The Top Ten Achievements of the DVD Range

With the age of Doctor Who on blu ray imminent, it seems an opportune time to look back on the superlative DVD range. Only Red Dwarf comes close to matching the astonishing curation of Doctor Who on DVD. No other series of Doctor Who’s vintage – hell, few Hollywood blockbusters – boast the restoration standards and quality of special features gifted to our beloved programme. The DVD range is a labour of love, made by fans for fans. Whilst a tiny minority of decisions along the way may have proved contentious, (the Pirate Planet’s infamous flying spanner and the day-for-night grading on Day of the Daleks, for example) every single DVD release has been met with deserved universal praise. The catalogue of Doctor Who on DVD is a tremendous achievement and the restoration team (and other contributors) ought to be rightly proud of their magnificent collection.

But what did the DVD range do that went beyond the call of duty? What were the greatest successes? The best bits? Here’s my Top Ten. Feel free to disagree below or let us know your own highlights. We’d love to hear from you!

10 – A NEW BODY AT LAST

It’s difficult to find a product these days that doesn’t include Tom Baker being honest about his time on Doctor Who. This documentary, however, was the first to reveal the true face of the Fourth Doctor after years of Tom disguising himself under the well-deserved veil of a legend. This was when he first talked frankly. “I became my own worst enemy,” he opines, his face filling the camera. “In other words, I became impossible.” Studio footage of his regeneration illustrates clearly the sporadic, unpredictable nature of his moods. Key contributors include an ever-smug (but equally charming) Christopher H Bidmead and director John Black, an unappreciated figure during this period of the show’s rejuvenation. The documentary provides a true picture of the upheaval the programme was undergoing and is all the better for it.

9 – CGI EFFECTS

Whilst some of the enhancements made to stories by way of CGI have not always been successful (Enlightenment was not a story with effects that needed improving upon!) the vast majority help put the icing on the cake to tales already very well accomplished. The Dalek Invasion of Earth spaceships, Earthshock’s laser beams and Revelation’s flying Dalek stand out amongst the CG crowd. Action sequences in Day of the Daleks feel more dynamic and alive with the added explosions and laser fire. Best of all though is Kinda’s snake. It writhes and bares its teeth frighteningly, whilst somehow keeping in touch with its 1980s roots. It doesn’t feel out of place, its skin tones matching the original studio bouncy castle but adding bucketloads of drama to the story’s climax. It’s nice to see the CG enhancements being employed by the blu ray range too, Nerva Beacon now seeming as robust and believable in Revenge as it does in Ark. Is it really too much to hope for CG dinosaurs when the time comes for Season 11 to get the blu ray treatment?

8 – COME IN NUMBER FIVE
Ed Stradling’s forthright and sometimes brutal dissection of the Fifth Doctor era, presented by none other than Peter Davison’s son-in-law and ex-Doctor Who, David Tennant. Key contributors include Anthony Root, Eric Saward, Janet Fielding and Davison himself, scrutinising the work of 1981-84. The documentary is often critical but also celebrates the achievements of the era, noting Kinda, Earthshock and Androzani as the definite hits that they were. It is probably as comprehensive, interesting and honest as any Doctor Who documentary is ever likely to be.

7 – ENDGAME
Richard Molesworth’s exploration of what Doctor Who might have gone on to do were it not for its 1989 cancellation is captivating. Of the contributors, Ben Aaronovitch and Andrew Cartmel give the strongest sense of which routes the show might have been about to travel down. There are story ideas and artworks illustrating what might have been which fuel fan curiosity even further, as well as discussions on Ace’s would-be successor. What is most surprising of all though is learning that plans were so vague that no writers had yet been commissioned and Aaronovitch admits, “We’d have probably changed it” because of the BBC’s inability to build spaceship sets. It’s heart-breaking to see Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred still so “miffed” (to use Syl’s terminology) by the cancellation. It’s also quite nice to hear that Peter Cregeen had never intended the cancellation to be quite so permanent. I’m not sure he’d have imagined quite how successful the series would be on its return but we end the documentary with hope that whatever happens to the show in the future, it can always return to rapture.

6 – LIVING WITH LEVENE

John Levene is an infamous name in Doctor Who fandom. His eccentricities and self-infatuation give this Toby Hadoke-fronted programme an agenda of the 70s star’s own making. One might claim the producers are sending Levene up but he does a good enough job of that himself. To be frank, this strange documentary is hilarious. Levene’s phone-call from Rand the Supreme Court Judge leaves him looking bafflingly pleased with himself. His anger vented towards certain types of paper is bewildering. An investigation into Levene’s wardrobe illustrates his odd desire to keep replicas of his costumes. His breakfast of sea-salt and mushrooms proves his incapability in navigating his own dining room table with any amount of grace. Levene claims the 70s dream-team were Jon Pertwee, Katy Manning and himself, inexplicably and thoroughly disregarding the universally adored Nicholas Courtney and Roger Delgado, as well as Richard Franklin. His pestering of old ladies in the park makes him seem outrageously foolish and his foul mouth provides a source of untold amusement: “Damn f**ing right I do!” he barks unnecessarily. Living with Levene is absolute comedy gold.

