Power of the Daleks Re-imagined

THE first episode of a fan-made re-imagining of lost Doctor Who story The Power of the Daleks has been released online.

The unofficial remake of the 1966 Patrick Troughton adventure has been produced by the same team responsible for successful stage versions of other missing classic Who stories including Evil of the Daleks and The Dalek Masterplan, with support from TNT films.

The production features Nick Scovell as the Doctor, reprising the role some 15 years after his debut as the Time Lord in acclaimed 1997 fan production “The Millennium Trap”, and guest stars Barnaby Edwards, Nick Briggs and Lisa Bowerman. Music has been provided by regular Big Finish Productions composer Martin Johnson.

Episode two of the three-part remake will be released online on July 14, followed by the final installment in September.

There will be a chance to see all three episodes together as a high-definition ‘movie’ version (with added post-production effects) at special charity convention Power: Reimagined, taking place in Fareham on September 1, 2012. Confirmed guests include the Doctor Who Restoration Team, Michael Troughton and Anneke Wills, who appeared in the original Power of the Daleks serial as companion Polly.

Tickets are available now and proceeds will go to Cancer Research UK and Children In Need. For more information visit www.power-convention.co.uk or the Power of the Daleks Facebook Page.

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COLLECTOR TAKES THE MISSING MICKEY: WEEKLY ROUND-UP

PRESENTING some stories of interest from the past week . . .

• Herefordshire firm’s lost Mickey Mouse prototype film auctioned: A lost Disney cartoon featuring what is thought to be the prototype Mickey Mouse character has been sold in the US for $25,000 (£16,000).
• Missing Doctor Who episodes discovered: Doctor Who fans are getting a fresh opportunity to travel back in time with the discovery of two missing episodes from the long-running BBC series. Also check out this piece about the recoveries over at the Radio Times.
• Alexander Graham Bell recordings played from 1880s: Alexander Graham Bell foresaw many things, including that people could someday talk over a telephone. Yet the inventor certainly never could have anticipated that his audio-recording experiments in a Washington, D.C., lab could be recovered 130 years later and played for a gathering of scientists, curators and journalists. You can hear some of the revived recordings here.
• Vinyl treasure found on Wake Island: In a tale straight from an adventure book, contractors here recently stumbled upon a vinyl record collection with an estimated value between $90,000 and $250,000.
• BFI to present restored rare Hitchcock films with new scores: As part of London 2012 festival, composers including Nitin Sawhney will work on new scores for early Hitchcock films.

First TV appearance of Sir Ian McKellen found after 50 years

A LONG-LOST BBC drama starring a young Sir Ian McKellen in his first TV role has been found after nearly 50 years.

The veteran actor, currently filming The Hobbit in New Zealand, couldn’t look more different to his role as grey-bearded wizard Gandalf in the rediscovered gem.

He appears as a dark-haired and fresh-faced 25-year-old in the black-and-white period drama “The Tomb Of His Ancestors”, made by the BBC in 1964.

McKellen plays a character named Plowden in the 50-minute production (tx 09.08.64), based on a short story by Jungle Book author Rudyard Kipling.

The programme, filmed as part of series “Kipling: The Indian Tales of Rudyard Kipling”, was no longer thought to exist – a victim of the BBC’s once-common policy of wiping or simply throwing away old recordings.

But a single print survived in a private collection belonging to a historical society in Illinois, America, and was bought by a consortium led by classic TV organisation Kaleidoscope.

Speaking for the consortium, also comprising missing episode enthusiasts Steve Birt and Tim Disney, Kaleidoscope’s Chris Perry described the McKellen drama as an “important find”.

He said: “The Tomb Of His Ancestors is a vintage piece of BBC drama set in the days of the British Raj and is especially important because of its connection to Sir Ian McKellen.

“For the first time in nearly 50 years we can once again watch the very first TV appearance by one of the UK’s greatest living actors.”

Broadcast between July and December 1964, Kipling featured performances from the likes of David Hemmings, Michael Bates, Alfred Burke, Barbara Murray, Keith Barron and Patrick Troughton.

The new discovery doubles the number of known surviving Kipling episodes from one to two, with 23 out of the original 25 still missing.

Also recovered by the consortium were two other previously believed-lost BBC programmes: a 1950s ballet production, Giselle, and a 1963 episode of the BBC series Suspense, starring Sylvia Simms and entitled “Miranda and a Salesman” (tx 19.08.63).

