Ahh… That brings back happy memories. I had a recording of the ITV premiere of TESB (my sister wanted us to record Back to the Future instead on another channel while we were out, but my dad fortunately did an Indy and “chose wisely”!). It wasn’t until many years later, when watching the 2006 GOUT DVD, that I noticed the odd 30 seconds of dialogue were missing here and there from my VHS recording. From memory, there were a couple of shots involving C-3PO missing, both at times where there were adverts:
- C-3PO reassuring R2D2 that Luke will be alright at dusk, just after Han goes looking for him on Hoth
- Sarcastic remarks from Han made to C-3PO on board the falcon while they are hiding in the asteroid, just after Piett has briefed Vader
I wonder if anything else was chopped out?
I think the scene with Threepio translating Artoo’s calculations to Leia got snipped as well. They also removed the interaction between Han and Leia after Threepio expresses his bewilderment at “human behaviour” and leaves the cockpit.
It seems ITV hadn’t yet discovered the joys of time compression/truncating credits and instead resorted to slashing away footage in order to cram in more adverts. Likewise, I didn’t realise either that there were segments missing till years later when I saw the USA Network airing.
Unfortunately the UK broadcasters have never been forced to carry these sorts of warnings that are commonplace stateside:
As much as I loathe the entire practice, at least that way, it saves you having your time wasted and you can change the channel and watch something else.
Sadly I no longer have this VHS tape. I lent it many times to a colleague who taught Geography and used it for a particular lesson to introduce glaciers…! Rather tenuous, but time better spent than getting the kids to colour stuff in, I guess. Then he left the school, and I realised only months later that he still had my tape 😦. It also had “Mickey’s Christmas Carol” afterwards, possibly recorded later that day or the next day.
Bluto
My copy (recorded from Thames) has also been lost to the winds of time. However it seems a few people still have the original recordings as the commercial breaks have been uploaded to YouTube. I didn’t record the ROTJ premiere and can’t remember if ITV also applied similar butchery to that instalment.
The real holy grail would be obtaining the actual 1983 ITV broadcast master tape (as happened with the HBO airing) but that’s probably been long since destroyed…
(on a side note, what did/do you teach and which age range?)