Quite Quite Fantastic! The Avengers for Modern Viewers

[mrspeel01]

Agreed. I didn't realise it was mentioned in that book-I have it too! But that's where i must have gotten the notion that Tunnel of fear exists in audio.

[denis rigg]

Ron, I agree with your opinion. There's no exclusion that audio recordings of first Avengers can exist. Why not? In practice, I often met the situations, while working in the video market, that a certain collector could have something important, but he personally did not attach importance to this reason for the fact that he was not personally interested in this or that topic. That is, he was just a sort of collector or archivist with main personal interest in accumulation than in the deepening of the material (as we know there is a sort of such people). I remember how one collector had in his archive a copy of movie Stunt Seven with Patrick Macnee shown in the USSR cinema theatres in 1983. I did not know at all that this was the case. Then I studied the topic and realized that it had a limited rental and it seemed all copies were destroyed. How did it survive? It turns out that the man who worked as a projectionist in the cinema at that time made copies of some films for himself. That is, he understood that the copies would be officially destroyed in the future, and so he found it possible to save it.
Such a course of things is possible for the Avengers and other serials at the time. One who worked at the ABC studio, could find a way to make copies, especially, considering that the Avengers series was as a certain product of the "new wave" already in 1961. Yes, I know what there are people who became Avengers fan from the first season, based in it I doubt that there were no people who could not find an opportunity to record it in any form. Why do not we know about this? Actually, we still do not know about many things about the Avengers in general - more than 50 years later we are still discovering and learning something new.
As a whole, I'm not talking about that these recordings definitely exist somewhere now (considering that I focus on point that I doubt that there were no people who could not find the opportunity to save the recordings in any form), I want to say that I think these records were made, but it is not known whether what survived to our time (although most probably "yes", rather than "not").

As confirmation, I remember how I acquired the missing episodes with Tara King in Russian. As a fact, when the series with Russian soundtrack was shown in Russia (only two runs), in both cases not all color series were shown. Well, although there are many Russian fans of the series, none of them have ever mentioned that they have some thing in their collection related to TV series about what is not in Steedumbrell's club or on the Runet. So I quite by chance received these missing copies (which are true treasures) in the way that personally asked leading questions to specific individuals. When, with a question asked, one person said that he has all the episodes with Tara King in Russian from Ukraininan TV channel (WOW) and soon this information was made public (with his consent), then of course there were questions whose bounty was reduced to one "Why before, for many many years, he never said about what has these treasures? ". Well, again this reason - as it turned out he just did not attach any importance to this.

[mrspeel01]

denis, you make very good points-as always.

I agree that many of these collectors do not realise what they have in their possession. This was the case with missing episodes of Doctor Who. One collector had bought a film canister of an old episode at a car-boot sale and didn't realise how important that episode was. Several missing Doctor Who stories have since been found. The fact that we now have Tunnel of Fear means there is still hope!

[QuiteQuiteFantastic]

By the way, Ron, if I may ask, which version of the book did you buy? The hardcover or the softcover? And what is your country of residence? I would like to know more about shipping costs and speed of delivery so I can improve things for European buyers.

Michael

[mrspeel01]

Hi Michael

I ordered the softcover. I used the codes that James kindly provided, so the shipping cost was shown as o.oo. I don't know how much it would have been, considering the size and weight of the book. I ordered it on 18th may and it arrived on 30th May which is pretty good I feel, as I am in UK.

Ron

[QuiteQuiteFantastic]

Hi Michael

I ordered the softcover. I used the codes that James kindly provided, so the shipping cost was shown as o.oo. I don't know how much it would have been, considering the size and weight of the book. I ordered it on 18th may and it arrived on 30th May which is pretty good I feel, as I am in UK.

Thank you. Yes, the paperback ships from France, I believe, or maybe the UK, so it will arrive very quickly. The problems appears to be the hardcover which is taking an egregious amount of time to arrive for some people as it ships from the US via snail mail (unless you want to pay about $35 for trackable shipping). I'm not happy about it, and I don't want people to feel like they have to buy the paperback. I think I'm going to look more seriously into a casewrap edition that will also print in Europe. Lower weight paper but a passable hardcover option.

Michael

[Alan]

One thing that has interested me is the assertion about season 1 that (page11) : "...unlike Newman's other cult creation, Doctor Who, none of the episodes were recorded on audiotape." On page15 it is stated that: "...there are no known audio recordings of the original broadcasts."

I remember reading, though I cannot remember the source, that there is an audio recording from a TV broadcast in existence. This is, if memory serves correctly, of the (newly re-discovered episode) "Tunnel of fear" which is held by a private collector. There are also "rumours" that other episodes were recorded direct from the TV broadcasts, as with early Doctor Who episodes. Of course, unlike Doctor Who, whereby the recordings were given to the BBC, and subsequently released commercially, none of these audio recordings have been made available. Perhaps other forum members have heard or know more about the existence or possible existence of audio recordings of season 1.

