Talk:The Time Monster

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BetacommandBot (talk) 23:17, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Surviving condition problems

The "Broadcast and VHS release" section notes that most TV copies (at least in the USA, although it does not seem plausible that this situation would be so localized) consist of only four episodes or a 90 minute compilation feature. However, there is no acknowledgement of, let alone an explanation for, this or the fact that on the VHS release Episode Three is colour-restored from a b/w telecine film print (as The Silurians and Terror of the Autons are in their entireties). Clearly this is no coincidence, and I believe that it should be noted, and explained. Does anybody have any information about this? I'll point out here—to save someone the trouble of looking there—that Doctor Who Magazine 's "The Complete Third Doctor" (Special Edition #2, September 2002) says nothing about this. --Tbrittreid (talk) 22:23, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Luminifer has added a cite request tag to the statement in the article described above. As I rather clumsily implied in that post, no source that I can find acknowledges this situation, although I once stumbled across a Who-oriented website that dealt with some flaws in Episode Three, as if UK fans had been seeing a full-length version of it, including a damaged or something Ep. 3, all along. Help! --Tbrittreid (talk) 00:40, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

It is possible the four parter is localised to the US as a lot of the flaws (e.g. the various five part versions of Planet of the Daleks or Resurrection of the Daleks with raw sound) stem from inaccurate master tapes being shipped to particular distributors and then never properly corrected. The 1980s Australian and 1990s UK Gold versions are the correct six parter and there hasn't been much reporting of the problem. Also on the VHS it's episode 6 that's restored (though using a b/w video copy not a film print) and I've never heard of episode 3 being done - is this misreporting or just a lousy transfer on the US VHS? Timrollpickering (talk) 10:05, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

No, it is ep. 3 on the US VHS release (it looks just like the original US VHS version of Terror of the Autons; I am assuming that my later better-looking—and Warner Home Video labelled—VHSs of Silurians and Daemons were Vidfired), and it was ep. 3 that was discussed as flawed on the website I mentioned. --Tbrittreid (talk) 20:33, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

VidFIRE was only developed in the last two years of the VHS range and was never applied to earlier releases like Silurians and Daemons. As for episode 3 that's a rare report and probably a dodgy version in use - if the episode had had to be colour restored there would have been far more reports about it, including on the Restoration Team website. Timrollpickering (talk) 10:47, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Warner, as I said my source for my copies of Silurians and Daemons, took over the North America video license from Fox very late in the VHS day. They are very much better-looking than Fox's Autons, which had "ghosts" whenever somebody moved very fast. It was only the presence of an actual transmission tape of episode 4 that worked against seeing the restoration level of Daemons as nearly perfect as that of Silurians looked. The website statement about Time Monster was in a FAQ style format, as if the moderator had been asked regularly about it; the question read to this exact effect: "Why is episode 3 of The Time Monster colour-restored like The Silurians, etc.?" We had a brief email exchange, in which he appeared to know very little about what was going on in the USA, Who-related, and therefore he was probably not on this continent. I'll tell you one other thing, Tim. There's no room for doubt that the US VHS releases used converted copies of the BBC VHS masters, as all of their logos and legal warnings are present as well as the American ones (I find the redundancy of the legal warnings particularly telling). Indeed, I firmly believe this is why at this late date there has still been no legitimate video (any format, to my knowledge) release of the 1996 TV movie over here, that no US label wants to use the Beeb's censored version which is definitely their video release. That also argues against the color-restored version of Time Monster ep. 3 being US localized, since its only known appearance here is on that video, whereas apparently all of our TV versions cut the opening UNIT material from two-thirds of the story to one-half. --Tbrittreid (talk) 20:27, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Your firm belief about the lack of a TV Movie VHS/DVD in the US is completely wrong. The US home entertainment rights are a complicated mess between the BBC, Universal and possibly other companies and too difficult to untangle to allow for a release. Also whilst the 1996 UK VHS was the edited version, the 2000 DVD is most definitely the unedited version.

