried watching some of these classics and found that they are just too unbearably slow. However the new doctor who episodes from the past decade are completely awesome
Odd, I find the new ones unbearably fast. Same for a lot of new TV and film in general, like the latest Star Trek films. Granted, the very early Doctor Whos (e.g. Hartnell era) were extremely slow, but by the time you got to Pertwee & Baker they'd pretty much got it right. Now they just seem to be going for the "attention span of a goldfish" market.
I 2nd that (Score:2)
I think people have less imagination in addition to a shorter attention span. There are signs of this out there including studies if you look.
I've been on the edge of dropping the new Who myself. I don't mind the fast pacing and I love FAST dialog (prefer it's not gibberish) but when they cut corners with it just like many lazy action films use a mess of cuts because their actors are not coordinated and their directors suck --- shows today use quick pacing, bad editing and disjointed situations to keep att
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I'm a brit and a geek.
I've honestly never watched that tripe. It's like watching an old episode of Star Trek but without anywhere near as much budget or class or talent.
Watched one at a friends' house on Netflix recently, we found the first episode we could to show my girlfriend (who's Italian). It was damn hilarious. The acting was absolutely atrocious. The sword-fight was incredibly poor (if you thought the old Sinbad movies were bad, this is orders of magnitude worse, and no exaggeration).
It was a ju
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Don't even try to convince your lady to watch them as you'll just bore her. You'd be much better off watching something like The Prisoner if you want some old retro sci-fi.
Another point to make (Score:5, Informative)
"'does anyone know,what ian levine,plans to do about the recovery of missing episodes,i myself have been considering,a little overseas travel, i work overseas and i think by traveling to some or even all countrys and searching ,is maybe the best way now,of finally putting the rumours,and stories to rest,if its there lets go there,and ask politely it can do no harm,who knows i might turn up a thing or two'
'yes i see your point,i have contacted the restoration team,and offered my services,free at no cost to them ,whatsoever,but i have had no reply.you are perfectly right the beeb themselves should do this,but they dont seem to want to know,official paperwork and authorisation,from the beeb would have been great,but if not forthcoming i will go it alone with whatever ,background information i can find and see were it leads me,any help from anyone interested will be much appreciated,to all fans i will give it my best shot for dr who'"
For those not in the know, Ian Levine is a superfan, who saved many of the early episodes from destruction and found many others. The above appeared on a forum dedicated to discussing missing episodes, and is partially run by BBC staff members some of whom restore the old episodes for DVD release. Apart from Ian Levine, everyone wrote him off. The BBC didn't seem to want to know. But if the story is right, he must have managed to acquire some paperwork to show how the episodes had been cycled round the world; when one TV station had finished with them, they would be sent to another one to reduce costs of producing new episodes from the negatives.
Another thing I'd like to mention. In 1984 the BBC and Levine contacted old foreign TV markets who had bought the early years of the show to find lost episodes. Most stations didn't bother to reply; 6 did come back from Nigeria (the newly found episodes were from a relay station so its not surprising they were missed) and one from Australia. Iran said "Who in the name of Allah are you talking about?" But as Phillip Morris has shown, you need to go over there and physically sift through the paperwork and film cans. Expecting an overworked archivist to do it isn't going to work, especially if the documentation of what they have is fragmentary. But I do wonder what other "lost" TV shows were found sitting on the shelf. When Dr.Who has been found in the past, other TV has usually come back, but it is rarely, if ever reported. This makes TV historians fury with despair, as the archival side of things is so Dr.Who-centric.
Normally, the episodes should have been returned to England when they had been shown an agreed number of times, or destroyed. Happily this isn't the case. I'm not too surprised that they were overlooked. My dad worked in Nigeria from about 1968-72 and I was born there. He says they are slovenly and corrupt. That's not being racist, that is what they are like over there, from his personal experience (like one local member of the Lagos glitterati who paid off the police to stop criminal proceedings after he nearly killed my mum in a speedboat accident). And yes my dad does recall Dr.Who being shown in Nigeria!
