New Zealand

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NEW ZEALAND is an island country in the south-western Pacific ocean. Its closest neighbour is Australia.

Profile

Country Number (Number 1) 1964 FIRST WAVE
Region Australasia/Asia Commonwealth
Television commenced 1 June 1960
Colour System 31 October 1973 PAL
Population 1966 2,640,117
TV Sets 1966 352,076
Language/s English

Television Stations / Channels

Between 1964 and 2001, Doctor Who screened on a number of different channels in New Zealand.

Television commenced on 1 June 1960, under the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation (NZBC), a statutory body-owned station.

Television was broadcast on a regional basis – with transmitters in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin – until 29 October 1973, when television across the country became fully networked. Two days later, colour broadcasts commenced, although it wasn't until June 1975, with the introduction of the second channel, that black and white broadcasts ceased.

Summary of broadcasters in New Zealand:

  • 1964 to May 1975: Doctor Who screens on the NZBC (later known as TV1).
  • April 1975: NZBC is dissolved. Second channel, TV2 is formed, which becomes a separate corporation called South Pacific Television a year later.
  • September 1975 to February 1980: Doctor Who airs on TV2 / South Pacific Television.
  • February 1980: TV1 and South Pacific Television merge and become Television New Zealand (TVNZ); the channels are still named TV1 and TV2.
  • February 1980 to July 1999: Doctor Who screens on both TV1 and TV2 at various times during this period.
  • From May 2000: PRIME becomes the new home for classic Doctor Who, and from 2005, the channel for the new series...


DOCTOR WHO IN NEW ZEALAND

New Zealand was the first country after the UK to screen Doctor Who (see Selling Doctor Who).


Stories bought and broadcast

New Zealand and Australia are the only two countries to screen all seven Doctors more or less in chronological order.

All bar eight Doctor Who stories have aired in New Zealand – although a number of stories did air one time or another "out of sequence" during 'repeats' many years later from when they should have aired.

Rather than listing all the stories that did air, it's much easier to note those that didn't: the eight stories (49 episodes) that have never screened in New Zealand (because of censorship or unavailability) are:

P The Crusade 4
T/A Mission to the Unknown 1
V The Daleks' Master Plan 12
KK The Faceless Ones 6
OO The Ice Warriors 6
RR Fury from the Deep 6
VV The Invasion 8
YY The Space Pirates 6

Key Dates and Events

1960s

  • 16 June 1964: The New Zealand government censors view and classify the first batch of 13 Doctor Who episodes as being unsuitable for younger audiences.
  • 18 September 1964: New Zealand becomes the first country outside the UK to screen Doctor Who. It debuts on CHTV-3, in Christchurch, at 7.57pm. This first run consists of those first three serials, 13 episodes. The other three stations air the series over the coming months. (The film prints are cycled around the country from station to station.)
  • 1965-1966: The NZBC is indecisive about purchasing further episodes of the series, mainly due to it having been classified as suitable only for older viewers by the censors.
  • December 1965: The Peter Cushing film, "Dr Who and the Daleks", goes on general release in theatres.
  • 27 October 1966: After a break of a year, the series returns, but only one serial, Marco Polo, screens.
  • By 19 September 1967: The NZBC receives a batch of 31 'used' episodes from the ABC in Australia, spanning The Reign of Terror to The Crusade. Sixteen of these cannot be screened due to censors' classifications.
  • December 1967: The film, "Daleks Invasion Earth 2150AD", goes on general release in theatres.
  • 26 January 1968: A run of fifteen episodes commences.
  • 26 March 1968: The NZBC sends the first 13 episodes as "Audition Prints" to Denmark.
  • By 23 September 1968, the NZBC receives a further batch: a selection of 44 episodes from The Space Museum to The Tenth Planet.
  • March to October 1969: The NZBC receives its first batch of Patrick Troughton episodes, from The Power of the Daleks to The Abominable Snowmen. The Faceless Ones gets "rejected" by the censor.
  • 31 August 1969: The Power of the Daleks screens.


1970s


1980s

  • February 1980: TVNZ comes into existence.
  • February 1981: Jon Pertwee returns for a second New Zealand tour.
  • 23 February 1981: The two-year non-stop run ends, with The Horns of Nimon part four.
  • 24 March 1981: New Zealand is the first country to screen Tom Baker's final run of stories, starting with The Leisure Hive. The runs ends after The Keeper of Traken in September 1981.
  • 20 September 1982: A whole year later, Logopolis screens.
  • 14 March 1983: A run of stories from Castrovalva to Mawdryn Undead airs; for the first time ever TVNZ has in effect caught up with the UK.
  • 1984: Doctor Who does not screen at all during 1984.
  • From 24 November 1984, Porirua Little Theatre performs the first-ever foreign performances of the stage-play "Doctor Who and the Daleks: Seven Keys to Doomsday".
  • 12 April 1985: Doctor Who returns - but it's a two-year run of repeats (the first time New Zealand has had Doctor Who repeats) which also includes many stories that have not screened before in New Zealand: the run opens with The Mind Robber. This 'replay' season also features the recently reissued package of 127 Pertwee episodes (in colour and black and white) that had also been sold to Australia and the United States. Also playing for the first time were the four Tom Baker stories that were missed in the 1978-1980 run.
  • June 1987: In the wake of the announcements of Sylvester McCoy as the seventh Doctor, and the death of Patrick Troughton, New Zealand's first Doctor Who fanzine, the highly-acclaimed Time Space Visualiser (TSV), is published.
  • March 1988: The New Zealand Doctor Who Fan Club (NZDWFC) is formed, based in Christchurch. They take over publication of TSV.
  • 19 to 25 November 1988: To celebrate the series' 25th anniversary, TVNZ screens a week-long Doctor Who Silver Jubilee, screening one story for each Doctor. This features the (so far) one and only NZ telecast of The Five Doctors, and the world debut of Silver Nemesis parts two and three.
  • 20 April 1989: After a six year gap, the rest of season 20 finally screens, followed by seasons 21 and 22 (the latter cut into half-hour episodes), although the episodes are heavily edited to allow for commercials.
  • 22-23 July 1989: TRAKON, the first ever New Zealand Doctor Who convention, is held in Christchurch.
  • 10 August 1989: The Twin Dilemma airs.


