Some enquiries were made in late 1999 as to the possibility of colourising the monochrome episodes from Planet of the Daleks and Invasion of the Dinosaurs for repeat on BBC 2. However the Pertwee repeats were abandoned after Doctor Who and the Silurians had completed its run and it seems therefore that the project has been shelved again. BBC Video released Planet of the Daleks in November 1999, however episode three was not colourised, likewise Invasion was not colourised when Invasion of the Dinosaurs was released in October 2003.  For the foreseeable future it is unlikely that these episodes will be colourised; the next logical policy review being as and when they are scheduled for release on DVD.  Steve Roberts of the Restoration Team believes that costs will remain too high for such a project to be viable, however.

Q. What's this I heard about a colourised version of Invasion Part One being shown at a convention?

Q. I hear that an episode of Invasion of the Dinosaurs was junked in mistake for a Troughton episode. Is this true and if so, how did the mistake arise?

This fan rumour has circulated for many years, and it alleges that the colour transmission tape of Invasion of the Dinosaurs episode one was accidentally wiped whilst the season six Cybermen story The Invasion was being junked. It is propagated by those who assume that all videotapes and film recordings were held in one library at the BBC. By studying the dates of tape wiping and the dates of the films being junked and by bearing in mind the roles of the three separate departments involved (see Introduction) we can attempt to determine whether the rumour is true or not. Invasion of the Dinosaurs episode one went out with an on-screen title of Invasion (presumably to avoid giving away the presence of the dinosaurs) in January 1974. In August of that same year, the original 2-inch PAL transmission tape was wiped or destroyed. BBC Enterprises never held copies of any of The Invasion episodes on videotape, even during the original telerecording process (as the telerecordings would have been made by Engineering on behalf of Enterprises). The videotapes of The Invasion were wiped by Engineering on 20th May 1971, well before Invasion of the Dinosaurs was even recorded, but this does not rule out the possibility that the tape of Invasion was wiped in mistake for the Troughton story in 1974 (i.e. it was thought that one episode of the Troughton story had somehow survived being wiped). However, whilst the on-screen title was just "Invasion" the documentation and the label on the tape spool would have undoubtedly referred to the episode as "Invasion of the Dinosaurs :1".  (It is worth noting here that several tapes ordered up to have clips taken from them for the Thirty Years in the TARDIS documentary in 1993, were still labelled with working titles of stories such as The Talons of Greel [The Talons of Weng-Chiang]). Furthermore, tapes were never wiped on title alone – the technical code of the tape would have been checked and it would have been obvious that the tape was 625 line PAL colour. Close examination of the wiping forms held at the BBC Film and Videotape library would probably answer the question fully, but all available evidence suggests strongly that the tape of Invasion was not wiped in mistake for an episode of the Patrick Troughton story The Invasion. Similar logic can be applied to prove that the Pertwee episode was not wiped through confusion with the Hartnell episode Invasion (The Web Planet :5) either.For some years after it was discovered that no colour transmission tape existed of Invasion, the episode was not known to exist, until a 16mm monochrome film recording was returned by a private film collector in 1983. Further investigations have shown that the likely origin of this film recording is an official BBC Enterprises film recording session. Documentation has recently been found to suggest that The Time Warrior and Invasion of the Dinosaurs were film recorded for BBC Enterprises to sell abroad – however there were no purchasers in this format as the only remaining customer for film recordings (Australia) had recently invested in colour broadcasting equipment and decided to purchase the season 11 stories in colour. Given the lack of customers, policy at BBC Enterprises was probably revised and they ceased ordering film recording sessions from BBC Engineering. Such a policy review would probably have applied to all new material that Enterprises was offering for sale to overseas broadcasters, not just Doctor Who. The film recordings of the first two stories of season 11 may well have been junked relatively quickly once it became apparent that they were not required and it is possible that no technical assessment of the recordings was made (or that no-one complained since no countries purchased copies). Hence these recordings were not found with the other Pertwee films at BBC Enterprises in 1978, and a technical problem with the film recording was never detected. Whatever, the film recording negative of episode 1 was used to produce at least one print which has survived in the hands of the private collector who originally returned it in 1983. Invasion of the Dinosaurs was not sold abroad until this date, when it could be marketed as a complete story once again.

