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.”

Introduction

Well, here it is then, the first page of my new blog and I suppose I should tell you what it is all about then.

It is many things to many people for instance to me it's a space where I can dazzle you all whilst laying out my uniquely original and insightful thoughts on my interests with razor sharp wit and grace.

To others, it is the frothing, gibbering, incoherent nonsensical ramblings of somebody who is old enough to know better. It definitely isn't big and it definitely isn't funny!

"But what is it about?"

It's about my attempts to make sense of the Omnirumour and attempt to understand what missing (or previously missing if you prefer) episodes of vintage sixties and seventies TV series may have been recovered by the founder of TIEA Philip Morris. So there will be rumours, research, analysis and inference - expect lots of inference.

This blog does expect some familiarity with the Omnirumour itself and will no doubt veer off into surrounding areas which may not seem whole relevant but will hopefully redeem themselves.

A couple of sites I am sure you are familiar with but are worth mentioning to the uninitiated are:

http://www.broadwcast.org

For all things Doctor Who and television distribution related: http://marsanditscanals.blogspot.co.uk/ 

The blog of the indomitable J O'Donnell who describes his blog as "A journal of pointless and suspect research into television history. Mainly about Doctor Who."

Enjoy,
Steve