The Secret Show (partially lost miscellaneous media from British animated TV show; 2006-2008): Difference between revisions
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| ||Desktop Calendar (Mac)||<span style="color:red;">'''Lost'''</span>''' | | ||Desktop Calendar (Mac)||<span style="color:red;">'''Lost'''</span>''' | ||
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| ||Changed Daily Cut-out||<span style="color: | | ||Changed Daily Cut-out||<span style="color:green;">'''Found'''</span>''' | ||
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| ||U.Z.Z. Agent Card||<span style="color:green;">'''Found'''</span>''' | | ||U.Z.Z. Agent Card||<span style="color:green;">'''Found'''</span>''' | ||
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| ||T.H.E.M. Agent Card||<span style="color:green;">'''Found'''</span>''' | | ||T.H.E.M. Agent Card||<span style="color:green;">'''Found'''</span>''' | ||
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| ||U.Z.Z. Door Hanger||<span style="color: | | ||U.Z.Z. Door Hanger||<span style="color:green;">'''Found'''</span>''' | ||
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| ||T.H.E.M. Door Hanger||<span style="color: | | ||T.H.E.M. Door Hanger||<span style="color:green;">'''Found'''</span>''' | ||
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|Limited Edition||Downloadables Guide||<span style="color: | |Limited Edition||Downloadables Guide||<span style="color:green;">'''Found'''</span>''' | ||
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Revision as of 13:16, 3 November 2017
TheSecretShow.com from 2008.
Status: Partially Lost
The Secret Show was a BAFTA-winnng, independently-produced animation series made for the BBC, by Collingwood/O'Hare Entertainment. It was about the semi-secret organisation U.Z.Z. and their top agents Victor Volt and Anita Knight, dealing with the dastardly machinations of Doctor Doctor's T.H.E.M. syndicate every second Tuesday, as well as saving the planet several times over from other villains such as The Impostors, Reptogators, and Prince Spong of the Floaty Heads. First devised in 2004, it premiered on CBBC in 2006 (in the UK) and on Nicktoons in 2007 (in the US).
Although the series itself is available online if you know where to look, a considerable amount of media related to it is currently unavailable.
Found/Partially Found Media
The Nicktoons American dub (Partially Found)
Paired with "Wedgie Attack" in the second of the double-billed episodes in Nicktoons broadcasts, the episode "Bogie Ball" had every use of the word "bogie" redubbed into "booger" for all voice lines, and the title-card was changed accordingly. Edited portions of it were uploaded by YouTube User TheSecretShow4You from their own camrip, although in very low quality.
Additionally, the episode "The Z-Ray Goggles Of Power" was redubbed to say "ZEE-Ray Goggles" instead of "ZED-Ray Goggles" when aired on Nicktoons.
It is unknown how many additional episodes were redubbed as only 1 of the 26 Nicktoons double-bills has surfaced - that being Dr Hypno Returns Again & Secret Sleep, neither of which appear to have been modified - although as of 02/11/17, master copies have been located of two further double bills, being Booger Ball & Wedgie Attack, and Flick The Switch & Giant Brain Of Terror. It is currently unknown which of the latter two were modified, nor which format - if they are in PAL then it will be in far superior quality than any broadcast even disregarding the footage being uncompressed.
The Martian Dub of "Super-Vic" (Found)
One of the most famous pieces of lost media from the show, this was exclusive to the Australian release of the Volume 2 DVD - although TV listings suggest it may have briefly aired on Nicktoons. It was a self-satirical in-character commentary on the episode "Super-Vic", showing the main cast supposedly "redubbing the episode into Martian for the benefit of those watching on Mars", seemingly on their first take. Naturally the "Martian" is nonsense and the redub devolves into everyone arguing over what the Martian language supposedly is, and what actually happened during the episode's events. Remaining elusive for many years, it was found and uploaded onto Google Drive and shared on Tumblr in its entirety in late 2016.
The 2004 'Lucky Leo' pilot (Found)
Before the series was picked up by the BBC, a pilot episode called "Lucky Leo" was fully made in 2004 and later recycled into the series 2 premiere episode of the same name in 2007. As Tony Collingwood explains:
"I wrote Lucky Leo as the pilot episode, and we made it at our own expense to pitch the series. ... Lucky Leo went out as episode 27, with very minor changes. I think we just re-timed the gag at the end when all the meteorites miss the “lucky” Earth. Apart from that – the episode is exactly the same as the pilot. We held the episode back in case we fell behind in production, and could throw that one in to catch up! So we used it half way through to give the crew a breather!"
Update as of 02/11/17 - The pilot is finally able to be declared found, having been kindly and generously presented by Tony Collingwood himself to user MK Inst on an extremely rare 2004 publicity sampler DVD. Far from being "exactly the same", there are numerous differences - The entire SFX track is completely different - using temp stock effects because the foley hadn't been recorded yet - about 70% of all the voice lines are alternate takes, the UZZ Base is an old design with satellite dishes on the sides, a few scenes are edited quite differently, Anita isn't a mermaid, the Credits Sequence looks unlike any other version and the animations in the Briefing Room are very different too, utilising flickering shadows from the fireplace - an effect which was later dropped completely.
Lost Media
Commentary on "Flick The Switch!"