It is also interesting to note that, had the film recording been made through conventional channels, it would almost certainly have been rejected on technical grounds (as it is rather out of focus on one side – this is not easily spotted on a domestic TV set due to overscan).  Fan rumours constantly suggest the existence of colour versions in American fan circles, however it is far more likely that those reporting a colour version have in fact seen an old camera-converted copy of the episode. These stem from the fact that the story was initially distributed in the US in a five episode format by Lionheart, the then-holders of the US Doctor Who licence, with episode two renumbered as episode one and episode three renumbered as episode two, etc. – omitting the monochrome-only (real) first episode. For many years the only copies of the genuine episode one in US fan circles stemmed from amateur PAL to NTSC standards conversions, usually achieved by pointing an NTSC camcorder at a PAL TV set which was fed with a British standard 625 line PAL VHS copy of the episode. Due to the differing frame rates of the devices the end result is very poor quality, suffering from cut-off similar to the amateur-shot 8mm cine clips, and with spurious colour introduced.

Q. Why was it necessary to colourise The Time Monster episode 6?

This was apparently the only option for all of The Time Monster until, in 1987, a 625 line monochrome videotape of episode 6 was discovered at the BBC's Engineering Department (early reports of the discovery stated that the tape was colour, which is not the case). This tape seems to have come into existence by pure chance – someone needed a tape for a training exercise and chose this particular programme. The tape however would have arisen directly from the original PAL tape of the episode (i.e. it has not been through any PAL/NTSC conversion process) and as such is not prone to the motion artefacts the colour copy of the episode now held. A colour TV picture is actually two components – a highly detailed monochrome picture (the luminance signal) and a weak colour signal superimposed over it (the chrominance component). The human brain responds more rapidly to luminance changes and hence is fooled into believing it is seeing a detailed moving colour picture. Hence if the chrominance component (converted back to PAL colour) of the Canadian-sourced tapes was used to add colour to the 625 line monochrome engineering tape, the motion artefacts arising from the standards conversions would be rendered less noticeable and a better quality PAL colour version of the episode would be obtained.

This colourisation was also easier on technical grounds – since the engineering tape was derived directly from the original PAL tape of the episode it did not suffer from any of the problems introduced by the telerecording process (such as cropping and non-linearities – see the Restoration Team article on the colourisation of the other Pertwee stories for details). Only one small problem was encountered during the restoration of this episode – the monochrome tape was recorded on the earlier, low-band type of Quad videotape, and Paul Vanezis only had access to a high-band machine when he came to replay it. This resulted in some blurring to the right of picture highlights as the wrong equalisation characteristics were used to replay the tape (this is analogous to playing an audio cassette recorded without Dolby noise reduction but with the noise reduction system switched on). This can be fixed fairly easily and was indeed corrected when the story was released by BBC Video (BBCV 7175, released November 2001). The results of this colourisation are however noticeably better than those which relied on off-air colour signals and film recordings for their component parts, and this version of the episode was shown on UK Gold in 1995. No new tapes have been produced for the US market for several years now, and hence the colourised version of this episode was not generally available in US fan circles prior to the commercial video release of the story (US release: Warner Home Video catalogue number E1729).

Q. What is so wrong with The Faceless Ones episode 3 that the print required extensive restoration work for the BBC Video release?

This episode, although rumoured to exist as early as 1985, was finally returned to the BBC in April 1987 (the same person returned The Evil of the Daleks episode 2 a month later). The print had suffered badly in the hands of the film collector who returned it, and had been played often on an old and badly-maintained projector. As a result the film had physically snapped several times and had been crudely sellotaped back together. These breakages resulted in the loss of perhaps four frames each time the film broke, and the sellotaped portions were now even more likely to stick in the projector and break again. This continued abuse has left the print with many small jumps where a few frames are missing, but also with some rather large jumps where upwards of half a second of material is missing (it is possible these result from even more severe projector damage such as a rip or even punching the sprocket teeth through the film – see the screen shots on the left which are taken from consecutive frames as they appear on the currently held print). 