You can watch a clip from “The Tomb Of His Ancestors” below (uploaded to Tim Disney’s YouTube channel).

Read On: “Sir Ian McKellen’s precious television debut is rediscovered!” (story on Tim Disney’s website www.findaclip.co.uk).

New Doctor Who Recon Trailer For Wheel In Space

WHEEL MEET AGAIN: A promotional photo from The Wheel in Space showing the Cybermen and new companion Zoe (Wendy Padbury).

A NEW CGI trailer for classic Doctor Who story The Wheel in Space has become an internet hit.

The clip imagines what the sixties adventure would have looked like if made by Alien director Ridley Scott.

Lasting two minutes, the “creepy” black and white animation features scenes of popular Who foes the Cybermen set to the soundtrack of Scott’s acclaimed 1979 horror film.

The video has had thousands of views on YouTube since being uploaded on New Year’s Day and shows how far reconstructions, or ‘recons’, of missing Doctor Who episodes have come.

Animator Iz Skinner made the trailer as a ‘taster’ for a forthcoming recon of the Patrick Troughton story and says she was trying to reinstate the “scariness” of the episodes.

She said: “When I read that Ridley Scott had actually worked for BBC Television in the 1960s, I thought it would be fun to imagine how he might have made a trailer for this great story.

“I felt that the Alien soundtrack in some way reinstated the scariness of this episode for the modern generation who might not know how terrifying and exciting these stories were when they were first broadcast.”

Originally broadcast from April 27 – June 1, 1968, only episodes three and six of this six-part story are currently held by the BBC.

Telesnaps and fan-made audio recordings of all episodes, however, do survive and have been utilized by Iz and fan-group Loose Cannon Productions to recreate as much as possible the look and feel of the show.

“The trailer is made up of a small selection of the clips I’ve been animating for the upcoming Loose Cannon release,” said Iz, who has based her work on continuity stills and the “expert advice” of fellow LC members Derek Handley, Dean Rose and Russ Port

“I do think a semi-photo realistic episode is entirely doable,” added Iz.

“I say semi-photo realistic because for the most part I’d say that you would still know it was CG, particularly with the characters.

“I now have a motion capture set-up in my living room which allows me to act out scenes and give a more natural movement to my characters.”

READ ON: Iz Skinner has also made a CGI trailer for Doctor Who story The Web of Fear – Doctor Who trailer recreated with CGI. There is a full set of telesnaps to all six episodes of The Wheel in Space over on the BBC’s Classic Doctor Who website.

Kaleidoscope Raiders of the Lost Archives list 2009 – 2010

CLASSIC TV organisation Kaleidoscope has revealed its annual Raiders of the Lost Archives list for 2009 – 2010, detailing all the missing material located in the last 12 months by the group along with the BBC, ITV, BFI and missing episode hunters.

Particularly notable on this year’s list is the Library of Congress finds, where over 60 long-lost British dramas dating beween the late fifties and early seventies were discovered sitting in an American archive. The assortment of plays and adaptations boast a who’s who of acting talent including Sean Connery, David McCallum, Charles Gray, Susannah York, Patrick Macnee, William Gaunt, Norman Rossington, Ron Moody, Derek Jacobi, Maggie Smith, Ronald Pickup, Nerys Hughes, Patricia Routledge, David Hemmings, Kevin Stoney, Hywel Bennett, Thora Hird, John Gielgud, Michael Gambon, Hugh Paddick, Robert Hardy, Peggy Ashcroft, Leonard Rossiter, John Le Mesurier, Patrick Stewart, Brian Rawlinson, Michael Gough, Bernard Horsfall, Michael Hordern, Patrick Troughton, Jeremy Brett, Patrick Wymark, Bernard Cribbins, Betty Marsden, Edward De Souza, Patsy Rowlands, Gerald Flood, Donald Wolfit, Philip Madoc, Geoffrey Bayldon, Frank Finlay, Henry McGee,  Jane Asher and Graham Crowden.

Also on the list are classic comedy shows starring Benny Hill, Dick Emery, Frankie Howerd, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, the Monty Python team, The Goodies, Marty Feldman, Bob Monkhouse, Denis Goodwin, Ronnie Barker, Willie Rushton, Frank Muir, Denis Norden, Alan Bennett and Hattie Jacques; serial dramas such as No Hiding Place and The Troubleshooters; light entertainment including The Rolf Harris Show; music from The Hollies, Cliff Richard and the Shadows, Showaddywaddy, The Arrows and Guys n Dolls; and children’s programmes by animator Oliver Postgate and the Smallfilms studio, including Ivor the Engine.