I've not heard anything other than your posts about episode 3 being colour restored, and as the Time Monster is currently the spotlight discussion story on the Gallifrey Base with everything, including the VHS release and a future DVD up for discussion, I'd be surprised if no-one else has noticed this. I'll ask there to see if anyone else has heard this one.

To my knowledge Silurians was never VidFIREd before the DVD release, nor was Daemons. The Restoration Team have been quite open about when the process has been used on existing releases and if the process had been applied to other stories for extra VHS releases it would have got more attention. (And the Daemons was repeated on BBC4 about two years ago and was most definitely not VidFIREd.) Similarly they've been open about the recolourisation and it is most definitely episode 6 not 3 that was done.

What is common knowledge is that the versions used for the 2001 VHS release of both Time Monster 1-5 and Colony in Space 1-6 (in the same boxed set) were off the shelf rather lousy bog standard conversions of the 525 line copies. Other than a couple of episodes of the Mutants, they were the final NTSC conversions to be released on any format before the Reverse Standards Conversion was developed, and they do look particularly poor by comparison. I think people are jumping to conclusions based on what made it to the VHS. Timrollpickering (talk) 23:25, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Fact: The USA VHS releases of Time Monster (which I purchased) and Colony in Space (which I didn't) were not boxed together, but with all six episodes of each on one tape in a conventional pasteboard "slip sleeve." (Yes, I am aware of "The Master Box Set.")

Fact: Episode 3 of that release of Time Monster looks just like Fox's VHS of Terror of the Autons except for its lack of the earlier release's "ghosts." It is irrefutably a "colour restored telecine print."

Fact: Telecasts of Time Monster in Denver, Colorado in the mid-to-late 1980s and in Dallas/Ft. Worth, Texas in 1994 & 2001 were variously in four 25-minute episodes or a 90-minute feature, each equally balanced between contemporary UK/UNIT and ancient Atlantis, rather than the two-thirds/one-third of the VHS (6 parts; where do you get "1-5"?).

Fact: The Warner label (post-Fox's loss of the N. America video license) releases of Silurians and Daemons (both of which I purchased) were significantly restored (by whatever process) to a reasonably close approximation of original transmission tape clarity (acknowledging that the presence of an actual transmission tape of one ep. of Daemons showed that it certainly was less than exact).

Nothing can or will change any of that. --Tbrittreid (talk) 22:14, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

It is not "irrefutably", that is your personal opinion which is not support by either facts or other opinions. The response on the Gallifrey Base forum from other US fans is that you are "wrong on all counts. Spectacularly wrong." [1] (I get "1-5" because the master for episode 6 is not an NTSC conversion but a PAL b/w tape married up to the NTSC colour.) Timrollpickering (talk) 12:29, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

It is not an opinion, nor is it wrong. I have seen the thing with my own eyes, and it cannot be anything else. Plus, as I said, that website I mentioned says (or said, as I can no longer find it) the same thing. Your link proves absolutely nothing, particularly as it is nothing but two people responding to your question about my comments. One, Ben Adams merely asserts what you quoted here and says absolutely nothing to back it up. The other, diabolik, describes the patently irrelevant UK VHS. This is absolutely no meaningful corroboration of your position whatsoever, nor any reason for me to doubt the clear evidence of my own eyes. --Tbrittreid (talk) 20:32, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

I conceded on the Gallifrey Base thread that the "colour-restored" Time Monster episode that the site I mentioned discussed just might have been episode 6, since I can't find the site now. As I said at the top of this thread, TV showings of TM in the USA (at least in Denver, Colorado, multiple times in the mid-to-late 1980s, and Dallas/Ft. Worth, Texas, in late 1994 and again in early 2002) edit the first four (contemporary Britain/UNIT oriented) episodes down to two—or the equivalent running time in a feature compilation. Due to this, I was not surprised to read on that site that one episode in the UK 6-episode version is a colour-restored film, figuring it was no coincidence. Hence, I might have jumped to the wrong assumption of just which episode they were referring to.

