2015
March 2015
12-13 – Industry group Archiving
Tomorrow screen the Kaleidoscope/BFI documentary, The Native Hue of Resolution. Sue Malden, former BBC lead archivist,
attends the two day industry event.
June
22 – On PMF, Tom Spilsbury comments
that he had heard the rumours for some time before the reveal in October 2013,
and that he initially believed them and in fact even helped spread them. He
claims not to be aware of the origin of the rumours, however. He further says
he eventually realised his error as more and more time went past, and so he
tried to “dampen” people’s expectations by posting on forums.
Tom further said that he expects no
animations will take place again, as every company who has done them has either
gone out of business or made a loss.
27 – However, on Twitter, Chris
Chapman responds to Tom’s statement about animations, stating categorically
that Qurios – a company Tom mentioned – was never commissioned to provide
animation for Doctor Who DVD releases
and therefore didn’t go bust because of a cancellation. He further states that
Planet 55 were the ones commissioned.
The tweets are here:
July
17 – Rich Johnston appears on PMF to clarify once more the source of
the rumours as far as he is concerned: from radio engineers working in
unrelated recording sessions overhearing Doctor
Who production staff gossiping about the rumours.
24 - The boys from 42 to Doomsday release a podcast feature an interview with journalist and author
Dave Hoskin, about his forthcoming book “Chasing Shadows” delving into the
entire the saga of the omnirumour.
In it, Dave is questioned on which rumours he believes are true. He says
that from his research and discussions with his sources, he believes a screening
of The Power of the Daleks at the BFI
happened, and that Marco Polo may
well have been going to be released in 2013 as well as season 1 and 2 boxsets. He
also says that those who originated the rumours did not expect them to become
so widespread and are “embarrassed” at how prevalent they have become.
When asked if there will be “a final reckoning” of the omni, i.e. will
fans ever be told the real and full story of Phil Morris and the missing
episode recoveries, Dave says that Charles Daniels told him that Phil’s book
was going to come out at the end of 2014 and there will be a documentary at
some stage.
Despite the non-appearance of
these, Dave feels this is all still happening.
24 – Meanwhile, MB1 member shuz/nospaces
draws attention to a thread on MEF and an article on BBC News. A lost two-part BBC documentary on the man behind the Peter
Sellers Gang Show – narrated by Sellers himself – has been found. In the thread
on MEF, Richard Latto (who was originally searching for the doco) thanks Phil
Morris and TIEA for “transferring” it.
24 – An article on BBC News announces that a lost album of songs by Micky
Dolenz – the drummer from The Monkees – has been found. The find, by “massive”
Monkees fan Iain Lee, came about as a result of interactions on social media,
and a mysterious email from a man who wrote: “I cannot tell you who I am, but I
think I know where the master tapes are.”
August
20 – In a surprise announcement, Fantom Films reveal that Philip Morris will attend the Bristol Pandorica convention over the weekend of 25-27 September
2015.
September
2 – Members of various fora point out
that the much-delayed and formerly cancelled DVD release of The Underwater Menace is now listed on BBC Shop with a release date of 26 October 2016.
News site DWN later tweet to say that BBC Worldwide have
confirmed to them the R2 release is genuine. There is still no word on whether
episodes 1 and 4 will be animations, recons, or the found episodes themselves.
8 – Chris Chapman tweets again in relation to animation studio, Qurios (see 27
June 2015). He says that three serials were going to be test animated in full
colour: The Daleks’ Master Plan, The Tenth Planet and Evil of the Daleks. He supplies link to
a 51-second clip of the test animation for DMP. Chris clarifies that there was a hope at one stage that
they would animate the entirety of DMP.
9 – In a comment on the Kickstarter page for 'The Native Hue
of Resolution' DVD, creator Chris Perry states that the release date for backers
is now 12 September.
11 – After personally emailing all
major retailers, including the BBC, the ABC and others, as at today’s date
no-one can supply any further information about The Underwater Menace other than its already-known R2 release date.
Update: in an email response from the
Australian distributor Roadshow Entertainment, the R4 release date for The Underwater Menace is confirmed as 2
December 2015.
12 – MB1 forum runner, The Space Pirate, is told personally by an acquaintance that all six episodes
of The Wheel in Space have been sold
back to the BBC by a Sydney film collector who is an ex-ABC employee. (Unfortunately this story later turns out to be false.)
15 – Pam Roston announces via the MEF that the recovered comedy classic, the formerly
missing episode of At Last the 1948 Show, will be shown at the Radio Times
Festival later this month.
17 – BBC Director-General Lord Tony
Hall, in an announcement about a BBC streaming service being
made available in the US, confirms that the BBC Store will open “next month”
(i.e., October 2015).
22 – The 60th anniversary
of ITV comes and goes with no missing material being announced.
