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Martin

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Martin


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Subject:  Galaxy 4 and The Underwater Menace recovery

12/12/2011 11:52 GMT

The recovery time line is: Galaxy 4 (3): Air Lock in July, The Romans (3): Conspiracy on 25 August and The Underwater Menace (2) on 19 September 2011. As The Romans print was superfluous (story is complete) it was announced; the others were unique, and held over to Missing Believed Wiped (a British Film Institute forum devoted to recovered material). A restored Underwater Menace (2) with Australian censor clips reinstated (ex-ABC print) was played at the 11 December 2011 Missing Believed Wiped, with a 5'30'' clip of Galaxy 4 (3).

On to recovery. A film collector named Terry Burnett had bought the unique film prints in the mid-eighties and had only recently found they were missing episodes. Meanwhile he'd shown them to friends, all the while no one knew how valuable they were. The 2004 recovered print of The Daleks' Master Plan (2): Day of Armageddon had been acquired by a BBC trainee who'd risen to become head of engineering at Yorkshire Television; he'd lent it to his University film club in the intervening years! And the 1999 recovered The Crusade (1): The Lion had been part of a NZ film collector's library, which he'd indexed online. For over a year. And no one noticed.

This bodes well, and shows how important publicity is. The Romans came from a whole different recovery; two sources for the three episodes found in 2011, some 44 years after the latest one was made. And all prints were held in active libraries except The Romans, which was from a deceased estate. Any attendee at these film nights could have noted the importance of the prints, which is apparently what eventually happened. How many more ...

And finally the content. The Underwater Menace is long reputed to be one of the worst stories of all time, in part due to script writer Geoffrey Orme's unfamiliarity with the series, some editing which left his villain Professor Zaroff motiveless, and a certain amount of overacting on actor Joseph Furst's behalf. The monsters of the story are the Fish Persons, and three Australian censored clips of Polly undergoing surgery to become a Fish Person were all the video which existed of the episode. With these reinstated it joins the complete episode three, audio track and one clip apiece of the missing episodes (1) and (4), and 66/68 telesnaps, respectively. Those who have seen it are already speaking of "re-evaluation'.

Galaxy 4 occurred at a crossroads in the series, commissioned by departing producer Verity Lambert, filmed at the end of production block two and held over to open series three. There were no existing episodes or telesnaps, but there was the soundtrack plus a clip of episode one filmed off the screen by a fan in Australia. It was selected for inclusion in the documentary series The Lively Arts: Whose Doctor Who, aired on BBC Two on 3 April 1977, A 5'53'' section of episode (1) was duplicated, with a 30' section being cut out for inclusion. The remaining cast offs were given to  Doctor Who Appreciation Society advisors Jan Vincent-Rudzki and Stephen Payne. In 1998 these were incorporated into The Missing Years documentary on The Ice Warriors VHS release. Sadly there are no censor clips to be recovered; as these were apparently destroyed by the National Archives of Australia only months before Damian Shanahan recovered all clips 30 years and younger. As such this is the more significant recovery, although what fandom will make of the returned print is yet to be seen.

106 to go ...

 

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