I was reading about the mysterious lost Dr. Who episodes (the BBC treated the series much like Pink Floyd, those bastards). Suddenly I stumbled across this paragraph.
In 1992, a fan named Roger K. Barrett claimed to have a videotape of The Tenth Planet and offered to sell it to some Doctor Who fans and the BBC, including Ian Levine, a well-known fan and one time unofficial continuity adviser to the programme. However, Barrett turned out to be an alias and the existence of the episode a hoax. In a mini-documentary titled "Missing in Action" (aired during a 1993 BBC One repeat of Planet of the Daleks), Levine said that he experienced "the absolute utter depths of despair when we found out that it was just a blank tape and it was all a hoax", expressing his desire to get hold of Barrett and "choke him until I found out why he misled everybody." Unfortunately, hoaxes of this kind are not uncommon in Doctor Who fandom, with people like Barrett more than willing to exploit the hope that copies of the missing episodes may still exist somewhere waiting to be recovered.
Roger K. Barrett? Is this our RKB, or another man with a name similar to Pink Floyd's ex-guitarist?
(I know it's unlikely 1992 Syd felt like screwing over Dr. Who fans, but this is at least humorous nonetheless.)
..very funny...Syd peddling a lost Dr Who episode to the ire of some serious Dr. Who fans. A worthy addition to bizarre and false Barrett stories...I like the story that I read somewhere on the internet about Barrett walking into a clothing store and trying on vastly different sizes of trousers, then declaring that they all fit well...
Some fans could maybe stand a little laughter at their own expense, myself included.
That's funny as F*ck.That's like Elvis peddling a lost StarTrek episode. Is this the famed lost Dr Who episode that was bought at a yard sale or is that something different.
professor frogmorton wrote:.I like the story that I read somewhere on the internet about Barrett walking into a clothing store and trying on vastly different sizes of trousers, then declaring that they all fit well...
professor frogmorton wrote:..very funny...Syd peddling a lost Dr Who episode to the ire of some serious Dr. Who fans. A worthy addition to bizarre and false Barrett stories...I like the story that I read somewhere on the internet about Barrett walking into a clothing store and trying on vastly different sizes of trousers, then declaring that they all fit well...
Some fans could maybe stand a little laughter at their own expense, myself included.
I don't mind a laugh at my own expense (well, most of the time), but these hoaxes about missing DW episodes are pretty mean spirited, especially for the people who shell out money and/or tapes only to find they have been ripped off. Sounds like Ian "absolute depths of dispair" Levine didn't see the funny side of it. That is what really p*sses me off about it , not the fact that the lowlife con artist decided to use Syd's name.
Part of what makes this ridiculously funny is that SYD could have sold a few paintings, rather than destroy them, or SYD could have cut an album of spontaneous verbal ramblings, or SYD could have booked a large hall and charged admission just to walk on stage.
I Don'......t quite think Mr Barrett would have stopped to acknowledge the existence of these people--or of DR Who for that matter....
This is something thats been making Floyd & Who fans chuckle for many years. Oddly it brings us back to the mention of Pet Shop Boys earlier on the site, Ian Levine who was duped worked on a lot of their mid 80s recordings. You'd like to think that someone so involved with the music industry might know just a little more than whats happening in his backyard. Theres a very funny documentary where Levine talks about wanting to get his hands on Roger Barrett with a funny shot of him slamming his fist down, it wouldnt be so funny if he didnt look and sound like a Sontaran when he done it!
''The hair is finer!
Bizarrely Levine has made several enemies in the Doctor Who camp simply by saying that he didnt believe there were anymore lost episodes to be found, rather than praise the work he done by finding and saving 10s of episodes there seems to be a contingent happy to blast him when a crap episode of Dalek Masterplan appears. Ho hum.
Apparently back in the 90's, they actually did think that "The Tenth Planet 4" turned up... they even had the late Michael Craze record an intro for the upcoming video release.
And then it never happened.
(If you're interested in seeing his intro - it's very sad, because he talks about how the episode was finally recovered - it's available on some crappy bootleg video of the first three episodes, plus this hilarious shitty attempt to recreate episode 4 by reusing footage from the other episodes.)
TheLazenby wrote:Apparently back in the 90's, they actually did think that "The Tenth Planet 4" turned up... they even had the late Michael Craze record an intro for the upcoming video release.
And then it never happened.
(If you're interested in seeing his intro - it's very sad, because he talks about how the episode was finally recovered - it's available on some crappy bootleg video of the first three episodes, plus this hilarious shitty attempt to recreate episode 4 by reusing footage from the other episodes.)
Y'know, I'm as much (probably more, at least here in the U.S.A.) a Doctor Who fan as the next fellow, and I don't understand this level of fanaticism... really, I don't. Been a fan since it started airing here in the U.S. back in the late 70's, went to conventions to watch rare Troughton and Pertwee episodes, we even had Tom Baker film festivals at college with "The Golden Voyage of Sinbad" and "Nicolas & Alexandria" because Baker played small parts in those films, but I don't understand this level of fanaticism...
