Red Dwarf model shots in a skip.

[Jonsmad]

Question to anyone who had heard about this before. But the model shots of Red Dwarf being thrown into a skip and someone fishing them out, and them getting back to Doug via ebay. when did that happen? whats the sort of timeline on that occurrence roughly?

I had heard the “model fell off the shelf” story before, and indeed storys about the demise, privatization etc of the bbc model unit into out sourced, commissioned work etc.

But when Doug mentioned this fact in his Q&A, i spoke to Mike Tucker in the merch room afterwards about it, and he nodded saying that BBC Heritage was the department he worked hard to archive everything with properly after the end of the model department etc. Then some time later someone shut down BBC heritage as a department and loads of things were all skipped then.

Didnt they say during Series X ? that they couldnt use the old red dwaf model footage because the bbc couldnt find it. So this rediscovery of the film is something thats happened since then?

Also. Dear BBC. You fucking TOSSERS!!!!

Topic

[Paul Muller]

Are we talking about the entire set of model rushes from across the series? If so, that’s insane.

[Ben Saunders]

This is the same company who torched hundreds of episodes of Doctor Who well into the 70s because they thought nobody would ever want to watch them again

[Jonsmad]

We are talking the original ship fly by shots from the early bbc series.

[Taiwan Tony]

Not Only, But Also…

[GlenTokyo]

To be fair to the BBC, it’s a bit unrealistic to keep everything due to the format of the time. Broadcast cassettes, betas, reels of film take up a shit ton of space.

They should have done a better job at asking the production company if they wanted their stuff though to be fair.

[Plastic Percy]

As I understand it I think there’s two factors in play. The BBC Film Library and BBC Enterprises had conflicting views over who was archiving what. As both groups thought it was the responsibility of the other to archive certain programmes, both didn’t give a second thought to destroying their own copies.

Also, when the show was being made through the sixties and seventies, there was no idea of the coming video revolution of the 1980s or that this little show made to fill a slot between Grandstand and Jukebox Jury would run for almost a quarter of a century and have a massive effect on popular culture (to the point where the BBC, in 2002, were successfully able to argue in a court of law that they own the right to the Police Box design over Metropolitan Police off the back that it was more publically recognised as the TARDIS instead of a piece of Police equipment).

[Jonsmad]

Very true to all of those points and info.

I’m not asking directly about 70s & 80s Dr Who dumping or any other show lost in full during the pre vhs era.

This question, as yet unanswered, is for the timeline of the early red dwarf model fly by film footage being skipped. When did BBC Heritage close? Is the above new information not referred to previously
In any documentary’s or interviews anywhere? Can we assume from what Doug and mike said about this, that some point between 1999 to 2009 this film was lost, couldn’t be used for back to Earth – X and was recovered allowing it to be used in Skipper? And possibly for the blu ray ? Now.

[Jonsmad]

Mike said they skipped the Samiad model from five children and It, at around the same time
And a lot of model work he had left with that heritage archive that was supposed to look after tv history.

[GlenTokyo]

Public service in ‘doesn’t know it’s arse from it’s elbow’ shocker.

It’s always a problem when something has so many departments and offshoots and exists over such a long time I suppose. Doesn’t matter if you’re a city council or a broadcasting corporation.

[Taiwan Tony]

(Peter Cook requested to buy the Not Onlys, but was refused and they were wiped. Damn shame.)

[Jonsmad]

I’ve seen a video playback of what Doug said now. He cites this model shot skipping as relevant to the Blu ray delay. So it’s fairly recent. He says finding some of the extras material “there have been adventures” trying to track stuff down, with cataloguing. Which would be the case if something is filed under “skip” lol.

[Moonlight]

That model shot in Skipper looks _way_ to good to be the SD scan on the old DVD. There’s no way you could blow that SD image up to fit in 16:9 on an HDTV and not look noticeably low quality.

Do we supposed that those model shots were found during or even before the production of Skipper?

[GlenTokyo]

There’s always the possibility of the odd duplicate model shot being in Pete Tyler’s shed or something I suppose, which would get around the missing/not missing/scanned/damaged “actual” masters issue.

It looked very nice though. Let’s hope they can track them all down.

[bloodteller]

I’m sure I remember reading somewhere (may have been Doug or Richard’s Twitter) that there was quite an interesting story about how they got hold of the old model shot for Skipper. Presumably, said story was the model shots being found in a skip etc?

[Ridley]

“You’re a model? Step into my skip!”

[Dave]

I hope you’re all pleased with yourself, I just had a three hour phone conversation trying to calm the Skip down.

[Jonsmad]

Yes you are right.

In fact Dwarf Fact. The episode Skipper is name in tribute to the person at the BBC that threw the model shots into the Skip.

[Author]

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