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Doctor Who: Dæmons (The) AKA Doctor Who: The Demons (TV) (1971)
In the village of Devil's End an archaeological dig is excavating the infamous Devil's Hump, a Bronze Age burial mound. A local white witch, Olive Hawthorne arrives to protest, warning of great evil and the coming of the horned beastDirector: Christopher Barry
OVERALL: Draw-
OVERALL: Draw
Identical releases.
Note on the restoration:
The original full colour PAL tapes - with the exception of "Episode Four" - were wiped by the BBC at some point not long after transmission. The serial was however transferred in colour to create NTSC masters which were used in territories where that was the broadcast format (i.e. USA). Those colour NTSC masters were lost or destroyed.
The BBC retained a B&W 16mm telecine copy in their archive. This was very high quality and provided the basis for the restoration. When the serial was broadcast in the USA in colour circa 1976-78 in NTSC, fans recorded it on Betamax.
In the early '90s the Doctor Who Restoration Team managed to take the colour signal off the NTSC Betamax tape and marry it up with the high quality B&W 16mm telecine recording to create a new colour version which was given a repeat broadcast and was released on VHS.
However, that version did not have the fluid 40 fields per second look the original colour master videotape had in 1971 due the conversion process to create the 16mm copy. In the early 2000s, a process called VidFIRE was created to return the 24 frames per second film to the 40 fields per second video look.
All DVDs now have this VidFIREd, full colour version.
In addition to The Dæmons, the above restoration also essentially applies to the following Jon Pertwee Doctor Who serials:
Doctor Who and the Silurians, The Ambassadors of Death, Inferno, Terror of the Autons, The Mind of Evil, The Claws of Axos, Colony in Space, Planet of the Daleks and Invasion of the Dinosaurs.
All of which have had to use various colour recovery, standards conversion and chroma dot recovery processes to return the episodes to something approaching their original PAL colour format. -
CUTS:
- R2 The Jon Pertwee Years 1970-74 United Kingdom- BBC - No cuts (122:34 PAL)
- R4 Australia- Roadshow Home Entertainment - No cuts (122:34 PAL)
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Comparison added by Mark_Meakin on 02/02/14
Comparison last updated by Rick_Curzon on 07/04/21UPDATE LOG:
02/02/14: Initial entry.
Please ensure you read our disclaimer.
26/02/18: Tidyup.
11/11/20: Added a note about the restoration.
08/03/21: Added title.
11/03/21: Added more prosaic spelling of demons to title to aide searching.
07/04/21: Added to the note on the restoration.
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