Monday, 30 May 2011
Wiped! Doctor Who’s Missing Episodes
A NEW book examining how episodes of Doctor Who came to go missing, and then turn up again, is released this September.
Wiped! Doctor Who’s Missing Episodes is written by Doctor Who Restoration Team member Richard Molesworth and published by Telos Publishing.
You can find out more about the book, including a brief interview with the author, over in the Out Now section.
Here’s the official blurb:
In the 1960s, the BBC screened 253 episodes of its cult science fiction show Doctor Who, starring William Hartnell and then Patrick Troughton as the time travelling Doctor. Yet by 1975, the Corporation had wiped the master tapes of every single one of these episodes. Of the 124 Doctor Who episodes starring Jon Pertwee shown between 1970 and 1974, the BBC destroyed over half of the original transmission tapes within two years of their original broadcast.
In the years that followed, the BBC, along with dedicated fans of the series, began the arduous task of trying to track down copies of as many missing Doctor Who episodes as possible. The search covered BBC sales vaults, foreign television stations, overseas archives, and numerous networks of private film collectors, until the tally of missing programmes was reduced to just 108 episodes.
For the first time, this book looks in detail at how the episodes came to be missing in the first place, and examines how material subsequently came to be returned to the BBC. Along the way, those people involved in the recovery of lost slices of Doctor Who’s past tell their stories in candid detail, many for the very first time.
No more rumours, no more misinformation, no more fan gossip. The truth about Doctor Who’s missing episodes can now be told in full!
- Wiped! Doctor Who’s Missing Episodes, by Richard Molesworth, is out September 2010, priced £15.99 (+p&p). You can order a copy from Telos Publishing.
The Rebel Flesh - Final Ratings
The final ratings for The Rebel flesh have now been released. The episode achieved a final official rating of of 7.35 million viewers, representing a 34.1% share of the audience who watched the programme within seven days of broadcast.
Doctor who news page
The Rebel Flesh: Australian ratings
TV Tonight reports that The Rebel Flesh averaged 823,000 viewers in the five major capital cities. Again, it won its national timeslot, was the top-rating drama of the day and the fourth highest rating programme for the day overallThe corresponding Confidential Cutdown also rated a respectable 598,000 viewers in the five major capitals. These overnight figures, however, do not include regional, rural and time-shifted viewers and hence significantly understate the actual national ratings.
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