It is a long held fan myth that the episode is "untransmittable" though. The BBC have transmitted far worse, notably the Steptoe and Son episodes recovered from CV2000 tapes. In November 2003 the episode was finally released on video after a lot of work was put in to repairing as many of the gaps as possible by the Doctor Who Restoration Team.  The work, as described in an article on their website, involved creating some entirely new sequences to bridge the gaps and has been made possible by the advances in computer technology since the episode was originally returned.  Whilst not perfect, it is as close to the original version as is likely to be achieved barring discovery of an undamaged copy of the episode. Peter Finklestone describes one such shot, "[A] problematic shot was where Ann Davidson closes the bulkhead door between the passenger and crew cabins. This is completely absent from the existing print. Jonathan [Wood, a BBC film operator] had used a cutaway of a zoomed-in intercom panel but, arising for no good reason in the scene and lasting a little over a second, I felt it was little less distracting than the jump cut. Therefore a combination of interpolation and paintbox techniques was used to create a composite image of Ann actually closing the door, as seen on one of the Chameleons’ monitors. While not perfect (as the shot is still short) it is now more sympathetic to the flow of the scene." In the images presented the first and last are the two consecutive frames in the print now, the middle image shows the reconstructed footage the Peter describes. Examples of the scene before and after can be seen below.

 

Q. I hear that the version of The Abominable Snowmen episode 2 released on the BBC Video The Troughton Years is edited. Why is this so?

There is a slight edit to the copy included on the BBC compilation video The Troughton Years, released in 1991. This edit was necessary due to an audio fault that leaves nearly 8 seconds of the print mute. As this same audio fault appears on all audio recordings made by fans it appears as though it existed on the original videotape of the episode. 

The two scenes affected are near the end of the episode after Jamie and Krissong have captured a Yeti outside the monastery. From the end of a lingering close-up of the control sphere in the monastery, to the first part of the Doctor examining the deactivated Yeti, the sound is mute. The edit removes all of the mute audio (including the Doctor's line "You were right about one thing, Victoria! This creature certainly doesn't seem to be flesh and blood…" The text in red is missing completely from all known soundtracks of the episode and the final portion in green is muted on the BBC Video release of the episode).  To avoid possible complaints that the BBC Video release was faulty, the 8 seconds or so of mute audio was cut out of the version of the episode included on The Troughton Years.  It is also worth noting that the 16mm location film inserts for this episode exist (but not for any other episodes of the story).  They are of far superior quality to the film recording (which lacks picture detail and is slightly cropped) but were not used for the BBC Video release.  Comparison frames are shown (top left, film recording; bottom, film insert; picture courtesy Steve Roberts/BBC).

(UPDATE November 2003): Careful research by a film collector has shown that the running time of the episode as released on video is actually the same as the uncut version.  It appears that the scene preceeding the section of missing audio, starting with the monk setting down the Yeti control sphere, is slowed down and replaces the beginning of the next shot in the version of the episode used on The Troughton Years (BBCV 4609).  A short file of the original damaged section can be seen below.

Q. I hear that the BBC Video releases of The Time Meddler and The War Machines are edited - is this so?

In answering this question, it must first be noted that many BBC Video releases of 60s stories, prior to the involvement of the Restoration Team, were edited in the sense that "Next Episode" captions were frequently removed from the last episode of a story (in the alleged words of a BBC Video manager at the time: "Because why would anybody want them?").

In the specific cases of The Time Meddler and The War Machines, both stories were completed in the archives in 1985 when a Nigerian TV station returned 16mm film recordings of all four episodes of each story (it was discovered in 1984 that the TV station in question held the films, but strained diplomatic relations between the UK and Nigeria at the time delayed their return). Upon closer inspection it became apparent that the Nigerian prints had been quite severely edited - the prints in question had been cycled (passed on) to Nigeria from New Zealand (rather than BBC Enterprises sending fresh copies direct to the Nigerians). It is uncertain which station performed the original edits, and until 2003 and the recovery of censored extracts from season 5 stories from New Zealand, the belief was that the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation (NZBC) would either reject a story outright or broadcast it complete and unedited - in other words, they didn't make cuts in the same manner as the Australian broadcasters did. Given the fresh evidence of the New Zealand censor clips the question remains even more open, as NZBC cannot be completely eliminated from the suspects list! Although complete, off-air audio recordings were available for all of these episodes, they would be of little use without the corresponding picture elements.

As events transpired, The Time Meddler was being prepared for repeat (in edited form) on BBC 2 in 1991 and Ian Levine stepped in. Levine had actually held uncut copies of The Watcher (episode 1) and A Battle Of Wits (episode 3) from The Time Meddler for some time, but had not realised that the BBC's copies were inferior to his. Fortunately he found out in time and was happy to lend his complete copies for use in the repeat broadcast. As a complete copy of episode 2 was held by the BBC Film Library upon its initial audit in 1978, only episode 4 remains edited. The cuts to this episode are very minor: scenes of the Saxon characters stabbing some of the Viking invaders have been trimmed but research suggests these cuts may amount to only a few frames in total.

