Ecuador

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ECUADOR lies on the Pacific coast of the South American continent. It shares borders with Colombia and Peru.

Profile

Country Number (52?) 1980 SECOND WAVE
Region South America
Television commenced 1959
Colour System 1974 NTSC
Population 1980 7.56 million
TV Sets 1980 275,000
Language/s Spanish Dubbed

Television Stations / Channels

Ecuador began its television service in 1959. NTSC colour was introduced to the country in 1974. In the late 1970s, it had seven television broadcasting services.

Canal 10 (Channel 10) was owned by the Cadena Ecuatoriana de Television, headquartered in Guayaquil; it was on that station that "Dr Misterio" aired in 1980 and 1981.


Language/s

The principal language of Ecuador is Spanish. Foreign television programmes are dubbed into Spanish.


DOCTOR WHO IN ECUADOR (EL DOCTOR MISTERIO)

Doctor Misterio logo

In Spanish speaking countries, the series was known as Doctor Misterio. Ecuador was (approximately) the 52nd country to screen the series.


BBC Records

In DWM, Ecuador is identified in 22 story Archives, all Tom Baker stories from his first four seasons 4A to 4Z, but not 4L, which is probably an oversight, as that story did air.

According to other BBC records, the offer and sale to Ecuador was completed by November 1978. Time-Life Television was the distributor who provided BBC programmes to Latin American countries. It may have been at the March 1978 NATPE exhibition that the programme was offered to Ecuador (and later to Mexico, Chile and Venezuela) (for more on NATPE, see also United States--1978).

Ecuador is not named in the 1987 memo mentioned in The Eighties - THE LOST CHAPTERS, which is very odd indeed...


Stories bought and broadcast

TOM BAKER

23 stories, 98 episodes:



Ecuador therefore was offered and bought the standard package of Tom Baker stories in Spanish that were distributed by Time-Life.

(*) It's possible that Image of the Fendahl was not included.

  • For the Spanish story titles, go to: SPANISH


Transmission

TOM BAKER

"Mister Misterio" begins, 19 March 1980 (El Comercio)
"Mr Misterio" begins, 19 March 1980 (El Telegrafo)
Generic listing for "Dr Misterio", El Comercio, 1980

Despite a sale taking place by November 1978, it wasn't until Wednesday, 19 March 1980 that Doctor Misterio was broadcast on Canal 10 in Ecuador.

This long delay may have been due to the time it took to have the episodes dubbed, and that other countries subsequently "jumped the queue" and aired the series before tapes could be supplied to Ecuador. (See THE MYSTERY OF THE MISSING MISTERIOS for more on this.)

The series played weekly on Wednesdays from 9.00 to 10.00pm, two episodes back to back. As with the screenings in Mexico, Chile and Colombia around this same time, the stories aired in a completely random order.

There were 44 clear billings, when there should be 49, which means five sets of two episodes are unaccounted for. All stories bar Terror of the Zygons, The Sun Makers and Image of the Fendahl were billed at least once.

Although the series was not billed on 1 April (the US medical drama "Quincy" was scheduled instead), it may have aired, otherwise the last two episodes of Underworld are not accounted for.

Alternatively, the scheduled football did not play on 18 or 25 February, and the first parts of The Invasion of Time played instead, bringing the "Dr Misterio" schedule forward by a week, with Underworld subsequently airing 18 and 25 March.

With each paper having a different billing for 25 June 1980 - football or Planet of Evil part one – and that the same serial is then listed again the next two weeks, it's highly likely Terror of the Zygons played instead, on 18 and 25 June.

There are two episodes without published titles – 26 November and 10 December; these would be either The Sun Makers or Image of the Fendahl.

No episodes were listed on 24 and 31 December, with the TV schedule filled with Christmas programming. It's possible the series did air without being scheduled. If "Dr Misterio" did air on those two dates in December, then we may have accounted for all the episodes.

An alternative is that Image of the Fendahl did not air – it seems likely that the serial was skipped in Mexico as well, perhaps on account of its storyline questioning the origins and evolution of humans..?


PAUL McGANN

The 1996 TV Movie was likely available via the HBO OLE cable station in 1999.


TV listings

Airdates in Ecuador
 ← AIRDATES ...... (CLICK ICON TO GO TO TABLE SHOWING EPISODE BREAKDOWN AND AIRDATES - N/S = story title is Not Stated)

Listings are from the Ecuador newspapers El Comercio and El Telegrafo, of which only the latter published story titles.

The series title was printed (in error) as "Mister Misterio" for the first three billings of El Comercio and the first in Telegrafo, before setting with "Doctor" or "Dr Misterio" as the standard.

Although both papers had the same listings most of the time, they did differ on the odd occasion – such as on 26 March and 1 June 1980, for which Telegrafo doesn't list the series at all, or when there was football - such as on 25 June and 3 December 1980.

We have generally sided with Telegrafo in our Airdates table as that had story titles, however even those went askew a couple of times, such as there being four listings for The Talons of Weng-Chiang, three for Planet of Evil, only one for Underworld and none at all for Terror of the Zygons, The Sun Makers or Image of the Fendahl.

Some of the published story titles differed from the "usual" ones (see our Spanish page), such as "Robots Mortales" (instead of "El Robot de la Muerte"), although the Ecuador listings tend to copy the ones published in Chile.

All issues of El Comercio to the end of 1982 were checked, and there were no further listings for "Dr Misterio" beyond 25 March 1981.


Ecuador in Doctor Who


Links

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