Previously completely unheard of, this redub was meant to have been released on the cancelled Volume 3 DVD, which never made it to market despite reportedly being complete. It was uploaded by an anonymous affiliate of Tony Collingwood to YouTube in late 2016 but was immediately blocked by the Content ID system, leaving it inaccessible before it caught any public attention.
According to Mr Collingwood himself, “I enjoyed writing [The Martian Dub] – and we had a blast recording it with the actors. We did another episode like that as a DVD extra, where Changed Daily held a post mission briefing, with the entire cast commenting on how they did during the episode. Not sure if that ever made it out into the world?”
The Sounds Of The Secret Show
Following the production of "Actors Playing U.Z.Z." and "Artists Drawing U.Z.Z.", a further making-of short known as "The Sounds Of The Secret Show" was made for the ill-fated Volume 3 DVD. Having been previously unheard of, it was uploaded to YouTube with the "Flick The Switch!" commentary and befell exactly the same fate. It is 9:27 long, the Farmer From Devon re-appears as he is visible in the thumbnail, and it would've been about how they made the foley and sound-effects used throughout the show.
There was a 4th BTS film made - in addition to another two Professor Professor Lectures which were also slated to have one on each volume - called The Music Of The Secret Show, which featured Roger Jackson, the series' composer.
The CBBC Platformer
The first truly interactive media made for the show, a 2D platformer game titled "Find The Secret Thing" was available on the long-gone Secrets & Spies section of the CBBC website between roughly 2006 and 2009. Predating the TheSecretShow.com website, it was the first game made by Complete Control for Collingwood/O'Hare. A video showcasing parts of it was uploaded to the developer's Dailymotion and Veoh channels. The game's original filename was "framework.swf" in the "spies" directory on the site.
TheSecretShow.com
The show's official website was launched in late 2006 on the 25th of October, created by the same team who did the CBBC Platformer, and was an impressively complex and intricate flash-based tie-in to the show - so much so that it won a BAFTA for Interactivity in it's own right. It had dozens of different animated screens and set-pieces, all designed to be as faithful to the show as possible, utilizing archive voice clips from the episodes but also having new lines especially recorded for different pages. It apparently also had a "promo site" full of teasers online in the weeks leading up to it's launch, which is now completely lost. The main site was active until 2014, and may even have remained online into the first few weeks of 2015, but ultimately disappeared quietly with only a single Wayback capture actually working out of the hundreds taken.
The Wayback's archive kept the site technically "still alive" until mid-2017, whereupon seven of the most important .swf files keeping it functional became inexplicably corrupted on the Wayback's own captures. Thus, after over 10 years, the site was finally gone for good, as the loading screen now forever stuck at 0%.
However, a coalition of fans managed to cobble together almost everything from their own archives, which are hosted on Google Drive - all the files needed to at least get it running survive here, but a compiled version does not exist at this time - the known missing files are "spiderbike.swf" (the file for a minigame) and data from an alternate version of "shop.swf" with a different shopping mall/escalators background.
The Blogs and Messages
The site had various places with update blogs - most of which made in-character as many of the cast - about either the site itself, upcoming episodes of the show, or just general articles that merely provided snippets of expanded canon not seen elsewhere. One can be partially seen in the above shot of the U.Z.Z. Leaderboard, but they were also present on the website's splash page, the info page, and in the Newsroom. Very few survive as screenshots but many exist as text only, saved from two of the site's XML files. A few examples:
The Downloadables
The site was full of hidden secrets for fans to find, unique downloadables hidden behind panels in the walls on different pages or requiring a 4-digit code (which could be found either on the website or in the show's episodes themselves) to unlock and download. However, these files were hosted externally on a separate server which the Wayback Archive was unable to access, and it is mostly these files that are currently lost.
All found downloadables are backed up here, and all known downloadables are as follows:
| Type | Name | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Clips | Trailer w/ SFX | Watermarked |
| Creditless Intro | Found | |
| CD Outtake | Found | |
| Extended Bogie Scene | YouTube Rip | |
| PP Outtake | YouTube Rip | |
| Ringtones | MP3 | Found |
| Polyphonic | Found | |
| Music | Instrumental Theme | Found |
| Wallpapers | Monday | Found |
| Tuesday | Found | |
| Wednesday | Found | |
| Thursday | Found | |
| Friday | Found | |
| Saturday | Found | |
| Sunday | Found | |
| Mobile | Lost | |
| U.Z.Z. | Found | |
| T.H.E.M. | Found | |
| Screensavers | U.Z.Z. (Win) | Lost |
| U.Z.Z. (Mac) | Lost | |
| T.H.E.M. (Win) | Lost | |
| T.H.E.M. (Mac) | Lost | |
| Kooky Gadgets (Win) | Lost | |
| Kooky Gadgets (Mac) | Lost | |
| Top Secrets | Desktop Calendar (Win) | Found |
| Desktop Calendar (Mac) | Lost | |
| Changed Daily Cut-out | Found | |
| U.Z.Z. Agent Card | Found | |
| T.H.E.M. Agent Card | Found | |
| U.Z.Z. Door Hanger | Found | |
| T.H.E.M. Door Hanger | Found | |
| Limited Edition | Downloadables Guide | Found |