Doctor Who: The Complete Fifth Series (DVD & Blu-Ray) Specs/Cover Art

I suppose it's too much to hope that the US release will finally get a real Blu-ray case like the UK got for The Complete Specials and Torchwood: Children of Earth (and maybe earlier Torchwood) instead of digipacks...

Interesting trivia, the Doctor Who Confidentials that air immediately after the episodes in the UK are about 45 minutes long.

 

It seems they are cut down to 15 (?) minutes of highlights for the home videos.

 

Shawn, I agree with everything you said about Matt Smith winning you over within 1 episode.

 

And the character of Amy Pond is great -- the first companion in a long time who seems genuinely excited about being on adventures.

 

I grew up on the Tom Baker era, like most Americans. Then more recently,of the modern era I quite liked Christopher Eccleston's Doctor, and was sad he quit immediately after his first season. I found David Tennant to be a bit too manic and frenzied though he had some standout episodes (The Girl In The Fireplace). The modern show itself, both with Eccleston and Tennant, was a bit too loud and colorful and frenzied. Almost like a children's show in many episodes.

 

But this latest incarnation with Matt Smith has a really good tone. It has the same sort of adult tone that the Tom Baker years did -- without Baker's gravitas, but with the same sort of writing designed for adults to enjoy, not kids. Matt Smith is excellent, as is the rest of the main cast. And with the exception of the Venice episode, the entire season feels like real science fiction from a thoughtful mind -- not merely a writing staff pressing to come up with something on short notice.

 

I also like the nod to the late 1960s that is Amy Pond's outfit (leggings!).

 

And the accents of both the Doctor and Pond, although difficult in a few moments to understand, are really interesting and a nice change from past seasons. Pond in particular.

for those of you who may be thinking of importing the UK BluRay, bear in mind that there's (hopefully) a pretty good chance this time that the episodes will be encoded at 1080i at 50hz, which can cause problem for a good many BluRay players Stateside.

 

I won't bore you with the details, but before anyone thinks of importing the Series 5 BluRays from the UK, you'd probaby better read a few reviews first or make sure your player/TV can handle 50hz BluRays.

 

(the reason I say there's a chance this release will be 1080/50, rather than 1080/60, is that the individual/vanilla releases were 50hz, albeit with only 2.0 stereo sound. It's not a guarantee, though, as the BBC cheaped-out on "The Specials" and released them as 60hz worldwide as a cost-cutting measure).

 

The sets are already expensive enough - I'd hate to see how much they'd try to charge for the 10 disc set with complete Confidentials & their music rights!

 

 

The three Torchwood releases were all 60 Hz as well. So "The Specials" was just following in line.

 

(I'm almost hoping they are 50 Hz - then I have an excuse to import. From what I hear, my Samsung BD-P1500 plays 50 Hz material fine, as long as it's on Blu-ray and not DVD...)

 

I certainly hope they're 50hz. I have an Oppo and a multi-system TV, so my setup handles 50hz natively. A 60hz set would be somewhat akin to an unnecessary standards conversion.

 

For what it's worth, I've heard that the only reason that Being Human was released 50hz in the UK was they didn't expect it to have much of a following in the US. Then, lo and behold, it's a runaway hit on BBC America, so they had to do a 60hz version for the US anyway. Too bad these releases had music replacements, though.

 

So, your BluRay player can handle 50hz but can't cope with PAL?

 

It can handle PAL content on a Blu-ray disc - the special features from the UK Life on Mars discs work fine. But it throws up its hands at a regionless PAL DVD I created on my computer.

does it handle pre-recorded PAL DVDs (if you have any)? If so, I'd suspect that maybe the burnt disc wasn't finalised to DVD-VIDEO, or maybe the BluRay player can't be made region-free for DVD discs and is so picky it expects Region 1 or else (which wouldn't seem likely).

I don't have any region-free pre-recorded PAL DVDs to try with, just R2, so I can't try those. But NTSC ones I've created work just fine, and it throws up a "wrong video format" error message, which makes me pretty sure that it's not a problem creating the disc...

a poster on Roobarb's forum just confirmed today that the UK release of the Series 5 boxset is indeed encoded at 50hz, so any US fans even thinking of importing better make sure their equipment can handle 1080/50i before buying.

I have to say, Matt's Doctor took me a few episodes to like. I loved David Tennant's take on the Doctor, so I was sad to see him go after three seasons. And when I first saw pictures of Matt, I thought they would go with a Tennant-like character (must've been the haircut). When I first saw him, I thought he was weird just for the sake of being weird. Either it was toned down after a couple of episodes, or I just got used to him, but I really like him as the Doctor. And Amy Pond as well, obviously.

