Brunei
Brunei is a tiny nation located on the island of Borneo in the South China Sea to the north of Australia. It was inducted as the 49th member of the British Commonwealth in 1984.
Contents
Population
When Doctor Who screened in Brunei in 1976, the population was 145,000, and licensed TV sets numbered only 2,000 (per WRTH, 1966). In 1984, the population was 195,000, and TVs were 30,000, with 28,000 in colour.
TV & system
Brunei began its television service in 1975, adopting the PAL colour broadcast system.
There is just one television station: Radio Dan Talivishen Brunei, a government-owned commercial broadcaster.
Language/s
The main language of Brunei is English, plus XXXXXXXX.
DOCTOR WHO IN BRUNEI
Brunei was the 40th country to screen Doctor Who (see Selling Doctor Who).
BBC Records
The Seventies records a sale of 10 stories by 28 February 1977.
The Eighties - The Lost Chapters records a sale of 43 stories (by 10 February 1987).
In DWM, Brunei is identified in 11 story Archives: RRR, PPP, QQQ, UUU, YYY, ZZZ, 4A, 4B, 4C, 4D, 4H, with a sales date of 1977.
The tally from The Seventies is made up of the above six Pertwees and the first four Bakers. Taking into account that the 1987 list has a degree of overlap with the 1977 list, there are two possible formulae to make up the 43:
- (6 JP + 4 TB) + 2 JP + 31 TB = 43
- (6 JP + 4 TB) + 33 TB = 43
There are 8 Pertwees and 17 Baker stories identified by title, leaving 18 Baker stories that are unidentified. The number of episodes without titles is 62 (not taking into account the possibility that there were no episodes over the Christmas 1980 period), which doesn't allow for very many combinations of 6 and 4-parters to fit that episode count. Taking into account the number of episodes in each of the six runs of Bakers (see Transmission below), there are not enough slots for there to be more than the one 6-parter, so the other slots must be taken by 14 4-parters.
Stories bought and broadcast
JON PERTWEE
Eight stories, 38 episodes:
| KKK | Day of the Daleks | 4 |
| PPP | Carnival of Monsters | 4 |
| QQQ | Frontier in Space | 6 |
| RRR | The Three Doctors | 4 |
| UUU | The Time Warrior | 4 |
| XXX | Death to the Daleks | 4 |
| YYY | The Monster of Peladon | 6 |
| ZZZ | Planet of the Spiders | 6 |
Brunei therefore bought what was available of the extant full colour PAL Jon Pertwee stories. (The Green Death was not available due to censorship issues in Australia.)
The programme was supplied as PAL colour video tapes with English soundtracks.
TOM BAKER
XXX stories, XX episodes:
| 4A | Robot | 4 |
| 4B | The Sontaran Experiment | 2 |
| 4C | The Ark in Space | 4 |
| 4D | Revenge of the Cybermen | 4 |
| 4E | Genesis of the Daleks | 6 |
| 4F | Terror of the Zygons | 4 |
| 4G | Pyramids of Mars | 4 |
| 4H | Planet of Evil | 4 |
| 4J | The Android Invasion | 4 |
| 4K | The Brain of Morbius | 4 |
| 4L | The Seeds of Doom | 6 |
| 4M | The Masque of Mandragora | 4 |
| 4N | The Hand of Fear | 4 |
| 4P | The Deadly Assassin | 4 |
| 4Q | The Face of Evil | 4 |
| 4R | The Robots of Death | 4 |
| . | group of unknown episodes | 62 |
| 5Q | Meglos | 4 |
Brunei bought GROUP A, B, C and at least parts of GROUP F of the Tom Baker stories.
The programme was supplied as PAL colour video tapes with English soundtracks.
Origin of the Tapes?
It is known that New Zealand sent the video tapes of Death to the Daleks to Brunei on 18 February 1976, a year ahead of its transmission in January 1977. (It's possible that New Zealand sent its Tom Baker episodes to Brunei, as the New Zealand screenings were several months ahead of Brunei's from 1978 onwards.
