For more than a decade, the most requested program in American public television history was one almost no one could see. Its broadcast rights had lapsed, and it survived only on fading tapes people had recorded off their own televisions.

The problem was a song. The film used the Beatles' "With a Little Help from My Friends" as a turning point in its plot, and clearing it had become ruinously expensive, especially after Michael Jackson bought the Beatles catalog. So THE LATHE OF HEAVEN (1980), the first movie PBS ever produced, sat locked away.

When fans finally forced a rebroadcast in 2000, a worse surprise was waiting. PBS had not kept the original. The only way to bring it back was to rebuild it from a single surviving broadcast tape, with a cover version standing in for the Beatles. A film about a man who dreams things out of existence had itself nearly been dreamed out of existence.

That man is George Orr, whose dreams rewrite reality while only he remembers the world that was. His psychiatrist learns the power is real and starts steering those dreams to repair the world, and every fix detonates. Cure overpopulation, and a plague has already killed billions. Dream up peace on Earth, and aliens invade to unite us against them.

Ursula K. Le Guin called it the only one of her books she ever enjoyed imagining as a film.

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Additional detail from Terry Dugas:
The film was produced by Taurus Film in association with WNET in New York. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting provided some funding, administered through PBS. While PBS was the distributor of the program, the masters were in control of WNET. When distribution rights expired in 1988, the masters were probably erased and the tape reused. This was a common industry practice. Since the production was shot on video tape and not film, no film masters exist.