5 – A MATTER OF TIME
Written by Nicholas Pegg and produced by Ed Stradling, A Matter of Time looks at Graham Williams’s three-year tenure at the helm of Doctor Who. The one-hour documentary details the stewardship of a producer whose time is not quite as celebrated or renowned as his predecessor and stories of the making of these serials are therefore more surprising and unfamiliar. There is a sense of regret from Tom Baker regarding his relationship with Williams and rare behind-the-scenes footage illustrates the difficulties any producer would face working with a star of Tom’s temperament. Perhaps remarkably, it is Lalla Ward who champions Tom in his endeavours to make the show as strong as it could be and there is a feeling that everyone involved was doing their best against insurmountable odds and clashes of taste and personality. The ending of the documentary is unexpectedly moving and overall it makes one appreciate the birth of the stories from The Ribos Operation to Shada far, far more.

4 – THE PERTWEE ERA (IN COLOUR!)
It might seem inconceivable to younger fans but there was a time when the few scant colour clips from The Mind of Evil were all we relics ever imagined we’d get to see of the prison-set thriller in its full rainbow gamut. Even the VHS cover used black and white photographs. To have the full six episodes in colour, thanks to the miracle of chroma-dot recovery and the skill of Babelcolour, (Stuart Humphryes) we can now enjoy the story as originally conceived and it’s more alive and vivid for it. An already tremendous yarn is now much richer a visual experience. Ambassadors of Death, Invasion of the Dinosaurs and the astonishingly good Planet of the Daleks are now bright and vibrant, thanks to their stunning restoration jobs. The Pertwee era can be enjoyed not as the piecemeal, fragmentary patchwork of yesteryear, but in its full colourful life. From Spearhead from Space, there’s now no going back. And it’s bloody beautiful.

3 – ANIMATED EPISODES

When Cosgrove Hall animated The Invasion Episodes One and Four, they were met with such huge acclaim, positivity and love that the prospect of more animation seemed surely to be a certainty. However, what fans didn’t know at the time was that the episodes had been financed by BBCi’s pot of money put aside to fund the Scream of the Shalka sequel (which for obvious reasons wasn’t going to happen). It would be another seven years before The Reign of Terror saw its two missing episodes given the animation treatment and despite them receiving mixed reviews, they do indeed plug the narrative gap and make the story as accessible as it is ever likely to be (and I for one think they’re brilliant!). The same company, Planet 55, having mastered their techniques returned to the DVD fold to complete The Moonbase and The Tenth Planet (to great approval), and animation company Qurious successfully delivered Episodes Two and Three of The Ice Warriors. With The Power of the Daleks landing in its six-episode entirety in 2016 thanks to BBC Worldwide and rumours of an incoming Macra Terror imminent, we could possibly be looking at a potentially “complete” 1960s marathon in years to come. Let’s keep our fingers crossed!

2 – TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS

Like Come in Number Five, Trials and Tribulations is a frank and open discussion, this time of the Colin Baker era. Due to the tumultuous nature of the period in question, the documentary is more dramatic, conflicting and emotional than any other in the DVD range. Like a microcosm of the era itself, Colin is never less than utterly dignified as those around him bitch and throw muck at one another. At times, the interviewees are dangerously close to the bone, Eric Saward admitting that Colin was “not really what you’d want in a leading man.” The programme is utterly fascinating and by its conclusion, one’s heart goes out to Colin Baker, a man who tried perhaps more than anyone else at the time to make his period on the show fly, only to have it scuppered by the egos he was surrounded by. As Doctor Who documentaries go, this is essential.

1 – ORIGINS

You can take your Terrance Dicks and Malcolm Hulke’s Making of Doctor Who. You can take your first issue of The Complete History. You can take an Andrew Pixley archive feature. Heck, you can even take Mark Gatiss’s An Adventure in Space and Time. The story of how Doctor Who became has never been more clearly explained and fascinatingly told than in Richard Molesworth’s Origins feature on The Edge of Destruction DVD. Cleanly narrated by Terry Molloy, the programme is neat, concise and revelatory, using interviewees, memos and voice-overs to illustrate the birth of a TV legend. What’s great about it is its humility. There is no great drama about the production, no bombast. Its factual and measured, telling its story in a matter-of-fact and therefore very effective manner. Its final few minutes see the Daleks arrive, reminding the viewer that the true greatness of the show wouldn’t hit the audience for a little while after these humble beginnings, which are here shown to be a product of carefully considered professional thought and the eagerness of a youthful production crew to make something good. This is a quietly spectacular documentary.  

JH