Ford's Blog: My Earnest Review :)

There is a rather annoying twat by the name of Ford Timelord. Here is his blog: https://fordtimelordblog.wordpress.com/ But! Before you waste your time clicking on it, read on and save yourself the hassle as most of it will fit on the back of a postage stamp!

His first page of any note just has a couple of JPGs. No dates or nuffink! Noob. So to save you the monotony of having to trawl through this one-armed bandit's break from his latest self-polishing project, here they are:

So what precisely does this research amount to? Bugger all. The guy's a putz.

His next post "TIE Discovery" is just reheated forum quotes from www.planetmondas.com and wherever - so skip that.

After that, his analysis is another equally childlike and pathetic (Hi Ford!) attempt which amounts to another couple of clippings, so here they are:

Sad, isn't it?

God only knows why Ford feels that his next post deserves to be split into two parts (one per clipping now?), but it's about TIE (Productions) Ltd. And here it is:

Did you enjoy that?

Part 2 of the post:

What follow [sic] are some examples of the material produced by TIE (Productions) Ltd.1) ‘Primary School Science – Support for the Teacher (Original)’This educational programme was produced in 1980. It is held in the British Film Archive collection. Details can be found here:http://collections-search.bfi.org.uk/web/Details/ChoiceFilmWorks/1500963522) ‘Churchill the Man’.A film produced in 1973 by Television International Enterprises. It reviews the life and career of the British politician and statesman Sir Winston Churchill. It was released in the USA by Pyramid Films. Produced by Peter Lambert and narrated by Douglas Fairbanks. Possibly held by the US Library of Congress.3) ‘Everest, Ocean in the Sky’.A documentary about an expedition taken in 1986, mounted by SAS founder Sir David Stirling to retrace the Mallory & Irvine route up the North-East ridge of Mount Everest. The resulting documentary was shot at altitudes over 21,000 feet which to that point had never been filmed with professional camera equipment.Undoubtably further programming was made by TIE (Productions) Ltd. Presumably the mastertapes or films were stored somewhere.TIE hub anyone?

And there you have ladies and gentleman. All that build up for the final sentence, "TIE hub anyone?".

Fuck me...

And for his most recent contribution we have this:

I have elided the beginning because it just wasn't worth repeating. He goes on:

And the following Forbes article is worth a read: https://www.forbes.com/sites/olliebarder/2016/03/08/doctor-who-fandom-in-japan-has-definitely-regenerated/#6184d9063388

 Specifically, the following paragraph is of interest:

Everyone wanted to know more but it’s here a degree of frustration became apparent, while some of the classic series had made it to Japan during the 70s (dubbed into Japanese on TBS) much of Doctor Who’s lineage was still inaccessible to the fanbase here.

Doctor Who dubbed into Japanese and broadcast in the 1970’s?  Yet no existence of this in BBC records? Maybe someone else provided the film prints.

“Konichiwa. Is that TBS? Do you have any old episodes of British TV series in your vault that you want to get rid of?”

So there we have it. A stranger to punctuation, accreditation of newspaper clippings (what publications were these? What dates where they?) and worthy analysis, who is never in any danger of being relevant or interesting.

Well done, Ford. Once again you have proven yourself to be a monumental putz and waste of time

Cheers, you donkey felching fuckwit. : )

I believe the last clipping came from an edition of Advertisers Weekly in 1968.

You can find his blog here: https://fordtimelordblog.wordpress.com/

Or follow him on twitter here: https://twitter.com/WGU18G

Options

I thought I would try and assess the likelihood of returns from certain avenues of investigation - just for my own amusement.
Cinemas and Mobile Cinemas:

In Brazil the TV signal didn’t extend over what is a very large land mass indeed; therefore, prints had to go into distribution through Cinema circulation. I imagine something similar could have happened in Nigeria, but as Philip Morris said, at the Pandorica Convention, Nigeria’s Cinemas largely went bust in the eighties, things changed when Nollywood started up in the early nineties, but that isn’t strictly relevant. Places like Jamaica had Mobile Cinemas, but as always these were mainly for educational purposes and the prints would not have had a stable resting place. I personally feel prints are unlikely to have turned up via this avenue and would most likely be educational or locally produced material and news films if they did. As the countries that are most likely to have been the final resting place for these items don’t have much economic stability then I think this compounds the unlikeliness of something being recovered via this route.

