The Film is Fabulous! team has published the first in a series of new articles, written exclusively for them. TV Historian Oliver Crocker has interviewed archive legend Sue Malden, and the result is a lengthy feature entitled “The Past, Present and Future of Doctor Who Missing Episodes“.
It’s especially wonderful to see her work celebrated, just as news comes that two more more Missing Episodes, both from The Daleks’ Master Plan, have been recovered… and that restored versions of the episodes will be released on BBC iPlayer this Easter.
During the interview, Sue outlined her early work at the BBC, and how she was appointed to the groundbreaking new role of BBC television’s first archive selector; a role specially created following criticism of the corporation’s neglectful approach to retaining programmes.
Sue also explains why she chose Doctor Who, a series she’d watched when William Hartnell was in the title role, as the series upon which to discover why there were so many gaps in the BBC archive’s holdings.
“It was between Doctor Who, Dixon of Dock Green and Z Cars, all of which had such a long stretch of transmission. I knew that Z Cars was in a bad state; when I worked on 40 Years [a historical compilation of BBC output] there were only three episodes from the first series available as film recordings. That’s why, until Paul Vanezis found all those episodes in Cyprus, you only ever saw the same clip of Brian Blessed and Joseph Brady bouncing up and down in their police car.”
Having chosen Doctor Who to be the case study, Sue began the painstaking process of determining how many of the 479 episodes broadcast between 1963 and 1978 had survived. Sadly, the computer printouts revealed that the original master tapes for every 1960s recording of the series had already been wiped. With no videotapes to track down for the Time Lord’s earliest adventures, Sue headed to the BBC film library at Ealing Studios to find out if any stories survived as 16mm telerecordings.
• BBC News: Lost Doctor Who episodes found in ‘eclectic’ collection
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John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.
He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.
Categories: Doctor Who, downthetubes News, Other Worlds, Television
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We owe Sue Malden so much. Many thanks forever and always.
Especially wonderful to see her work celebrated, just as news comes that two more more Missing Episodes, both from The Daleks’ Master Plan, have been recovered… and that restored versions of the episodes will be released on BBC iPlayer this Easter.