Doctor Who - The War Machines
(Video Release)

Audio Restoration Report

In February 1997, film/TV composer and sound designer Mark Ayres was a member of the team responsible for restoring this 1966 William Hartnell Doctor Who story for video release and subsequent broadcast sale.

If you've linked directly to this page from another site - welcome! Mark Ayres also wrote the music for three Doctor Who stories ("The Greatest Show in the Galaxy", "Ghost Light", and "The Curse of Fenric") and other Doctor Who-related
video productions. You may wish to visit Mark's main Doctor Who page for a listing of other Doctor Who material on this site. Please also visit Mark Ayres' Homepage and read more about Mark's work for Doctor Who and other productions while you're here!

The BBC's original master videotapes of "The War Machines" had been lost in the great library purge of the early 1970's, and the film prints had similarly disappeared. When the remaining prints were recovered from abroad it was discovered that they had been damaged or edited to remove "violent" content. Some of this excised material was recovered from a library in Australia at the end of 1996, so when BBC Worldwide scheduled the story for release on video, a decision was made to restore the available missing material and produce new master tapes of as high quality as possible.

Picture restoration was handled by Paul Vanezis and Steve Roberts, and they can tell you more accurately than I can what was done there (see below for links). This article deals purely with what I did to the sound.

First priority was to restore missing sequences. Second was to repair or correct any damage to the soundtrack.

With regard to the latter, I only tried to correct anomalies introduced subsequent to the original master tape, i.e. those introduced as a result of the optical transfer and subsequent damage to the negative or prints. This includes the removal of dirt pops on the soundtrack, or clicks due to tears in the film. Except in two minor cases I have specifically not attempted to alter anything that was done "wrongly" during the original recording (i.e. all miscued sound effects, microphone clunks, obvious tape edits, wrong fader moves and continuity errors are as originally recorded!).

I have tried to match the quality of the programme sound as closely as possible over the various sources. As a result, the background media noise changes character slightly across some of the transitions (although I have tried to minimise this effect wherever possible). This is noticeable in critical monitoring conditions, but should be less so in a domestic environment, and is preferable to changes in the actual sync sound quality.

Also, as a result of the high levels of noise reduction that had to be employed on some of the imported sources, a slight "glassiness" may be apparent on these sequences. Again, I felt that this was less noticeable than a massive increase in background noise and change in the sync sound quality (especially when it occurs mid-scene).

Episode 1

• Audio topped-and-tailed to remove optical leader.
• A few bad optical pops removed.
• Closing titles music restored to cover torn print.

Episode 2

• Audio topped-and-tailed to remove optical leader.
• Clipped opening title music repaired.
• Closing titles music restored to cover torn print.
• Various restored sequences eq'd, denoised, patched and matched-in to master audio. Some background sound borrowed from matching sequences elsewhere in the episode to ease transitions.
• Some optical pops removed.

Episode 3

• Audio topped-and-tailed to remove optical leader.
• Clipped opening title music repaired.
• Closing titles music restored to cover torn print.
• Moderate broad-band noise reduction and hum-removal applied to master audio.
• Various restored sequences eq'd, denoised, patched and matched-in to master audio.
• One short sequence between Brett and Krimpton restored from home-taped reel-to-reel recording over new picture cutaways. The existing machine noise was looped to cover the background, as this sound had to be removed from the patched-in segment along with most of the unwanted noise. It was impossible to remove all the VHF reception artifacts so I have made a feature of the artifacts produced by the denoising software. This sounds like a new added sound effect and hopefully few will notice anything amiss!

  Krimpton: "Machines have been programmed to destroy any form of human life that opposes them. The order to attack must come from Wotan alone".

  (Underlined words restored).

• I corrected two mistakes in this episode, both where the studio sound engineer had faded the sound up, decided he was wrong and faded it down again, then realised he had been right first time and brought it up again, all in the space of a couple of seconds! I've countered this as it was distracting. (Beginning of restored battle scene; start of next scene as Doctor approaches).
• Some optical pops removed.

Episode 4

• Audio topped-and-tailed to remove optical leader.
• Clipped opening title music repaired.
• Moderate broad-band noise reduction applied to master audio.
• Restored sequences eq'd, denoised, patched and matched-in to master audio.
• Two lines from man in telephone box ("It's out there now. It's seen me!") restored from domestic reel-to-reel, over reconstructed effects background. Note that the restored sound was heavily distorted, but this has been disguised as much as possible by use of sound effects. (Some original pictures missing here, but all dialogue has been restored).
• Audio restored from domestic reel-to-reel to cover torn print as Doctor and Ben discuss Polly. Some words are still missing (there were not enough pictures to squeeze the whole line in) but at least Ben finishes his line and the exchange now makes sense!

  Ben: "If they've got Polly, Doctor, they could have transferred her to help at any one of their places".

  Doctor: "Oh my dear boy, if we're going to worry about, er, one person we shall never solve anything, shall we?"

  (Underlined words still missing, bold words restored).

• Exchange between Brett, Krimpton, and Polly partially restored. Unfortunately two lines are still missing as there were no pictures to cover.

  Polly: "I have come to submit myself to Wotan's judgment. I allowed a prisoner to escape".

  Brett: "Wotan will consider your case later. If found guilty you will be destroyed".

  Polly: "I understand".

  Krimpton: "For the moment your help is needed here".

  (Underlined lines still missing, bold words restored).

• Some optical pops removed.

Equipment used

• Digidesign ProTools III running on a Power Computing P100 MacOS computer.
• Digidesign DINR noise reduction software.
• Waves Q10 Equalising software.
• Waves PAZ Analyser.
• Yamaha 02R recording console.
• Various DAT machines.

Steve Roberts' Doctor Who Restoration Team Homepage contains further information on this project, including interviews with Steve Cole from BBC Worldwide, War Machines director Michael Ferguson, and Mark Ayres (yours truly!) regarding the restoration.

Mark Ayres. February 1997. Some minor revisions November 1997.