Love Off-Air (documentary)

Love Off-Air was a tribute to the people dedicated enough to capture the soundtracks of Doctor Who in the 1960s, enabling the recreated episodes on the DVD release of The Invasion.

The main subject focused on the efforts people went to recording Doctor Who on audio before the advent of home video releases, and the individual way of going about it. Topics include troubles when recording (such as other family member's voices and other sounds getting into the recording), the meticulous cataloguing of all of their recorded tapes (such as using dynamo labels to label all your tapes or using Weetabix cut-outs as covers for cassette boxes) and the different ways of recording (microphone, straight from the tape recorder...) and the general thrill of managing to re-listen to Doctor Who when repeats were scarce and almost never happened.

The additional topics covered were the process of using off-air recordings as material for The Invasion DVD. Mark Ayres talks about the differences between different types of recordings, with some being more soft than others and some being sharper than others etc. He also discusses how when going about reconstructing a sound-track (whether it be for a DVD like The Invasion or an audio), Ayers will use a variety of different sources and usually blend them all together to get a better completed version.

He also briefly mentions a moment when he was working on the Lost in Time DVD boxset, in particular episode 2 of The Abominable Snowmen. There is a sound-glitch on the master of episode of The Abominable Snowmen itself, meaning all off-air recordings have this glitch. For a couple of seconds the sound cuts out and there is dead-air for a noticeable while. In order for him to get round that problem, Ayers had to take sound clips from other episodes starring Patrick Troughton, find the times he says something with the same words as what was meant to be scripted, and incorporates the mingled sound collection instead of the silence. He admits this was by no means a perfect solution, but felt it was preferable to cutting the scene entirely.

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