Episode: 1110
Title: HPR1110: The Doctor Who Restoration Team
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1110/hpr1110.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 19:04:23

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Hello, faithful HBR listeners, I am Auckland DK and today I want to gush fanboy like about
a group of people who have helped keep my favourite TV show alive and make old archive
tapes look like they were shot yesterday. No, I'm not talking about Star Trek, this goes
back further and with a lot less money. Doctor Who fandom is incredibly lucky, long before
its second coming in 2005, DVD releases of old shows were treated amazingly. We didn't
just get season box sets to the odd commentary. Each story got a dedicated release with full
commentary and professional documentaries and sometimes isolated music tracks. Most importantly,
the picture and sound called had been restored and enhanced to Lucas Gursett had done when first
transmitted. This is all thanks to a loose collection of fans in the TV industry, known unofficially
as the Doctor Who restoration team. The team formed in 1992 when they wanted to restore the
1971 story the day months to colour. You see the BBC archives only contained a black and white
film copy of the original colour video. Video tape in the 60s and 70s was expensive and often
old shows were wiped. About a hundred episodes of Doctor Who are still missing. We would have
even less if it wasn't for film copies for overseas styles, in black and white because most
in the world hadn't moved to colour yet. However, a colour version had been recovered,
recorded on beta max for an American repeated the show. Black and white film had been made
from pointing a film camera at a video monitor and it was a much higher resolution and detailed
than the NTSC format video tape, so the idea was to combine the two.
Okay, it's not as simple as it sounds and the team's website contains in-depth articles about
all the problems and solutions they came across from all their projects. Since the
DVD started coming out in 2001, amazing things have been done with the footage, sometimes 40 to
50 years old. Just the labour of love in finding the best copy possible made a huge difference in
the quality, compared to the VHS releases of previous years, where any odd film print was stuck on
the tape and sold for 30 quid. The first technical process that amazed me was called Vidfire.
As a lot of the odd shows were only available as film copies of video tapes. Half the frames
were missing and with video being interlaced, two frames could be combined onto the same frame of film.
The Vidfire process interpolates the frames and restores the video look.
A very similar process has been used to turn copies of stories that are only on the NTSC
American format, back to something that looks like the original power system. The low resolution
couldn't be helped unless there was a film copy, such as with the Damant, but the lost frames could
be restored with interpolation. The next thing that amazed me was very recent. Some shows shot in
colour weren't as lucky as the Damans in having any copy other than the black and white.
However, since the film copy was from a colour CRT monitor, the chroma information was recorded
on the film. Remember your old CRT TV with the little squares of three colours. It was possible
to recover at least some of the colour information from a black and white print, which could see
these little squares. Colonisation by hand or by computer as possible, not great, and still very
expensive. In the end, a combination of the two techniques was used to restore colour to the
episode 3 of Planet of the Daleks. Found should also get a special mention. Marcares, who also
composed some of the music from the show in the late 80s, works magic on the old recordings,
even taking and splicing in fan recordings that were of better quality than the ones in the archive
film. These reel to reel recordings are often from microphones in front of TV speakers,
but some were connected directly to the speakers. It takes a lot of work, as all these recordings
might not sync up with the picture and the magnetic tape and cellulite film both deteriorate in time.
Thanks to these recordings, we have at least the audio for every single episode.
In the 50s and 60s, an enterprising man named John Cure ran a business taking photos of his
television screen and sending the tally snaps to actors and directors who would otherwise have
no easy record of the television programmes they produced. Thanks to him, we have photographic
records of most of the missing episodes, and these tally snaps were combined by fans with the audio
recordings to reconstruct the stories. This was of course unofficial, but years later, similar
techniques were used on the DVD releases of some stories. In some cases, as with the Cyberman
story The Invasion and the French Revolution story The Rain of Terror, the missing episodes
have been brought to life with 2D animation combined with the original soundtrack.
In the end, the DVDs of Doctor Who often look better than they did on transmission,
despite not having access to the original recordings. And sometimes, if the budget allows for it
and the material is appropriate, we get remade effects of 5-1 surround mix with an extended
feature cut. These enhancements are optional, you always get the original on the disc,
but it is nice to see a dodgy model shot replaced with a slightly less dodgy CGI shot.
All this stuff is very much of the hacker ethic. The love and technical know-how put
into this show is inspiring, and I love reading about it even on our only half understanding.
From the fan 40 years ago wiring a tick record into a TV speaker to the hours of work needed to
clean up, re-sync, and work around glitches to restore these old shows. The love of the material
shines through. Doctor Who fans new and old have a lot to be grateful for. Check out the restoration
team site and articles in every project at www.restoration-team.co.uk. Thanks for listening to me,
Gush. If you want to get in contact with me, I really would like feedback. Go to orcondk.com
just a-u-k-o-n-d-k.com and you'll find my email, Google Plus, Twitter, etc. details. Be seeing you.
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