Universities, Embassies, Hospitals and other Governmental institutions:
The BBC always offered first refusal to the National Broadcaster when it came to selling televisual material and most National Broadcasters in the poorer countries were run under Government or Quasi-Governmental departments: The Department of Education or the Department of Information, for example. Some Embassies actually edited film prints, which were sent out to Universities for educational purposes and in the case of ETV in Ethiopia, the Broadcaster was actually located in Addis Ababa City Hall. As I have mentioned before, there were plans to use localised Hub distribution from educational or information departments under the guise of Media Centres.

National Broadcasters:
These places didn’t have a lot of storage space. If there was any kind of recall, and in the case of VT which was expensive and reusable there certainly was, then locating these prints to return or destroy should have been fairly easy. However, paperwork is notoriously unreliable. It isn’t hard to imagine a whole plethora of ways in which material could have survived and leaked into circulation. Logistically unless things are somehow misplaced then they are unlikely to have survived. ‘Tomb’ was sent back along the bicycling-chain so there was no record of its location. ‘Web’ and ‘Enemy’ were sent to another local broadcaster supposedly illegally – I say supposedly because no paperwork has survived which doesn’t guarantee this was an illegal transaction, although it’s a fair assumption to make and we know they did happen. Phil Morris has even contradicted his, “They never throw anything away” statement from the original Facebook Missing Episodes Q&A at the Pandorica Convention with a story about how Lagos dumped prints on the beach and a couple of other references I can’t recall right now.

Private Collectors and Ex-Employees of TV stations:
Prints are most likely to have entered circulation through Employees of TV stations or people retrieving items from skips. Prints being returned via this route could depend upon the philanthropic nature of the individual and would certainly be one of the hardest to quantify the chances. Auctions would be untraceable and every instance is unique.

Audition Prints:
Audition prints are nothing special. Once it was purchased it was no longer an audition print, but then set could be used or broken up for audition purposes. I have a theory that a set would be sent out for audition purposes but if other requested an audition print rather than get another print sent out it would be more economical to split a set. There was a broadcaster in Brazil, Global TV I think, that used to order Audition Prints; broadcaster them and then return them refusing to pay for them. Obviously, sending part of a serial rather than the whole thing would be a wise move to prevent this kind of practice.

National Archives:
A lot of countries in Africa still don’t have National Film Archives. I don’t think TIEA would even entertain the idea of searching a whole archive without reason, be it financial or otherwise, despite Morris’s famed tenacity.

TV recordings:
Illicit copies by employees are possible and did happen on a small scale, but this is a situation that’s very similar to the Private Collectors scenario. Obviously, prints would more likely than not be close to their point of origin, but the story about illicit copies being made and then the guy moving to Ireland are could be true. It’s been a long time and neither people, or prints are static, but obviously big cities or capitals are more likely locations for recoveries provided they haven’t been passed along the Collector chain.

Hubs/Distribution Points, Airports, Bonded Storage and Customs:
I could have just given this the heading, “Red-Tape”. This would obviously, be only relevant to poorer, more corrupt and disorganised countries, but would be a massive boost for the chances of returns. If proven true. I could write quite a long post about this, but I think that’s outside the scope of what this post intended to achieve.

Private Auctions:
This is a no go really, as lot descriptions are often vague and bidders are usually untraceable.

Other:
There is something unconsidered, or an outlier. Prints have been found frozen inland fill under the permafrost of the Yukon, Ivor the Engine episodes were found in a pig pen on a farm and the recent ‘Do Not Adjust Your Set’ episode found with a French Awards Organisation are all clear reasons to, “Expect the unexpected.”

64,000 Film Cans

Two posts today, I really am spoiling you. I gave a lot of thought to what I was going to post but then realised it was all bollocks and posted this instead. A few people have said on very occasions this past month or so, "Have you found anything in your research that proves the Omnirumour?" Of course, the answer to this is no. Only one thing would prove the existence of more episodes and that is a clip of the episode itself. Although some would still claim that only the clip itself had been found. If a clip had surfaced somewhere nobody would dare post it as that could cause all sorts of potential problems or delays.

My personal paradigm is to try and disprove the most suspect rumours in order to sort the wheat from the chaff as it were. That which can't be disproved I then consider whether I personally believe it and there is a lot if you look that can't be disproved. So I see no need to be glum.