Transmission
JON PERTWEE
The first screenings in Brunei were from Sunday, 8 August 1976, staring with Day of the Daleks. The timeslot start was usually around 6.32pm, give or take the odd minute.
Brunei appears to have been the first country to screen Frontier in Space in colour. (The master tapes had been held by BBC Sydney; it wasn't until the mid-1980s that these master tapes were "found" and returned to BBC in London.)
Although New Zealand had screened KKK, PPP, RRR, UUU and XXX ahead of Brunei, Brunei screened YYY and ZZZ a month ahead of New Zealand!
The run ended on 1 May 1977; a run of 39 weeks, with no episode on 13 March 1977.
TOM BAKER
The Baker era commenced on Thursday, 23 November 1978, at 6.30pm. Stories aired in production code order. 36 weeks later, on 26 July 1979 the first run ended with part four of The Android Invasion.
Viewers had to wait four months to see the series again, on Thursday, 15 November 1979, picking up from where the run left off, with The Brain of Morbius. The series moved to Wednesdays from 23 January 1980, at 6.05pm, with The Masque of Mandragora. This 22 week run ended on 9 April 1980, with The Deadly Assassin, a story that had been unable to screen in Australia due to censorship, but which had already screened in New Zealand in 1979.
After a three month break, the series was back from 16 July 1980, on Wednesdays still. The Face of Evil aired at 5.10pm or 5.05pm, then the timeslot shifted ahead to 6.30 (or thereabouts) for the rest of the run: 36 episodes later on 25 March 1981 (with no episode on 13 August) the run came to an end. The listings stopped printing story titles from 3 September 1980, so it is unknown what the last 28 episodes consisted of. 28 episodes equates to seven 4-parters, or two 6-parters and four 4-parters. The 11 March 1981 listing gives a timeslot of 5.30pm to 7.00pm – is this a misprint, or an indication that more than one episode aired? There were no papers available for seven weeks between mid-November and the end of December, so it's not known if there were any breaks, especially over the Christmas / New Years' period.
The series returned on Friday, 4 July 1981, for 18 weeks, at 6.05pm or 5.10pm. Again, what aired is unknown – but there would have been at least three 4-parters and one 6-parter.
Nine months later, on Friday, 2 July 1982, at 5.05 began a further run of eight unidentified episodes – presumably two 4-parters. (The timeslot varied from 5.00pm to 5.30pm.)
After ten month gap, the final run of twelve episodes commenced on Sunday, 19 June 1983. The first listing was illustrated with a photo of Bill Fraser as General Grugger from Meglos: the accompanying caption merely stated it was a "a new series". (There's no absolute certainty that Meglos screened first; it could have been the second or third story of that block.) The series came to an end on 4 September 1983.
In all 170 episodes screened in Brunei (assuming there were no breaks during Christmas 1980). 38 Pertwees and the rest were Bakers.
As noted in the BBC Records section above, the unidentified stories could only be made up of one 6-parter and 14 4-parters. With an educated guess, given how these stories were 'missed' by other countries, we think 4S or 4Z, one 4-parter from season 15, 5G, 5H, 5J, 5P, 5S, 5T and 5V didn't screen in Brunei. This leaves most of season 15, all of season 16 and a handful from seasons 17 and 18 as the stories that did go to air.
See the AIRDATES page for our take on what may have screened.
There is no record that Brunei screened Doctor Who again.
TV listings
TV listings have been obtained from the newspaper Borneo Bulletin. Most of the Pertwee listings contained detailed synopses of the episodes. Some of the titles were incorrect: "Frontier" or "Frontiers of Space" used for that serial. Serial XXX was named "Death OF the Daleks"; "The MASK of Mandragora" was used for all four parts, and a missing letter "S" gave us "The Deadly Assasin".
As note above, there were seven issues 'missing' from mid-November to the end of the year, so it's impossible to know if the series took a break over this time.
Brunei in Doctor Who
There are no instances where Brunei is mentioned in the series.
References