1990s

  • 3 January 1990: The Trial of a Time Lord commences.
  • 23 January 1990: The Sylvester McCoy run commences.
  • 11-13 May 1990: Mark Strickson is the first Doctor Who guest to feature at an organised New Zealand Science Fiction convention.
  • 14-16 September 1990: WHOCON, the second New Zealand Doctor Who convention is held, with Jon Pertwee and Mark Strickson as guests.
  • 16 September 1990: Survival part three airs.
  • January 1991: Management of the New Zealand Doctor Who Fan Club relocates to Auckland.
  • 1991-1993: A selective run of Hartnell, Troughton and Pertwee repeats screens.
  • 9-30 May 1993: The Time Meddler airs as a one off.
  • 28 November 1993: Day of the Daleks is repeated as a 30th anniversary celebratory story.
  • 26 December 1993: The documentary Resistance is Useless screens.
  • 30 October 1996: The Paul McGann TV Movie airs.
  • January 1997: Tom Baker makes a rare appearance at a fan event when he comes to Auckland to film a series of television commercials for a New Zealand Superannuation campaign.
  • 3 January 1999: A print of The Lion, the missing first episode of The Crusade, is found, and eventually returned to the BBC.


2000s

  • 15 May 2000: PRIME-TV commences a 13-month run of all complete stories on a daily basis, starting with An Unearthly Child and ending with The Horns of Nimon. This run includes many first-ever screenings of black and white Hartnell and Troughton stories that were missed in the 1960s, as well as some of the newly re-coloured Pertwee episodes. The black and white first episode of Invasion of the Dinosaurs also airs during this run.
  • Prime planned to screen a further run from January 2002, commencing with The Leisure Hive, but the schedules were revised following a change in ownership of the station.
  • 6 February 2002: The movie, "Daleks Invasion Earth 2150AD", airs for the first time on New Zealand television.
  • February 2002 to July 2005: Doctor Who is absent from New Zealand television screens for the next three years, but returns in mid-2005 with the start of the new series...


Transmission

TV listings

A full account of the broadcast history of Doctor Who in New Zealand, complete with clippings from the TV listings magazine, The New Zealand Listener, can be found at: ARCHIVE: ANOTHER TIME AND SPACE


New Zealand in Doctor Who

  • New Zealand is mentioned on page 7 of the novelisation of The Daleks.
  • In The Tenth Planet, the space capsule Zeus IV passes over the south island of New Zealand (see page 21 of the novel). And when the planet Mondas is seen on screen, the upside-down image of the Mondas equivalent of 'New Zealand' can be glimpsed briefly.
  • Two New Zealanders are crewmen in the Gravitron base: Sam Becket (No 7) and N Stacey (No 15). The character played by Victor Pemberton (Jules?) has a New Zealand flag on his tunic.
  • A behind the scenes photograph from The Web of Fear shows a Yeti smashing its way through a stack of boxes labelled "New Zealand Apples". Whether this actual scene appears like this in the televised version is not known.
  • In The Seeds of Death, a map of the world is seen and New Zealand features rather prominently in several shots.
  • Scientist Ernest Rutherford is named by the Doctor (The Five Doctors).
  • Michael Wisher was unable to revise his role as Davros in Destiny of the Daleks in 1979 as he was touring New Zealand with a D'Oyly Carte production of one of Gilbert and Sullivan's operas at the time.
  • Ian Marter (Harry Sullivan) worked on a New Zealand soap-opera, Close to Home, for several years in the early 1980s, a job which excluded him from making an appearance in The Five Doctors.
  • There have also been New Zealanders working behind the scenes too: TVNZ producer, the late Brian Lenane, claimed to have worked on Doctor Who although it is not known in what capacity, and apparently Peter Bartlett, the locations film cameraman on The Abominable Snowmen, was a Kiwi.
  • The Doctor Who stageplay The Ultimate Adventure, with Colin Baker, was to have toured New Zealand in 1989, but this fell through.
  • Colin Meek, the non-existent writer of Dan Freedman's webcast Doctor Who - Death Comes to Time, was said to have been a New Zealander.
  • New Zealand-born entrepreneur, Walter Tuckwell, could be said to have been responsible for the Dalekmania craze in the mid-1960s, when he assumed the role of the BBC's merchandising liaison.
  • The opening scenes of the 2003 web-cast animated adventure, Scream of the Shalka, are set at Mount Ruapehu.
  • And although the new series is outside the scope of BroaDWcast, New Zealand is mentioned twice in Voyage of the Damned.


Links

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