One thing that I think has been disproved is the notion of a TIE hub. It makes no sense logistically to insert an extra node into an ad-hoc distribution topology that already has plenty of redundancy. The costs of maintaining a facility and the return to the hub make economically unsound. Especially when there are statements like this one to consider:

As far as I can ascertain that is from early 1964 so there was plenty of time for things to change although I see no reason to suggest that TIE would suddenly switch from moving things from station to station as required to adopting such a nonsensical business model. Of course, there is always that blind spot. That unknown variable that we just can't predict or compensate for. I have been wrong before and will surely be so again but there is little that can be done about that. We don't always get to make decisions knowing all there is to know. Often we have to make choices without all the available information. If somebody said to you that your house was burning down would you demand proof or go back and check on your house? At the end of the day, nothing is lost through daring to be wrong.

So what rumours do I think are credible? Well, the idea that 90 out of what was at the time 106 missing episodes being found is on the face of it rather borderline and considering how poorly Power of the Daleks and Evil of the Daleks were known to have sold then something rather unlikely has to have happened. So sticking to just the highly likely certainly isn't going to give us the full picture but for me it cannot be satisfactorily disproved.

I also find the high number of film cans and tapes (let's say 64,000 with a 54,000/10,000 split in favour of film prints) plausible. I also find the idea that it could all be British material plausible. Although I think the majority would be ITV material and not missing, then there are dupes to consider but the thing that amazes me about this one is the people are so keen to ignore the context of the 64,000 number. Finds in Australia and Hong Kong I also think are highly probable, although Australia would probably only yield a couple of stories at most and most likely from a private collector. Anyway, there are three rumours there and I am sure I could find more, such as anything Anneke Wills says for one.

So is not knowing a blessing or a curse? Probably a bit of both to be honest but I am as upbeat as ever. Don't get me wrong there are plenty of times I yearn for this to be over and one day it will but I am digressing. The point of all this is that some people I have spoken to have become increasingly frustrated at the lack of evidence whereas I see it as hope. Not being able to prove something is not necessarily such a burden.

Sierra Leone: Pheonix or Final Resting Place?

In January 1999, Sierra Leone’s capital city, Freetown, came under a bloody three-week occupation. This was part of a civil war that had begun in 1991 and would last until 2002. During these three weeks, the SLBS studios and Gramophone library were destroyed.

The History:

Sierra Leone’s SLTV began in Freetown on the 27th of April 1963. SLTV jointly owned by the government (40%) and TIE Ltd, NBC, RCA and Thompson international holding owning the other 60%. This turnkey TV station was equipped with equipment for broadcasting films and live programmes but lacked any means of recording local programmes. This essentially limited the station to the role of exhibitor for the UK and US television producers the jointly owned SLTV.

During the next five years, SLTV provided a service which was on-air for 4-5 hours a day with 75% of its TV schedule being composed of imported material. This lasted until 1967 when NBC and RCA withdrew their interests and SLTV merged with SLBS (Sierra Leone’s radio station) for about six weeks. Due to difficulties they separated again until finally merging again in 1971. By this time, the television broadcasting equipment, after years of neglect, was in a state of disrepair. Attempts to create local programmes had been thwarted by a lack of equipment and properly trained staff. Until, in the same year, some second-hand foreign equipment was purchased including two videotape recorders.

Construction began on a new ‘Broadcasting House’ in 1974. Broadcasts continued from the old building and improved signal strength now allowed for transmissions to extend beyond Freetown. Frequent equipment and power failures resulted in frequent periods of dead air. Breaks in transmission lasted days, weeks or even longer. In one survey in the late seventies, only 0.6% of the population of Freetown responded that they were happy with the quality of the picture on their sets. Building work on the new structure was never completed. In the early-1980s, the roof of the original Broadcasting House collapsed during a storm with leaving all the stored equipment to be damaged beyond repair.

In 1987, the government sold the colour PAL transmitter that had been installed in 1978. At this point, all transmissions ceased until the television service resumed in 1993 with the backing of a private consortium from Hong Kong. The consortium began work on a second new ‘Broadcasting House’. This was adjacent to the abandoned project that began in 1974. In 1995, the original new Broadcasting House was converted to class rooms for a local university who vacated the premises in 2009 with ownership of the building reverting to SLBS. 2010 saw the SLBS replaced SLBC

The Rumour:

We had a first hand account and a dated description of what was seen. This was passed onto Steve Roberts and the description described "the first one with the white hair" and the story was "about cavemen living in a wilderness outside a futuristic city who were captured and put in a machine and tortured."