Michael's book is correct on the subject of audio recordings of the TV broadcasts of Series 1. One episode, as you rightly say, was rumoured to exist in this way (Tunnel of Fear) but there has never been any corroborating evidence presented. Basically, a 1/4" tape was reputed to exist in the collection of an Avengers fan, but this has never been backed up with any proof. Therefore, to all intents and purposes, it is as good as non-existent, even if it actually did ever exist.

No other rumours of Series 1 off-air audios have ever borne fruit (and there haven't exactly been a lot of rumours, either).

I am aware of off-TV audio recordings made in the UK of other TV shows (Hancock's Half Hour for instance) that pre-date Hot Snow, so it's not impossible that Series 1 Avengers off-airs were made, but none have come to light in the 57 years since transmission.

[Alan]

Ron, I agree with your opinion. There's no exclusion that audio recordings of first Avengers can exist. Why not? In practice, I often met the situations, while working in the video market, that a certain collector could have something important, but he personally did not attach importance to this reason for the fact that he was not personally interested in this or that topic. That is, he was just a sort of collector or archivist with main personal interest in accumulation than in the deepening of the material (as we know there is a sort of such people). I remember how one collector had in his archive a copy of movie Stunt Seven with Patrick Macnee shown in the USSR cinema theatres in 1983. I did not know at all that this was the case. Then I studied the topic and realized that it had a limited rental and it seemed all copies were destroyed. How did it survive? It turns out that the man who worked as a projectionist in the cinema at that time made copies of some films for himself. That is, he understood that the copies would be officially destroyed in the future, and so he found it possible to save it.
Such a course of things is possible for the Avengers and other serials at the time. One who worked at the ABC studio, could find a way to make copies, especially, considering that the Avengers series was as a certain product of the "new wave" already in 1961. Yes, I know what there are people who became Avengers fan from the first season, based in it I doubt that there were no people who could not find an opportunity to record it in any form. Why do not we know about this? Actually, we still do not know about many things about the Avengers in general - more than 50 years later we are still discovering and learning something new.
As a whole, I'm not talking about that these recordings definitely exist somewhere now (considering that I focus on point that I doubt that there were no people who could not find the opportunity to save the recordings in any form), I want to say that I think these records were made, but it is not known whether what survived to our time (although most probably "yes", rather than "not").

As confirmation, I remember how I acquired the missing episodes with Tara King in Russian. As a fact, when the series with Russian soundtrack was shown in Russia (only two runs), in both cases not all color series were shown. Well, although there are many Russian fans of the series, none of them have ever mentioned that they have some thing in their collection related to TV series about what is not in Steedumbrell's club or on the Runet. So I quite by chance received these missing copies (which are true treasures) in the way that personally asked leading questions to specific individuals. When, with a question asked, one person said that he has all the episodes with Tara King in Russian from Ukraininan TV channel (WOW) and soon this information was made public (with his consent), then of course there were questions whose bounty was reduced to one "Why before, for many many years, he never said about what has these treasures? ". Well, again this reason - as it turned out he just did not attach any importance to this.

Hi Denis,

I think the thing that needs considering here is that home recording equipment was nowhere near as widespread in the early 1960s as it was in the 1970s onwards.

There was no compact cassette, the format that really brought home recording to the masses, just open reel 1/4" machines, which were not as widespread.

Of course, I agree with you that there is a chance that Series 1 was recorded by somebody, somewhere, but I'd also say that our chances of actually tracking down any tapes are very slim indeed. If they were going to be found, I reckon we'd have at least some episodes in this form by now.

Best,

[Alan]

And... coincidence of coincidences, as I replied to this thread, within seconds of posting my paperback copy of QQF has arrived!

First impressions are very positive!

[denis rigg]

Hi Denis,

I think the thing that needs considering here is that home recording equipment was nowhere near as widespread in the early 1960s as it was in the 1970s onwards.

There was no compact cassette, the format that really brought home recording to the masses, just open reel 1/4" machines, which were not as widespread.

Of course, I agree with you that there is a chance that Series 1 was recorded by somebody, somewhere, but I'd also say that our chances of actually tracking down any tapes are very slim indeed. If they were going to be found, I reckon we'd have at least some episodes in this form by now.

Best

Hi Alan

Glad to hear you. I agree with all the points you indicated. Despite, in our time there still are surprises when find the films even from the era of silent movies. It seems that never know what is really lost and what is not. For some kind of film can be devoted whole detailed topic about how many copies there were, where they were shown, to whom they were sold, where and when (with the mass of evidence) was destroyed and why this can not exist. But suddenly the film is found, after many many years. Frankly, I often am amazed at such cases when you actually begin to believe that there can not be any options for the existence of those or other films, and suddenly...
I think that for the existence of some lost Avengers series 1 tapes it's 50/50 percent (and I do not exclude it for the episodes of the Avengers radio series too).