1.26 - Dragonsfield

[Frankymole]

I suppose it makes sense they would hold off showing the episode that has no Dr Keel, so they get the audience back on board with episodes with the pair of stars, after the strike.

[denis rigg]

I suppose it makes sense they would hold off showing the episode that has no Dr Keel, so they get the audience back on board with episodes with the pair of stars, after the strike.

Moreover, it seems quite logical that Ian Hendry could have been delayed in that pause in the production of the first series and for this reason he could not take part right away.

Ha, if we look at the order of the episode with a new look, we get a funny thing:

Production order

Dragonsfield
A Change of Bait
The Deadly Air
Dead of Winter

The order of episodes in the broadcast

Dead of Winter
The Deadly Air
A Change of Bait
Dragonsfield

That is, in this situation, the block of episodes after the production pause was broadcast completely backwards regarding the production order. Funny.

[mousemeat]

Yes, that's my understanding.

This is a very intriguing situation, I am looking forward to your research, Piers.

yeah, I would be interested as well...season one..needs to be re examined as some of the info is faulty

[dissolute]

What source did they use? Camera scripts?

There are only scripts for A Change of Bait and Dead of Winter, they seem to have guessed the rest and got it very wrong.

[darren]

This is an episode that I'd really love see.

[mousemeat]

This is an episode that I'd really love see.

same here..script seems to be above average for that season..a shame that majority of first season shows are gone forever..i.e. wiped clean

[denis rigg]

This is an episode that I'd really love see.

I'm in line for this episode number 23 - hopefully I'm not wrong for the number.

[denis rigg]

same here..script seems to be above average for that season..a shame that majority of first season shows are gone forever..i.e. wiped clean

Well, I think some of this could have survived. Seriously enough - they were planning to re-broadcast some of the episodes with David Keel, which says the tapes had been kept for a while. We do not know for sure whether copies were made by the time the originals are believed to have been destroyed. We weren't there and it's hard to tell if the tapes exist or not. But following the logic, I would say that most likely something exists. There have always been many collectors and businessmen willing to pay big bucks for what they want. I can easily imagine that the some originals were bought. And in general, why should we believe that they were exactly destroyed like many other videotapes at the time?

Imagine that you are producing a TV series and at some point it becomes profitable. The first Avengers series at a certain point became profitable. If you feel money is going into your pocket, then why would someone erased the last Avengers episodes of the first series on videotape, if it is more profitable to sell? I think that destroying all but the existing Avengers tapes from Season 1 is nothing more than a guessing game.

The worst is that there are still a lot of wrong things around The Avengers/TNA, like the Dragonfield production order.

[Frankymole]

The tapes themselves were huge things, and treated as re-usable for ALL programmes. They were not seen as a permanent storage medium, being too costly to keep "untouched", so were taped over, again and again, with other productions. The way that permanent copies were kept was on the much cheaper medium of 16mm film telerecordings, whereby the programmes were filmed and those negatives then used to make copies for any buyers, e.g. overseas television stations that wanted to show the series. This is how the Cathy Gales survived (just! since the negatives were in danger of being deemed unbroadcastable and unsaleable in the 80s and might've been junked then).

Why Ian Hendry's The Frighteners episode survived in the vaults is anyone's guess, but luckily it did and was able to be stumbled upon by Dave Rogers and saved from oblivion (and used on This Is Your Life). Even more mysterious is how copies of several Keel episodes made their way over to America and UCLA's library. We may never know. But it's fun to speculate, and the chance that some other episodes are out there, somewhere in the world, is ever-present. After all, "Girl on the Trapeze" and the other early season 1 "live" episodes were long-thought to have never been recorded at all, yet one has come back to us.

Denis has a good point when he says "why should we believe that they were exactly destroyed like many other videotapes at the time?". The "official" record of wiped episodes is often in error; lots of Dr Who episodes have been recovered that officially no longer exist - film prints found in car boot sales, hanging on a door handle in a carrier bag in an editing suite, used as doorstops, slung in church admin buildings' basements... even sometimes in forgotten cupboards at TV stations having a clear-out decades later. And some are known to be in the hands of collectors who have not shared them (as Tunnel of Fear was rumoured to be for a long time).

I'd like to know how Tunnel of Fear escaped, but that's under a cloak of mystery too, perhaps protecting the innocent... after all, films have been known to "wander" from their original owners....

[mousemeat]

The tapes themselves were huge things, and treated as re-usable for ALL programmes. They were not seen as a permanent storage medium, being too costly to keep "untouched", so were taped over, again and again, with other productions. The way that permanent copies were kept was on the much cheaper medium of 16mm film telerecordings, whereby the programmes were filmed and those negatives then used to make copies for any buyers, e.g. overseas television stations that wanted to show the series. This is how the Cathy Gales survived (just! since the negatives were in danger of being deemed unbroadcastable and unsaleable in the 80s and might've been junked then).

Why Ian Hendry's The Frighteners episode survived in the vaults is anyone's guess, but luckily it did and was able to be stumbled upon by Dave Rogers and saved from oblivion (and used on This Is Your Life). Even more mysterious is how copies of several Keel episodes made their way over to
America and UCLA's library. We may never know. But it's fun to speculate, and the chance that some other episodes are out there, somewhere in the world, is ever-present. After all, "Girl on the Trapeze" and the other early season 1 "live" episodes were long-thought to have never been recorded at all, yet one has

come back to us.

Denis has a good point when he says "why should we believe that they were exactly destroyed like many other videotapes at the time?". The "official"
record of wiped episodes is often in error; lots of Dr Who episodes have been recovered that officially no longer exist - film prints found in car boot sales, hanging on a door handle in a carrier bag in an editing suite, used as
doorstops, slung in church admin buildings' basements... even sometimes in forgotten cupboards at TV stations having a clear-out decades later. And some are known to be in the hands of collectors who have not shared them (as Tunnel of Fear was rumoured to be for a long time).
Franky,
I'd like to know how Tunnel of Fear escaped, but that's under a cloak of
mystery too, perhaps protecting the innocent... after all, films have been known to "wander" from their original owners....

Franky, you're spot on...I worked in broadcast television for eons, at several stations i.e. WMC and Wxyz....as well as NBC...and too many times, 'missing tapes, episodes did turn up in all sorts of places...including yard sales, etc..and early video tape was bulky, and prone to slowly drop out..as time flew by..and it didn't take too kindly, to magnetic fields, heat/cold/etc

of course 16mm, tended to look better and hold up much better than tape