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Yeah, if some imperialist bastards from the other end of the world walked up and told me what to do I wouldn't be terribly motivated either, genocide threat or not.
You do realise Nigeria was given independence in 1960, and, given the timeframe, the GP's father was probably there to assist with the oil boom which was making the country rich, right?
But don't let that get in the way of your idiot leftyist rant.
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Goodness ,that's hard ,to read
I swear, after the second comma I started hearing that in William Shatner's voice!
Dear Friend in God (Score:5, Funny)
(Please read the following in CAPITALS)
Permit me to inform you of my desire of going into business relationship with you. I have the believe you are a reputable and responsible and trustworthy person I can do business with from the little information so far I gathered about you during my search for a partner and by matter of trust I must not hesitate to confide in you for this simple and sincere business.
I am Stella Morris 19 years of age the only daughter of late Mr Phillip Morris whom was killed by the daleks that attacked our country Nigeria and took over our town. I ran to Lagos the economical capital of nigeria from were I am contacting you. Before the death of my father he told me that he has a sum of DWE 9.000,000 (Nine point one million Doctor Who Episodes) kept in a private cloud here in nigeria in my name as the next of kin,
Dear, in the capacity of the next of kin and with all the tapes in my hand now, I am contacting you with due sence of gallifreyanity that you will give it a sympathetic and mutual consideration.
I am honourably seeking your assistance in the following ways.
(1)To serve as the guardian of this drama and to come assist me visit the television company here to retrive the consignment.
(2)To make arrangement for me to come over to your country by tardis to further my education and to secure a residential permit for me in your country.
(3)To provide good viewing plans for the tapes and to manage the tapes for 5 years, during the viewing period,only our profit will be shared annually 70% for me the iTunes account holder while 30% will be for you the manager annually.
Moreover, I am willing to offer you 11 % of the total tapes (1 (one) episode) as compensation for your effort /input after the successful transfer of this video to your nominated iTunes account overseas, before the viewing starts.
Anticipating hearing from you immediately.
Thanks, and would you like a jelly baby?
Best Regards.
Stella Morris
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I am very interested but with respect to (1) please clarify as to whether that is Black or White Guardian
In other news... (Score:2)
Finally! (Score:3)
biggest problem... (Score:3)
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The biggest problem I have is with them putting them on iTunes store first..
Well, be glad that you are just misinformed then. Your biggest problem is now gone.
Wouldn't be possible now (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't care much for Dr Who, but this is another reason to oppose DRM and be cautious about streaming. If the producers can't be trusted to keep a copy of their works, it's up to the audience to do the archiving. Some works may not be considered popular or good, but may later have a huge cult (or mainstream, in this case) following
Re:Wouldn't be possible now (Score:4, Insightful)
To be fair, the situation with Doctor Who episodes not being kept was far different than a producer not keeping an episode today. Back then, tape was expensive and limited in supply so old episodes were wiped to reuse the tapes for new episodes (or other TV programs). They kept things that they thought would have long lasting value, like news clips. Doctor Who was thought of as a fun show but one that wouldn't last long. They had no idea that people would be enjoying it 50 years later. Today, all that's needed to keep a show is some extra hard drives or backup discs - a minimal cost investment Don't judge people from 50 years ago based on technology from today.
very interesting (Score:2)
At least get the title right (Score:2)
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Basically, digitizing them automatically extends the copyright
I'm not saying you're definitely wrong, but I'm sceptical that you're right. There are a lot of half-truths, myths and downright misunderstandings around. On what basis do you hold this belief- is it something you think *should* be the case, something you *think* actually is the case based on some vague understanding, or do you know for sure that this is what UK law says?
Bearing in mind that "digitizing" is essentially just the process of making a copy of an analogue source using a digital format (rather
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Not necessarily, see e.g.:
http://openbiblio.net/copyright/copyright-faq/ [openbiblio.net]
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