I think you just got used to him.

 

I was iffy on Matt Smith's brief appearance at the end of "The End of Time", but the season 5 opener sold me on him. (It took me less time than to be sold on Tennant, certainly!) I initially liked Amy, but the end of the second "Angels" episode soured me on her.

I've posted this in another thread but I think it may be worth re-posting for those who didn't see the other thread:

 

They've sent review copies of this set out and it seems they've really phoned in the set this year.

 

First off there's the disc breakdown which is as follows:

 

Disc 1: The Eleventh Hour (with and without in-vision commentary)/The Beast Below + additional scene between the episodes

Disc 2: Victory Of The Daleks(with and without in-vision commentary)/The Time Of Angels(with and without in-vision commentary)

Disc 3: Flesh & Stone/The Vampires Of Venice(with and without in-vision commentary)/Amy's Choice + additonal scene after Flesh & Stone

Disc 4: The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood(with and without in-vision commentary)/Vincent And The Doctor

Disc 5: The Lodger/The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang (with and without in-vision commentary)

Disc 6: Cut-down Confidentials, trailers and teasers

The Monster Files and video diaries are dotted across the discs and the outtakes are on Disc 5

 

As you can see they've split the Angels 2-parter across two discs and all of the episodes could have easily fit on 4 discs, especially on blu-ray which probably would have driven the price down too.

 

There are only commentaries on 6 of the 13 episodes and they feature:

 

In vision commentary for The 11th Hour features Beth (producer), Piers (producer) & Moffat (show runner and writer)

 

In vision commentary for Victory of the Daleks features Gatiss (writer) , Barnaby Edwards (Dalek Operator) & Nick Briggs (Actor, Voice of the Daleks)

 

In vision commentary for Time of the Angels features Moffat & Karen Gillan (Actor, Amy Pond)

In vision commentary for Vampires of Venice features Johnny Campbell (Director) , Toby Whithouse (writer) & Alex Price (Actor, Francesco)

 

In vision commentary for Cold Blood features Ashley Way (Director), Alun Raglan (Actor, Mo) & James Dehaviland (Second Assistant Director)

 

In vision commentary for The Big Bang features Toby Haynes (Director), Gillan (Amy) & Arthur Darvill (Actor, Rory Williams)

 

As you can see Matt Smith isn't on any of the commentaries.

 

The two "Meanwhile in the Tardis..." scenes run around 3 minutes each, the three video diaries run 10 minutes each and the outakes are around 8 minutes. The Confidentials have been cut down from 45 minutes to probably 10 minutes or so, just like they were on the box sets for the first 4 Series. I can't find an exact running time for all of the Monster Files featurettes but the one looking at the monsters seen in the final 2 episodes runs 10 minutes and sounds like its just footage from Confidential re-cut so they're short and sound very fluffy. There's trailers and tv spots included too but I haven't seen a list of exactly which ones are included.

 

The biggest thing missing from the set are deleted scenes. Unlike other years Series 5 had a huge number of deleted scenes, in some cases as much as 25 minutes were cut and a lot of these scenes would have fixed plot and character holes found in the episodes.

 

Things cut from the episodes include:

 

 

Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show)

All of this is taken from a Doctor Who Magazine special looking at the making of first half of the series. The second issue looking at the final half of the season won't be out until December so its not known exactly what was cut from the final half of the series but its been confirmed that Vincent and the Doctor originally ran 75 minutes long so there are some significant cuts there too. None of this footage is on the dvd.

 

They've also removed the "Next Time" trailers which are sandwiched between the end of the episodes and the end credits on the UK broadcast and previous dvd box sets. The trailers aren't even included as an extra feature. The BBC logo that appears onscreen over the first scene in each episode has been replaced with the BBC Worldwide logo, which is bigger and animated so its much more distracting. If you've seen this season on BBC America or Space here in Canada you've seen the distracting new logo.

 

So that's what you get in the Series 5 set. Given the high price and poor or flat out missing extras I don't really think its worth the money, especially if you didn't LOVE the episodes. I own every other Doctor Who dvd but I'll be waiting for this to drop in price. Its not worth the money to me right now. I just wanted to give people who don't regularly visit Doctor Who websites a heads up on what's included in this set so they can decide for themselves if its worth getting.

Ah man - that bites. I love the way the old school DVDs are treated, but the Nu-Who discs have been getting more and more shabby as time goes on. The 05 series was well represented, but it's been going downhill ever since. I guess I'll save some pennies and get the series when it goes on sale.