The edits to The War Machines were similarly extensive and with the Nigerian prints being the only near-complete sources of episodes 1, 3 and 4 (an Australian film collector had returned a poor quality, but complete, copy of episode 2 in 1978) the reconstruction of this story has been a greater challenge. The Nigerian print of episode 1 is actually complete, with the exception of odd single frames removed, presumably to cover up jarring edits and shot transitions. Episode 2 was restored by splicing sections from the collector print into the better quality Nigerian film. Many portions removed from the last two episodes were contained in the Australian censor clips, and a scene from episode 4 had been incorporated into a contemporary Blue Peter episode (a film recording of which survives to this day). Other short sections which were still missing were covered up by using cutaway shots and Graham Strong's audio recordings of the episodes.

Two sequences from the story are still missing - these comprise a further minute of action from the warehouse fight in episode 3 (the audio exists but is of little use since no characters speak during this section of the fight) and a short section of dialogue from episode 4. This dialogue occurs when Polly reports back to WOTAN:

Brett: WOTAN will consider your case later. If found guilty you will be destroyed.
Polly: I understand.
Krimpton: For the moment your help is needed here.
(The RED text indicates the missing portion.)

Owing to the offset between sound and picture on prints with a combined optical soundtrack (as the standard BBC Enterprises overseas sales prints were), and the fact that the original edits were made simply by cutting and re-splicing the film, the last half of Krimpton's line is seen but not heard. The Restoration Team had planned to cover this gap by using cutaways to other shots, but no suitable candidates could be found and the edit therefore had to remain in the finished video. A more in-depth article concerning the restoration of The War Machines can be found under the VHS Releases section of the Restoration Team website.

Q. Is it true a "slash print" of The Wheel in Space episode 6 exists?

No!  This is another very common misconception, which stems from the earliest bootleg copies of the episode that were floating around fan circles. Unlike many episodes of the era, The Wheel in Space episode six was telerecorded directly onto 35mm film out of the studio (as from a live broadcast, although the episode itself was not transmitted live), rather than recorded onto videotape as was the more normal case – this was almost certainly because it would have required more extensive editing than usual, which was easier to do on film than videotape in those days. (It should be pointed out that even 16mm telerecording systems, if handled correctly, are capable of delivering results comparable in picture quality to videotape, and 35mm systems are even better). The studio sound was recorded onto the optical soundtrack of the film, as well as onto a separate 35mm magnetic film soundtrack. The film was edited in the conventional way, with pictures and magnetic sound being edited and then the sound mixed down onto another 35mm magnetic film for use on transmission. The crucial point here is that the edited film still contained the parts of the optical soundtrack recorded from the studio, although it was never intended to be used. Because there is a physical offset of 20 frames between sound and pictures on 35mm film (or 26 frames on 16mm), whenever the pictures are edited the optical soundtrack runs on for a fraction of a second after the cut into the beginning of the next shot– and the sound for the new shot hence starts slightly late (a similar an effect can be seen on the raw versions of the Australian censor clips, where, because the edits to the original episodes had been made by physically cutting the film and splicing it back together again, the soundtrack contains a few fractions of a second of sound from the portion of the programme immediately following the cut). Also, because the optical soundtrack contains only material recorded from the studio, it will not contain some music and effects added in post-production.

The early fan copies mistakenly used the optical track, instead of the final mix magnetic master, hence the audio is unfinished and out of synch with the picture edits – and thus was the myth of the slash print born!  The complete version of the episode is available on the compilation tape Cybermen: The Early Years (BBCV 4813, released in 1992).

Q. Are the BBC master copies of The War Games damaged?

Yes, but the problem is not serious.  The BBC Film Library held episodes 2, 5, 8 and 9 of this story when catalogued in 1978, however at some point prior to this the British Film Institute (BFI) had been donated all ten episodes (along with two other season six stories, The Dominators and The Krotons).  The BFI copies were used to complete the story in the BBC Film and Videotape library and that appeared to be the end of the story.  In 2003 however a routine check of the BBC's 16mm film recordings revealed water damage to episodes 1 to 4 and 6 which would make them unsuitable for mastering a DVD release.  The BFI have since confirmed that they hold what are almost certainly the original film recording negatives of all ten episodes and that they will grant BBC representatives access to these when required.  This will not be until the serial is prepared for DVD release but the alternative, superior quality source of master material means the damage to the BBC prints is not as problematic as was first thought.

