In message
"Ronnie Clark" wrote:

[snip]

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.

Don't be afraid, I have just heard from Paul Kay, an ex-senior cameraman who
worked on many of the early series that they were indeed all recorded.

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).

Hence the stories Id heard about having to shoot round daleks stalling in the
middle of the studio floor.


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.

You had to coat the recorded side of the tape with a special fluid to show up
the recording tracks and then cut carefully between the tracks using a
special jig. Programmes were charged 50 quid an edit, which was a fortune in
those days.



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.

Not quite sure what you mean by thos, presumably you are referring to the
advent of electronic editing.

[snip]

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).

We'd been using Yellow CSO for Dr Who for quite a lot of the Pertwee series
as well. The reason being that the Tardis was blue! I used to do the
electronic special effects for the programme and we had one episode that was
an absolute nightmare. It involved Katy Manning as the Dr's assistant. Katy
is blond and was wearing a yellow dress, gold make-up, gold tights and yellow
boots. She'd walk out of the Tardis and vanish! We kept having to switch
between blue and yellow CSO which involved physically swapping electronic
modules in the studio equipment bay during recording breaks, something
against BBC engineering guidelines.

[snip]

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.


That is the most probable reason.

--
Graeme Wall
This address is not read, substitute trains for rail.
Transport Miscellany at http://www.greywall.demon.co.uk/rail/index.html