DAD'S ARMY MISSING EPISODES

A few episodes of the long-running British sitcom television programme ''Dad's Army'' are 'missing', with no known film or videotape copies existing. Other episodes were missing for some years but subsequently copies were recoved. They were erased (or "junked") by the BBC during the 1960s and 1970s for a variety of commercial and space-saving reasons. In all, three episodes, all from the black & white second series, are still missing, whilst one colour episode now only exists as a black & white copy.
''Dad's Army'' is not alone in having missing material, with many other shows also suffering, including series such as ''Z-Cars'' and ''Doctor Who''. In fact, most contemporary BBC shows have far more missing episodes.

Contents

Background

Episodes affected

Recovery

Episodes missing

References

Background

Between approximately 1967 and 1978, large amounts of material stored in the BBC's videotape and film libraries were destroyed or wiped to make way for newer programmes. This happened for a number of reasons, not least the restrictions negotiated by unions to prevent programmes being heavily repeated at the expense of new productions, making the old material redundant.
For the first two years, ''Dad's Army'' was made in black & white, with most episodes being made on two-inch quad videotape for initial broadcast. As a series thought to have commercial potential overseas, the first series was offered for sale to broadcasters by BBC Enterprises. To this end, 16 mm film recordings were made of the first six episodes by the BBC Engineering department before the master videotapes were wiped for re-use. In the event, series 1 sold very poorly and BBC Enterprises did not express interest in selling series 2 abroad - so no film recordings were made of any episodes for them. The episode ''Sgt. Wilson's Little Secret'' was recorded onto 35 mm film instead of videotape, either because it required additional editing (which was easier to perform with film before the advent of modern electronic editing methods) or because no videotape recording facilities were available on the day it was recorded. This inadvertently assured the episode's survival: being effectively a production made on film it fell within the BBC Film Library's remit of keeping filmed productions for posterity.^[1]
From the third series onwards the show was made in colour on 625 line videotape. With interest in the series picking up, BBC Enterprises resumed offering the episodes for sale in up to three different formats:

★ PAL 625 line colour videotapes for countries with the same broadcast standards as the United Kingdom, including New Zealand and (from 1975) Australia

★ NTSC 525 line colour videotapes for countries such as Canada

★ 16 mm film records for countries still broadcasting in black & white (such as Australia until 1975)
Until 1978 the BBC had no central archive, with the Film Library keeping only some programmes that were made on film (e.g. ''Sgt. Wilson's Little Secret''), whilst the Engineering Department handled videotape but had no mandate to retain material for posterity. BBC Enterprises only kept material that was considered commercially exploitable and had limited storage space.
In the mid 1970s BBC Enterprises disposed of much older material where the rights to sell the programmes had expired, whilst the Engineering Department routinely wiped videotapes that were no longer formally required. In 1978 the BBC created the Film & Videotape Library, the first time a permanent archive for all its old programmes was established.

Episodes affected

The first series of ''Dad's Army'' survived as a set of black & white telerecordings. However the second season was badly affected, with five of the six episodes not being held by the BBC in 1978.
The colour series were also hit badly, with many episodes initially only surviving as black & white copies if at all.

Recovery

The colour episodes have been remarkably fortunate compared to many of their contemporaries, even series with very well preserved 1970s holdings such as ''Steptoe and Son'' and ''Doctor Who''. Episodes were returned from overseas broadcasters, mainly from those in New Zealand and Australia, with the result that all but one episode now exists in the original 625 line colour format.
The one exception is the series 3 episode ''Room at the Bottom'' which survives only as a 16 mm black & white film recording.
Series 2 remains incomplete. In 2001 the episodes ''Operation Kilt'' and ''The Battle of Godfrey's Cottage'' were returned as 16mm film recordings, to much surprise as it was assumed that none had ever been made of the series. It has since been established that the two episodes were film recorded to show to executives at Columbia Pictures during discussions on the structure of the ''Dad's Army'' feature film.
The other second series episodes are still missing and were probably lost forever once the original broadcast videotapes were wiped.^[2] The only remaining (slim) hope is that the episodes may have been recorded during their original UK broadcasts by a person wealthy enough to afford an early videotape recorder such as a Shibaden or Sony CV-2000 machine, and also of sufficient means to be able to afford new tapes rather than wiping and reusing their existing recordings. The BBC is running a "Treasure Hunt" for the wiped episodes; they encourage anyone with copies to contact them at the Treasure Hunt Website.

Episodes missing

The following episodes are still missing in their entirety:

★ ''The Loneliness of the Long Distance Walker''

★ ''A Stripe for Frazer''

★ ''Under Fire''
In addition the following episode was made in colour but is currently only known to exist in black & white:

★ ''Room at the Bottom''

References

1. Documentary: ''Dad's Army: Missing Presumed Wiped'', BBC, 2001
2. The missing episodes at the BBC Treasure Hunt site, URL accessed 4 June 2006