Also, the US VHS release of Ambassadors of Death, with a transmission tape of episode 1 and "colour-restored" prints for much of the other six, including explicitly stating to have Vidfired studio-taped scenes among the latter, proves that this process does fall a bit short of fully recreating a video tape look. I also asked the person who described the UK VHS of TM if, like the US version, it lacks the infamous shot of Benton in a nappy (it is cut out over here; no dispute allowed). Since our ep. 6 comes from a transmission quality-level tape while yours is a colour-restored telecine print, that could easily be different. --Tbrittreid (talk) 20:59, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

No episode 6 is not a restored telecine. It instead combines a PAL black & white copy of the episode that was found at the BBC with the colour signal from the NTSC conversion. Both the sources are significantly superior to the other recolourisations that combine telecine and off-air colour, hence the episode looks near original transmission quality. None of the season 9 episodes have ever had telecines colourised because they all exist as either the original PAL tapes or NTSC conversions. Timrollpickering (talk) 12:36, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

My apologies for misunderstanding about Time Monster episode 6. Someone on the Gallifrey Base thread said something about the transferred "colour information" there, and I didn't read carefully enough to realize that the b/w version was not a film print. Unique, isn't that? Is everybody certain that the b/w tape wasn't made from a film print? Am I wrong in thinking that a very early step in the "colour restoration" process is making a video of the b/w film? If not, just where did it come from? In any event, episode 6 in my Warner Home Video VHS matches 1, 2, 4 & 5 in looking tape-sourced. --Tbrittreid (talk) 23:16, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

The latest theory amongst the RT that I'm aware of is that the b/w episode 6 tape was probably from an engineer's test, presumably of a then-new BBC machine, that survived for many years by accident until it was found in the early 1980s and its significance realised. It's most definitely not a copy of the telecine - it's a colourless but otherwise complete 625 line PAL copy of the episode, with all the original video fields whereas the telecine copies turn the 50 fields into 25 frames and are cruder. If the end result of the restoration looks a bit crap on the US release that's probably because of the conversion method used to turn the tape to NTSC and/or the duplication quality at the mass production end.

In theory one can transmit direct from a telecine copy, but the last time this happened for Who was the 1981 repeat of the Krotons. For the colour restorations the telecine copies were put on video but they still look like the telecine copies, not like a transmission tape with the colour turned off. Timrollpickering (talk) 23:44, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for the source of that b/w tape (as opposed to a tape of a b/w film copy). Very interesting. As for the other, I was well aware of that. And it is, or at least was, more than "in theory" as well. It used to be if it was produced on film, it was telecast from a print. Television as a mass medium predates videotape, of course. As for your very last sentence, that is obviously why Vidfire was invented. --Tbrittreid (talk) 19:44, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Only Appearance of the Tardis Interior Nonsense

There's a claim made that the Tardis Interior appears here for the only time this series, which is nonsense. Much of the first episode of "Curse of Peladon" is set in the Tardis control room. I've therefore deleted the claim. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.193.240.128 (talk) 08:21, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, but you're wrong about the opening episode of The Curse of Peladon, at least to some extent. I know that our synopsis there indicates a brief conversation between the Doctor and Jo before they step out of the TARDIS, but I am quite clear it's actually after. The TARDIS materializes on a cliff edge (a very miniature prop on a miniature set), our leads emerge (I think we first see them already inside the cave system that allows them access to the city above, but maybe not) with Jo then complaining about her date with Mike. However, even if I'm wrong (speaking only hypothetically) it is by no means "Much of the first episode". I'll check my The Complete Third Doctor and other Doctor Who Magazine back issues, but in the meantime anybody else want to dispute this? --Tbrittreid (talk) 21:15, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, but there's a full scene within the TARDIS right after they land and before they step outside. Just checked the DVD. DonQuixote (talk) 04:15, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Okay. But it is far short of "Much of the first episode" isn't it? --Tbrittreid (talk) 19:48, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Brief conversation about Mike and such. DonQuixote (talk) 07:47, 4 June 2010 (UTC)