Doctor Who Missing Episodes - Background

Background

Between approximately 1967 and 1978, large quantities of material stored in the BBC's Engineering department (videotape) and film libraries were destroyed or wiped to make way for newer programmes. This happened for a number of reasons, the primary one being the belief that there was no reason for the material to be kept.

The actors' union Equity had actively fought against the introduction of TV recording since it originally became a practical proposition in the 1950s. Prior to the development of workable television recording, if a broadcaster wished to repeat a programme (usually a one-off play), the actors would be re-hired for an additional fee to perform it again live. Equity's concern was that if broadcasters were able to record the original performances, they would be able to repeat them indefinitely, which would cut down on the levels of new production and threaten the livelihoods of its members. Although Equity could not prevent recording altogether, it was able to add standard clauses to its members' contracts that stipulated that recordings could only be repeated a set number of times within a specific timeframe, and the fees payable for further use beyond that were deliberately so high that broadcasters would consider it unjustifiable to spend so much money repeating an old programme rather than making a new one. Consequently, recordings whose repeat rights had expired were considered to be of no further economic use to the broadcasters.

Most Doctor Who episodes were made on two-inch videotape for initial broadcast and then telerecorded onto 16mm film by BBC Enterprises for further commercial exploitation. Enterprises used 16mm for overseas sales as it was considerably cheaper to buy and easier to transport than videotape. It also circumvented the problem of different countries' incompatible video standards, as film was a universal medium whereas videotape was not. The BBC had no central archive at the time – the Film Library kept programmes that had been made on film, while the Engineering Department was responsible for storing videotapes. BBC Enterprises kept only copies of programmes they deemed commercially exploitable. They also had little dedicated storage space and tended to keep piles of film canisters wherever they could find space for them at their Villiers House property.

The Engineering Department had no mandate to archive the programme videotapes they held, although they would not normally be wiped or junked until the relevant production department or BBC Enterprises had indicated that they had no further use for the tapes. The first Doctor Who master videotapes to be junked were those for the serial The Highlanders, which were erased on 9 March 1967, a mere two months after Episode 4's original transmission. Further erasing and junking of Doctor Who master videotapes by the Engineering Department continued into the 1970s. Eventually every single master videotape of the programme's first 253 episodes (1963–1969) was destroyed or wiped, with the final 1960s mastertapes to be erased being those for the 1968 serial Fury from the Deep, which were authorised for wiping in late 1974.

Despite the destruction of these masters, BBC Enterprises held a near-complete archive of the series in the form of their 16mm film telerecording copies until approximately 1972. From around 1972–1978, BBC Enterprises also disposed of much of their older material, including many episodes of Doctor Who.