The Doctors

[Khan]

I just keep hoping that somehow, someway, someone will unearth some episodes of WTHI and LIAMST, lol.

[Chris B]

Those two I would be so excited about! My one dream soap to see is Return To Peyton Place. I feel like with it being produced by FOX, it's probably in a vault somewhere. I've read that Bing Crosby Productions saved Bright Promise as well. I wonder just how many short lived soaps are out there waiting to be discovered.

[cody_1990]

I was wondering the other day if somewhere out in the world the 1980-1982 run existed. There have been around a dozen or so episodes that popped up over the years online from that era including the final episode of the series. I know apparently NBC didn't save those tapes, which really confuses me, because I believe the show did air in some international markets at some point. VCR's were also more available at this point, maybe more fans have episodes in their personal collections. I just find it hard to believe all those episodes are gone, when soap producers/networks were saving episodes for all soaps by this point, no matter how popular or unpopular they were. Could it be possible they didn't approach NBC at all? 

[Jdee43]

Could be Retro's deal was just for the episodes owned by Colgate Palmolive; anything owned by NBC would cost extra money to license, and they aren't interested? Maybe that's why we haven't seen the early episodes either, since they may be owned by NBC? Just theories. 

[Chris B]

The company that owns The Doctors is I believe called SFM Entertainment. Unless they outright sold the series to Retro I believe they'd be the ones who have to request the additional tapes from NBC. I personally don't think they reached out to anybody. It doesn't make sense to me that NBC would've wiped those tapes when that wasn't a practice at the time. 

I do believe that they have the early episodes of The Doctors because they've streamed a few of them. I do wonder what the hold up is on uploading what early episodes they have. That would've been a nice treat to make up for what we lost.

[cody_1990]

Yeah, they had mentioned they had a broken amount of episodes from the 63-67 period. They aired the first episode and another random episode from the shows first month. You think they would have put everything up. Even if episodes are missing. Soap fans of that period are use to not having complete runs.

In regards to my point about the 80-82 episodes, I also wonder if it’s a residual issue that could be keeping them from wanting to air those episodes. I believe it was around that time when writers and actors worked larger residuals into their contracts. Ryan’s Hope/SFT/Edge are the only soaps that have reaired regular episodes from that period before. 

Edited December 18, 2024 by cody_1990

[DRW50]

I think Another World and Texas from 80/81 were also briefly repeated on the old AOL P&G channel or whatever it was called.

[cody_1990]

Yeah, was that for profit though? Wasn’t it just promotional? Ryan’s aired on soap net. SFT and Edge aired on the USA network. Texas reaired briefly to, on TBS paired with The Caitlin’s. 

[Jdee43]

The 2 episodes of The Doctors from 1963 that were streamed by Retro were the first episode and one from April 1963, "The Helping Hand." Both are available to view in the Paley Center Collection. Make of that what you will. We've never seen stuff from 1963-1967 outside of those 2 episodes. You'd think they'd try to stream Matt's or Althea's or Nick's first episode or something, if they really had access to all that stuff.

[DRW50]

You may be right. I couldn't remember if that was promotional.

[Chris B]

When they first announced it, they said the pre RetroTV episodes would be online only exclusives, but then Covid hit and that never happened. Considering they didn't revisit that after discovering the final episodes were missing probably tells us everything we need to know unfortunately.

[te.]

I'm happy they're setting up a FAST channel - I'll admit that I sort of gave up watching this when the announcement about the last two years being "missing" / wiped came. I'm not sure if I want to invest countless hours in watching something that I can't complete 'til the end. I might tune into a FAST channel though as it's less investment. 

[Maxim]

I posted this in the AW topic as well, because the discussion was about MDP and her writing. I think this clip can find a place here. Margaret DePriest as Mrs. Berger in 1967. 

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[Jdee43]

The 1968 Christmas episode (12/25/68) was very entertaining! It featured only the "fearsome foursome" of Matt, Maggie, Nick, and Althea. Nick's and Matt's imitations of each other were really funny and spot on! 

Towards the end of the episode, Nick tries to make small talk by chatting about a football game. He refers to an actual game between the Giants and the Rams, tied at 21-21 with Gossett coming out at the very end to try and make a field goal. The game was played a month before the airdate, November 24, 1968. It gives a little insight into how far ahead they were taping. 

 

[Contessa Donatella]

At its conclusion BET bought the rights to Generations & aired it several times over.