The date then given was 1982/83 and was for that single story. The information was forwarded to Steve in 2009.

Regards,

Paul

http://missingepisodes.proboards.com/thread/7956/all-rumours-discussion?page=10&scrollTo=81762

In addition to the above quote from Paul Vanezis, Richard Molesworth states: 

“Certain records were also found, which indicated that the fate of the 16mm prints of certain stories sent to Sierra Leone was uncertain: 'Galaxy 4', 'The Myth Makers', 'The Massacre', 'The Savages' & 'The Celestial Toymaker' were the stories in question. This certainly tied in with the report of the 1980s screening. But it was very clear that if these films were still in the country in the 1980s, then they were later destroyed during the war in the 1990s.”

http://gallifreybase.com/forum/showthread.php?p=9948076&highlight=sierra+leone#post9948076

And onto yet another statement by an authority on the subject, during a  Facebook Q&A Philip Morris Director of TIEA stated:

"Hi Michael yes I have found evidence of audition prints.Yes I have visited sierra leonne .and I do posses there programme traffic records .I can tell you all Doctor Who prints were sent back to london in 1974.”

And further to that, Philip Morris in December 2016 had this to add surrounding the events in 1999:

 "People always thought that Sierra Leone had… there was a fire there, they had… the story with Sierra Leone, I was there, I worked quite closely with the head of their station. Their archive (Gramaphone Library) had been destroyed. The story is that it was destroyed by the head of the rebel group because he thought that they had some film of him which would then go to the UN and he’d be tried for war crimes. So he decided to shoot a mortar shell at the big metal shed which was the archive (Gramaphone Library). Burnt it to the ground. However, there weren’t any Doctor Who episodes there. They were returned to London in the early seventies. And from then… well, we don’t know what happened. It’s all right saying well they’ve gone back to London and been destroyed, well were they? We don’t know. There’s no-one can tell you that for sure."

In an attempt to add some clarity, the observations of Wolfgang Bender should be noted. This comment in particular is intriguing:

“Wolfgang Bender’s (1987) meticulous inventory of SLBS’s Gramophone Library further testifies the relatively broad output of popular records, both local and from other African countries, during the 1950s and early ‘60s. Besides the mass-produced Tin Pan Alley sounds and the growing number of released maringa, highlife, calypso, palm wine etc. songs, Freetown’s music and recording scene of the 1950s was further eked by a number of traditional musicians from upcountry. The B-Side of Bender’s (1988) collection of 1950s’ recordings from Freetown indicates a wide range of musicians from the provinces who came to the city’s studios to record their performances.”

https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/bitstream/handle/1887/22179/ASC-075287668-3302-01.pdf?sequence=2

A poster by the name of Jason Mahoney Jason Mahoney on www.planetmondas.com had this to contribute: 

“Had a reply from that German professor who copied some African music from the Sierra Leone Broadcasting Service gramophone library that was destroyed in 1999. He confirms that he only dealt with African music and that no film material was kept in the gramophone library.

He also states that there was a separate TV building to the gramophone library. The gramophone library was a kind of shed whereas the TV building was constructed from concrete.

I've got another contact to try who should be able to provide further information.

I also notice my post about Sierra Leone over at MEF has quietly been deleted. No matter, it's recorded here for posterity and is based on a post from GB anyway. 

One final bit of information. The German Professor recalls a large fire in the early 1990's at a TV station in Accra, Ghana (GBC) where a lot of tv and film footage was destroyed.”

And then another post fills in detail, here:

Jason Mahoney » Mon Sep 30, 2013 9:21 pm

“Sierra Leone.

Some interesting information, not concerning Doctor Who but to do with the archiving of materials. I have referred previously to the archiving of the contents of the Sierra Leone Gramophone Library (destroyed in the civil war in January 1999). Copies were made of some of the contents of the library prior to this and then these were later used to restore some of the destroyed music collection in Sierra Leone.