23 – A new member on GB, Ken Sanders,
posts that a friend of his who works at BBC Home
Entertainment told him that the DVD for The Underwater Menace will contain
passwords for “downloadable content”. Sanders wonders whether this content
could be the missing episodes of the serial. Further, he adds that the reason
for the delay on the DVD release has been due to the delays of the iPlayer
service (read: BBC Store) coming online, as this will be the platform on which
the DLC will be available.
29 - On MEF, Paul Vanezis weighs in on the debate over the date of episode 3 of The Web of Fear. He doesn't believe it was sold into the hands of a private collector; rather, someone at the station was curious why someone was interested in all these "old films", and took it in order to do more research. Once he realised the worth of the item, he kept it and denied all knowledge. Paul doesn't think we'll be seeing it "any time soon".
Paul also says this is why he stopped updating the Africa Progress thread.
30 - GB publishes a news article quoting Philip Morris at the Pandorica Convention about the loss of The Web of Fear: quotes reproduced here in full:
"This is a little bit of a revelation here now. There were twelve cans there, The Web of Fear was complete, the Enemy of the World was complete. I photographed them, the items were recorded, I knew exactly what was there. I said to one of the guys that was there with me, who works for me “make sure you put these films somewhere safe”. Because normally when you find something, you know it might disappear. I certainly didn’t want that to happen. So he put the films somewhere but as he was doing so the station manager came up and said “I’ll take that” and took one can, which was Episode 3, to his office. I didn’t know about this until later on. [...] When they were sent back episode 3 was missing. I highlighted it to the head of the NTAs and he said "are you sure? It was there". I said "there’s the photograph, it was complete". He then went back to the head of the station who said "Oh I put it back on the shelf. He said it must have gotten sent back up again and I didn’t believe that. Because it would have been there, it really would. It broke my heart that this piece was missing and I wanted to know why. Now I had let somebody know that I had found it, it was a big mistake, I realise that. And obviously that information leaked out. So, episode 3 was missing.
I went back to Nigeria this year to chase this one down. I spoke to the guy who was the station manager. He said "I put it back on the shelf". I said "I’ve got a photograph here, it was there". I said if it was there it would have been sent back. And then he just said “Well I don’t know anything about missing episodes". And I thought what a strange thing to say. And two days later after that Jos Station was on fire. [...] When I produced the photograph he was "oh dear, he's got proof that this was here." So the strangest thing was when he said to me "I don't know anything about the missing episodes" and I said "well I never mentioned missing episodes" and that was the big cat out of the bag, really so someone's obviously said "that's a missing episode" and offered him money.
It was completely the wrong thing to do, it should have come out with the rest of the story. That's why, you know, we have a sort of long recovery, getting it back to the UK, restoration, waiting on part 3, for that, because it should have been there and I thought it would come back.
And looking at it, this is what I personally think: Somebody rang up, they offered him money, he has taken that, it's been sent by courier, which you would have thought would be within Jos' area, it would be one of the courier companies. I have somebody actually looking at that now for any records... I'm not saying I'm going to print somebody's name online or anything like that, but if I get some kind of contact details I will be writing to the guy and asking them to do the right thing, but we'll see where that leads. Hopefully he'll do it on his own. So that's basically what happened. When you go to a station, you're not allowed to remove programmes, you've got to catalogue what you see, photograph what you see, and then, obviously you go back to the head of the station and you say "this is there, that's over there", and he'll just say "ok" then it goes back to Central, in Nigeria it goes back to Abuja, everything is catalogued so we know what's gonna leave the country, and then it's sent back to the UK.
(Question from an attendee) Do you think it's still in Nigeria, or did it actually make it to the UK? Do you think it's in the UK somewhere?
Phillip Morris: Hmmmmm, no, maybe not in the UK. It might be in Australia, somewhere like that. I don't know, it might be in the UK, but it was somebody - I trusted somebody. And within the space of a week the information was out there, as in someone had mentioned the station, this station had purchased Doctor Who, which it hadn't, and I thought "well hang on a minute, every single state in Nigeria has a newspaper to give you the programme listings, why has this one been pinpointed?" When the whole system worked, everything moved around someone obviously is not aware of that you can only find those details if you're actually aware of them. So it wasn't helpful, and with the project going forward people think "well, he's really secretive" but I have to be. I have to protect those things that come forward until we can tell the story.
(Question from attendee) Do you think that one has been taken because it was the Brigadier's first story?
Phillip Morris: No, it was coincidence. You've got to say, when that guy intervened, and went "I'll take those", it was random. I wish it had been episode one, or Enemy of the World episode three! It really must have been the luck of the draw."
October
11 - GB posts a follow-up news story quoting Phil Morris from Facebook, and a picture purporting to be of the 12 films cans Morris checked in the storage room in Jos where the episodes were found. Morris says that "No undue attention was drawn to the Doctor Who prints by myself or any of my staff, however I instructed one of my trusted team to ensure the Doctor Who prints were hidden until authorisation for retrieval could be obtained."
No comments:
Post a Comment