hughes@mother.DEC (Gary Hughes - CSSE uVAX & AI Systems Group) (05/23/84)
One of the problems with old episodes of Dr Who is that many were made
under a union agreement that limits the number of reruns of each episode.
I'm not sure if this holds for the current episodes. When the older series
had been shown n times the master tapes were destroyed.
Much of the archive material that the BBC has now came from BBC
merchandising who had 16mm prints made of most of the Hartnell stories and
stored them on film canisters marked 'Z Cars' or some other program.
Given that these shows have not been shown in the USA the rerun
restrictions might not apply to them. The restrictions in the UK must have
have been relaxed in order for the 'Five Faces of Doctor Who' season to
have been shown.
Other old episodes have turned up in the hands of collectors and at some of
the foreign TV stations that have been showing Dr Who for a while. Some
older Pertwee stories (The Claws of Axos comes to mind) were found at the
ABC, the Australian cousin of the BBC.
Lastly, a company in Canada is taking the Hartnell story The Tenth Planet
and coloring it using a digital process. This is the last Hartnell story,
and the first regeneration. I do not know how or when it will be released.
Gary
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