Last but not least, the list reveals some good progress in the BSB recoveries campaign of Ian Greaves, including episodes of The Happening, I Love Keith Allen and Up Yer News.

Speaking about the impressive list, Kaleidoscope’s Chris Perry said: “It’s been a great year for recoveries all round and goes to show there’s still more out there to find.”

Wiped! Doctor Who’s Missing Episodes

A NEW book examining how episodes of Doctor Who came to go missing, and then turn up again, is released this September.

Wiped! Doctor Who’s Missing Episodes is written by Doctor Who Restoration Team member Richard Molesworth and published by Telos Publishing.

You can find out more about the book, including a brief interview with the author, over in the Out Now section.

Here’s the official blurb:

In the 1960s, the BBC screened 253 episodes of its cult science fiction show Doctor Who, starring William Hartnell and then Patrick Troughton as the time travelling Doctor. Yet by 1975, the Corporation had wiped the master tapes of every single one of these episodes. Of the 124 Doctor Who episodes starring Jon Pertwee shown between 1970 and 1974, the BBC destroyed over half of the original transmission tapes within two years of their original broadcast.

In the years that followed, the BBC, along with dedicated fans of the series, began the arduous task of trying to track down copies of as many missing Doctor Who episodes as possible. The search covered BBC sales vaults, foreign television stations, overseas archives, and numerous networks of private film collectors, until the tally of missing programmes was reduced to just 108 episodes.

For the first time, this book looks in detail at how the episodes came to be missing in the first place, and examines how material subsequently came to be returned to the BBC. Along the way, those people involved in the recovery of lost slices of Doctor Who’s past tell their stories in candid detail, many for the very first time.

No more rumours, no more misinformation, no more fan gossip. The truth about Doctor Who’s missing episodes can now be told in full!

• Wiped! Doctor Who’s Missing Episodes, by Richard Molesworth, is out September 2010, priced £15.99 (+p&p). You can order a copy from Telos Publishing.

Doctor Who trailer recreated with CGI

Along with episodes two – six of the story it promoted, a specially-recorded trailer for classic 1968 Doctor Who story The Web Of Fear is currently missing from the BBC archives.

Featuring Patrick Troughton as the Doctor, the trailer was broadcast at the end of episode six of The Enemy of the World to warn viewers the Yeti (and the Great Intelligence that controlled them) were coming back, scarier than ever.

Thankfully, an audio copy survived from an off-air recording made at the time and this has just been combined with cutting-edge CGI to give a faithful idea of what the original trail must have looked like.

It is the work of ‘life-long Doctor Who fan’ Iz Skinner. Speaking to WIPED, Iz explained how the idea for the trailer recreation came about after she started helping with the Loose Cannon series of missing Doctor Who adventure reconstructions.

‘Animation is one of my hobbies,’ said Iz. ‘I joined http://www.who3d.co.uk a couple of years ago and then got the recon(struction) bug.

‘The LC (Loose Cannon) guys found me at Who3D and asked me to help out on a few bits.

‘Working with the Loose Cannon team has been brilliant and a lot of fun – they were so knowledgeable and supportive. I hope to do more with them!

She continued: ‘I’d say Patrick Troughton was my favourite doctor, until David Tennant (swoon), and I was looking for a short piece to try out my 2nd Doctor model and my Yeti – so the trailer was perfect.

‘But it was the great line ‘If your mummy and daddy are scared…’ that really sold it to me.

‘There weren’t any visual references for the trailer. I’d seen a set photo which I used as a basis to create the set and I found part of the script in The second Doctor Handbook (Howe-Stammers- Walker) although I’d started working on the animation by this time, just following the audio.

‘I made the Doctor and Yeti models early last year, 2008, and did the lip sync and then animation later, at different times, so it’s difficult to say how long it took – I’d say it would have taken three to four weeks if I’d been working on it full time.

‘The announcement at the end probably shouldn’t have had the BBC globe ident over it (and apparently I made the globe spin a bit too fast – lol), but the trailer was just a bit of fun really.’

Iz’s trailer is set to be shown at the Gallifrey 2009 convention in Los Angeles in February and she revealed to WIPED that she is now working on the CGI recreation of a missing Doctor Who episode, title still under wraps, which she expects to have completed by the end of the year.

‘I love the idea that we can try to rebuild the past through animation,’ concluded Iz. ‘We’re so lucky that the audio of these episodes survived. ‘