It seems this was not a one-off project but part of a systematic approach throughout Africa. Music collections from Ghana, Malawi, and Rwanda were also archived by the 'African Music Archive' in Mainz. Germany. There were also plans to preserve collections in Cameroon, the Republic of Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo (separate state, formerly Zaire), more from Ghana, and Nigeria.
What this shows is that in the 1980s / 1990s there was a concerted effort to archive or back up these music collections. If only the BBC or other party had done the same for Doctor Who''s Missing Episodes.
What's also interesting is that apparently there was a lot of "bootlegging" going on (illegal copying of material).

Here's a couple of pictures from the Sierra Leone Broadcasting Service in the 1980's. Music and radio related I'm afraid but gives you a taste of the facilities.”

"To reiterate the gramophone library was located in the Original Broadcasting House 1. But music collections were backed up and stored elsewhere before they were destroyed in 1999."

Suspicion Over The Timeline:

Elsewhere on the Missing Episodes Forum Dec 16, 2011 Paul Vanezis stated that:

"Guys, seriously, there is nothing there anymore. If we had the slightest inkling there was we would go personally.

There are no missing DW films in Sierra Leone. The station was shelled and burned down. Any film was destroyed entirely. I admire your enthusiasm for the search, particularly after the latest recoveries, but energies need to be expended elsewhere.

Regards,
Paul”

http://missingepisodes.proboards.com/thread/6653

Much later on PMF (April 2014) Snacky presented a photo of Philip Morris outside the gates of the new Sierra Leone television station:

“Check the metadata on the photo. The date says January 25, 2012, shortly after Paul Vanezis had denied that Phil had ever been there. Time stamps can be forged, of course, but why would it be forged to an earlier date? Rigelsford supposedly said Phil Morris had just come back from Sierra Leone when he gave that picture to Aron recently, but the date was much earlier.”

I think I see one possible reason why TIEA was in SL in Jan 2012:

"For now, the SLBC is running old programs of its two predecessors, and as such, it cannot yet be described as the new voice of a free Sierra Leone. Indeed, Kaikai appealed to Sierra Leoneans to be patient; he said the SLBC needs at least 18 months to become fully functional internally and another six months or so to develop an original slate of programs."

http://www.audiencescapes.org/resources/field-blog/will-sierra-leones-slbc-fulfill-its-public-mission/will-sierra-leones-slbc-fulf

(Page has since been removed, but archived here: https://web.archive.org/web/20120306191705/http://www.audiencescapes.org/resources/field-blog/will-sierra-leones-slbc-fulfill-its-public-mission/will-sierra-leones-slbc-fulf)

It is possible that TIEA could have been helping with the SLBC get on its feet after the restructuring and rebranding away from SLBS. And of course taken the opportunity to delve into the archives.

Still speculation was rife on the MEF:

"Rubbish! The television vaults at Sierra Leone are far from destroyed! I known of two people who are employed as researchers there and I was in touch with them only two years ago. I did ask then about the rumours about the civil war reducing the building to rubble but they denied this saying that only the entrance suffered damage during a mortar attack. The complete destruction reported widely stems from propaganda stories initiated by the opposition forces (they also reported the apparent destruction of other landmarks). I will definitely ask them next time I contact them to enquire exactly what’s in the archives. It’s probably more a case of what has been saved to this day than what’s been blown to smithereens."

http://missingepisodes.proboards.com/thread/9023/missing-episode-rumours?page=11

In the End:

I doubt there is much room for any missing television material to have remained but there is always the possibility of a small number of prints to have survived somehow. Though let's not forget the stories of the Doctor Who serial 'The Savages' having been screened in Sierra Leone in the early eighties, but you can read more about that here: 

http://marsanditscanals.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/the-sierra-leone-doug-mcclure-conjecture.html

Sources:

http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0003/000325/032528EB.pdf

http://gallifreybase.com/w/index.php/Sierra_Leone

Jason Mahoney and www.planetmondas.com (All Rights Reserved © 2015 & ™ by Jason Mahoney) :http://www.planetmondas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=2479&p=74131&hilit=+wolfgang+bender#p74131

http://missingepisodes.proboards.com

National Archives file: FO 953/2155, CO 1027/503, DO 191/235

http://www.audiencescapes.org/resources/field-blog/will-sierra-leones-slbc-fulfill-its-public-mission/will-sierra-leones-slbc-fulf

http://marsanditscanals.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/the-sierra-leone-doug-mcclure-conjecture.html
http://marsanditscanals.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/part-8.html