"Graeme Wall" wrote in message
...
In message
"Ronnie Clark" wrote:


"M. J. Powell" wrote in message
...

Was that the one where an actor died on the set and the others ad
libbed
around his part? The sets were in the studio, but as a number of
parallel tunnels. It went out live.

It is an urban myth that Doctor Who ever went out live. It was simply
recorded "as live" for the first few years due to the difficulties in
videotape editing.

It certainly went out live in the very early years, most BBC programmes
did.
[...] The reason being to do with studio scheduling rather than
editing.

I'm afraid the BBC's own paperwork is fairly conclusive, as well as
interviews with Verity Lambert, the show's first producer. Every episode of
Doctor Who was pre-recorded to (mostly to video tape) at least a week before
transmission. It was curious, however, how this progressed in technique over
time. At the very beginning, episodes were recorded on a one-at-a-time
basis. The recording was made "as live" (with as few breaks in recording as
possible). Certain scenes were pre-filmed, and fed in where required to
smooth the process (Though the very first episode, "An Unearthly Child",
with what appear to be complex pre-films for its flashbacks were actually
achieved by clever direction meaning the actors who were on one set only had
to provide voiceovers for the flashbacks), but actual edits were extremely
rare in the first series. This was due to the only way of editing being to
physically cut the 2 inch tape and splice it together. "An Unearthly Child"
contains one edit approximately half-way through.

It was quite some time before more advanced editing techniques made it
possible to record a whole serial in one go, however I vaguely recall that
it started in the middle of the third series.

One serial ("Spearhead From Space", the opening story of the seventh series)
was shot on entirely on film. Not only was this Jon Pertwee's debut, it was
also the first Doctor Who serial to be made in colour. The reason for
shooting on film, however, was not because it was deemed "special", but
because a studio strike meant the serial had to be remounted entirely on
location.

Ironically, the first serial to use outside broadcast taping was Tom Baker's
first story, "Robot", again not because of the debut but because a large
amount of CSO ("blue screen", which was actually yellow for this story) was
required, and CSOing a video image onto film looks rather ropey (see
"Invasion of the Dinosaurs" the year before).

It is sad, but understandable, that the BBC did felt it was a better used of
resources to tape over old programs in the 1970s. This was when most of the
original video tapes of Doctor Who from 1963-1972 were junked (though in at
least two instances, this was in error). Most episodes from this era have
been restored either from overseas film prints, or in some cases from NTSC
transmission tapes and, even more curiously, from home recordings. At least
one episode, 1965's "The Feast Of Steven", the only episode except for
2005's "Christmas Invasion" to premiere on Christmas Day, was never
transferred to film for overseas sale, and is therefore the most likely
candidate for "episode that will never be recovered".

As for the reason why the BBC chose to pre-record Who from the outset: who
knows? As has been pointed out, this was certainly not the norm at the time.
It may be that it was felt that with the requirement for some special
effects, a pre-record was necessary. It is hard to imagine how a
roll-back-and-mix effect (such as the TARDIS de/re-materializing) would be
achieved live.


--
Ronnie
--
Have a great day...
....Have a Great Central day.
www.greatcentralrailway.com