Q. Is it possible to recover a colour signal from a monochrome film recording?

In short: theoretically, yes but in practice almost certainly no.  To explain more fully: when a colour videotape was used as the source for monochrome film recordings (as for the majority of the Pertwee stories made available for overseas sale) the "best practice" was to use a notch filter to remove the colour signal centred on 4.43 MHz, as the film recorders used by the BBC were sensitive enough to pick out this information and record it.  A recording not so treated would be liable to reproduce spurious colour on professional playback equipment, as the colour information would be detected but is present in a scrambled form (this is a similar phenomenon to that seen when multi-generational VHS copies of monochrome material are made and may play back with spurious colour on some systems).  Theoretically it would be possible to recover this colour signal and descramble it to reconstruct the original colour signal.  In practice this is fraught with difficulties including the fact that film recordings are invariably slightly cropped compared to the originals (meaning loss of some of the colour signal) and that the signal is not only scrambled within each frame but there may well be cross-contamination between frames as well.  To recover even a partial signal requires reconstruction (most likely by trial-and-error) of the scanning pattern of the film recorder device, which would not only vary between recorder machines but quite possibly between individual recordings made on a particular machine.  At the peak of the film recording system, the BBC had over 20 machines which were of several different specifications.  Ian Williams considers the matter in some detail at his Doctor Who Technical Forum FAQ page.  Test footage from a Top of the Pops film recording was analysed some years ago and produced results which were acceptable in some areas of the picture but were by no means usable as anything other than a reference for other methods of introducing colour.

Q. What is "reverse standards conversion"?

When it was discovered that many Pertwee-era episodes of Doctor Who that had been made in colour, were now only held by the BBC as black and white film recordings, a search for colour copies was instigated.  This bore fruit with NTSC colour 2" broadcast quality tapes of over 30 episodes being returned by TV Ontario in Canada between 1979 and 1985.  The conversion process by which these 525-line, 30 frames-per-second tapes were made from the original BBC 625-line, 25 frames-per-second tapes was somewhat crude and often relied on creating new (duplicated) video fields to achieve the required 30 frames-per-second rate.  These were then converted back to 625/25 tapes for use in BBC Video releases and future repeats/sales abroad.  The crude early 1970s standards conversions result in jerky motion and other undesirable artefacts which are still evident even if modern standards conversions (using digital technology and motion vector prediction) are done on the 525/30 tapes.  A software system has been developed to predict how the original (wiped) 625/25 tapes would have looked and to "unpick" the 525/30 conversions to recreate the original images.  Until recently, the software required expensive SGI/Irix computer systems and was not considered financially viable. As generic PC power increased according to Moore's Law it has now become viable to run the process overnight on a standard PC to process an episode. As a result it is expected that BBC DVD releases will begin to showcase this restoration technique from 2005 onwards.

Q. What is "VidFIRE"?

VidFIRE^TM is a method of recreating the fluid, video-look that most 1960s Doctor Who episodes had when originally broadcast.  It is an acronym for VIDeo Field Interpolation Restoration Effect and was developed by members of the Doctor Who Restoration Team.  Ian Williams' pages have more detail, but briefly the method works by analysing adjacent frames on a film recording of a programme (which are 1/25th of a second apart in time) and attempting to create a new frame between the original two, 1/50th of a second apart from each one.  VidFIRE made its public debut in late 2001 when two episodes of Dad's Army were repeated on BBC 2.  The effect was highly convincing for static studio shots but produced some noticeable side effects on areas of fast motion as well as scenes with complex backgrounds.  As the method has been refined, some of these problems have been overcome.  Problems remain with certain types of film recording, where two fields from the original videotape (which are 1/50th of a second apart in time) are recorded onto the same frame of the film.  Effectively they are now "locked together" but scenes of fast movement mean they may differ substantially, as fast-moving objects may move relatively long distances in 1/50th of a second!  The latter effect may still cause problems when programme material is treated with the VidFIRE but is much more difficult to overcome.  The use of VidFIRE is now commonplace on Doctor Who DVD and VHS releases and it must be said that the DVD release of The Aztecs (BBCDVD 1099, released October 2002) and The Seeds of Death (BBCDVD 1151, released February 2003) benefit greatly from the effect.