Missing Misterio
The Mystery of the Missing Misterios
There is something amiss with the sales of Doctor Who to Central American and South American countries.
The big mystery is, did the series actually screen in all the countries purported to have purchased the series?
BBC Records list the following Central and South American countries in a report (going up to December 1979) for which a payment had been made for the rights to use incidental music featured in the first 23 Tom Baker stories, Robot to The Invasion of Time:
| Ecuador | by December 1978 |
| Chile | by February 1979 |
| Mexico | by February 1979 |
| Venezuela | by February 1979 |
| Brazil | by March 1979 |
| Guatemala | by March 1979 |
The February 1987 memo mentioned in The Eighties - THE LOST CHAPTERS records sales to the following Latin American countries:
| Costa Rica | 1 story |
| Chile | 23 stories |
| Guatemala | 24 stories * |
| Honduras | 24 stories * |
| Nicaragua | 24 stories * |
[* We feel sure that 24 should be 23, as that was how many Baker stories were in the package.]
Of note, only Chile and Guatemala appear in both lists, when in fact they all should. Why are the other sales of Dr Misterio missing? Nicaragua and Costa Rica should certainly be listed in the music payments register – or is it simply that their payments hadn't been recovered at the time these records were compiled? And Mexico should definitely be in the 1987 memo.
Costa Rica is recorded as buying only one story – and yet we have found over 330 airdates for that country.
Airdates have been located for Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico and Nicaragua only. Newspapers have been checked from 1978 to the mid-1980s for the other countries (with the exception of Honduras, for which only 1984 onwards have been accessed). But "El Dr Misterio" is missing from the television listings for Venezuela, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras and Dominican Republic. And for Brazil, where Portuguese is the official language, no listings have been found for "Doutor Who".
Sure, it's possible that the series aired outside the date ranges we've searched, but with 98 episodes to find, even if they were stripped five days a week, it is hard to believe that we couldn't find at least one listing even when viewing every third month at random.
The fact that all the dated payments are from December 1978 to March 1979, shortly after the grand launch of the series in the United States, suggests that Time Life wanted to exploit the new series to as many countries as possible, and all at the same time. Time Life handled sales to Latin America as well as North America, so did its deal include some sort of "bulk" sale / offer that encompassed not only the USA but also Latin America and South America? (Brazil is not part of Latin America.) There is no certainty that in all cases an actual sale ever took place. These may have all merely been prospective customers.
And how do the music payments actually work? A fee may have been paid in advance – and thus recorded in the music payments register. But the sale of the series might not have been completed and gone ahead. The fee would have been refunded. But was the register updated to record this? Or was this recorded somewhere else?
Is there any significance in the fact that Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica all lie in very close proximity to one another? These countries would have been able to receive television transmissions from their neighbours. Guatemala and Honduras lie between Mexico and Nicaragua; two countries for which airdates have not been found lying slap-bang between two countries for which airdates have. Does this mean that a country which did not buy the series still had to pay a small fee because they could pick up cross-border transmissions?
Of the nine countries under examination, Chile is the only one that appears in both the music records, has the correct number of stories in the 1987 memo (23), and has had its airdates confirmed. All three components are present and there are no conflicts; all the facts fit. So why is it not the same for any of the others?
Let's combine the two tables:
| Country | music paid | 1987 | airdates |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chile | by February 1979 | 23 | 9 May 1979 |
| Mexico | by February 1979 | -- | 4 May 1979 |
| Costa Rica | -- | 1 | 4 Feb 1980 |
| Nicaragua | -- | 24 | 6 Aug 1980 |
| Guatemala | by March 1979 | 24 | -- |
| Ecuador | by December 1978 | -- | -- |
| Venezuela | by February 1979 | -- | -- |
| Brazil | by March 1979 | -- | -- |
| Honduras | -- | 24 | -- |
- Costa Rica and Nicaragua are missing from the "music paid" list – but that's perfectly understandable, since their broadcasts did not commence until 1980, which is after the music memo was compiled (it stopped at December 1979).
- Mexico is missing from the 1987 memo list that's presented in The Eighties - THE LOST CHAPTERS. However it's entirely possible that Mexico was named in the memo itself, but was accidentally omitted from the published list. Problem is we cannot verify either way now, as the authors of the book no longer have a copy of the memo...
- Ecuador, Venezuela and Brazil appear only in the music report, and nowhere else, so we could probably consider those as being potential sales that Time Life offered but which ultimately did not go ahead – hence their absence from the other two columns.
- Airdates for Brazil have been impossible to find; the country has over 50 private TV stations, which don't all have listings in newspapers.
- Newspapers have been checked for 1978 to 1980 for Guatemala, so it's possible that the series aired much later. But if music payments were made in 1979, why hold off screening the series for more than two years? Both Chile and Mexico screened the series within a few months of the "payment" date. Costa Rica and Nicaragua also screened the series a very short time after the music memo was complied. If the music payment was reflective of broadcast, then Dr Misterio would have played in Guatemala around June 1979...
- The jury is still out on Honduras; until 1979 to 1983 newspapers can be checked, we don't know for sure whether or not the series aired.
CONCLUSION
We may be completely overlooking something obvious here!
- Have we been looking in the wrong newspapers?
- Are the BBC records wrong / inaccurate / incomplete / being taken out of context?
- For those countries where no airdates have been found, were the 'sales' cancelled after the music payments had been made, and the money later refunded?
- Did some countries have to pay some sort of "proximity payment" to cover transmissions they received from their close neighbours?
- The "sales" were handled by Time Life, who would have notified the BBC of all sales that had been completed; but how accurate was their communication with the BBC? Did they provide the BBC with all the facts?
A number of questions that can't be answered – so for now, the Mystery of the Missing Misterios will have to remain unsolved...
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