On Blu-ray, that would have been possible. Not on DVD - the in-vision commentaries take up as much disc space as an entire episode on their own. The only way to avoid splitting the Angels two-parter would be to have "Victory of the Daleks" on one disc and its commentary on another.

Didn't the series 2 set have 3 episodes per disc with in-vision commentary? Maybe they've encoded the disc's differently this time to devote more space to the commentary video? Still, as you say they could have lost a disc for the blu-ray but 2Entertain has been stretching the disc count out for years, The Torchwood Series 1 blu-ray had 2 episodes per disc and it wasn't exactly packed to the brim with extra features. They've got a bit greedy lately. I guess they don't watch and learn from the show. Thank god the Restoration Team hasn't been corrupted yet. The classic series dvds are some of the best dvds ever. A lot of movies don't get the treatment the average classic episode gets.

I believe that earlier series never had more than one in-vision commentary per disc (the others were normal audio commentaries), while two episodes on Disc 2 of Series 5 ("Victory" and Angels #1) have in-vision commentaries.

My mistake. Its been awhile since I've watched the series 2 set.

Bad news- not only is the US Blu-Ray also 1080/50i, which causes problems on my Panasonic DMP-BD55 as well as rafts of other players, but the in-vision commentaries play without the commentaries!  You can see the window with the commentators, but the audio remains the standard episode audio.  You can't surf the audio on, nothing.  This is the first I've heard of this issue as an issue on my Panasonic.

 

Does anyone bother to qc and check the compatability for discs any longer at the studios?  It's ridiculous at this point with Blu-ray to have features that won't play on certain later generation players.  And BBC Video needs to get their thumbs out and stop releasing these 1080i discs that are incompatible.

Looks beautiful on my Sony setup. But let me ask a question. I have not watched the video commentaries. HOWEVER, often you need to change the audio option on the Blu-ray player to hear them. From Direct, to Mix. I forget what the option is, cause honestly i stopped listening to commentaries years ago, so i have not changed the audio in a long time. Usually its the PIP commentaries that this is an issue with.

 

Anyway, try it, see what happens.

 

Your player's audio is set to bitstream, if you set it to PCM or Re-Encode or something like the audio will work fine.
 

Are you quite positive that the US/Warner Bros/Region A one is 1080/50, or if your only problem the audio on those commentaries? Your player is listed as incompatible with 1080/50, so if that's indeed correct, you shouldn't even be able to see video for the episodes themselves, let alone in-vision commentaries. About all you should be able to see is menus.

 

If you're right, that would be a major cock-up, in a way far worse than them releasing The Specials and Torchwood as 60i worldwide, because UK viewers can at least play those titles universally (despite being inferior to the 1080/50 standard), but I have a hard time believing these are 1080/50, or we'd have heard a lot more complaints before now (and probably in this very thread).

I frequent Gallifrey Base, the biggest Doctor Who forum around, and I've yet to see anyone say anything about the Region A set being 50i, and one would think with hundreds of North American  fans visiting the dvd section of the forum everyday someone who have mentioned this. The only problem I've heard about is the missing audio in the commentaries and people on both sides of the pond have had that problem but I've already posted the solution for that above. I think you're mistaken about the video Darren, but hopefully you can the commentaries working.

Thanks folks for the tip on the in-vision commentaries!  Worked like a charm.  That issue is resolved.

 

It's possibly that the BD is 1080/60i, not 1080/50i.  My player doesn't indicate what the disc format is, only what the player setting is output to.  It's the identical issue with the Torchwood Children of Earth discs, so it's probably 1080/60i then.

 

All three series of Torchwood were released in 1080/60 worldwide (even in the UK), so I guess that definitely says the US release of Doctor Who: Series 5 is indeed 1080/60, not 50hz.

Some people are reporting audio problems with Vincent and The Doctor in this set. They claim the music sounds muffled throughout the entire episode, though the dialogue and sound effects are fine. This is supposed to be most evident during the opening theme and closing credits. This seems to be a problem with both the UK and US releases of the dvd and blu-ray. It doesn't seem to be a problems on all copies though, some people are saying its sounds fine on their set.

 

Some fans have emailed their problems to the BBC (dvdsupport@bbc.com) and so far have only been told to try their disc in a different player or adjust their settings but it seems more likely its a disc problem, given the number of complaints and the fact that the other episodes on the disc sound fine. I would suggest emailing them if you're having this problem. If they get enough complaints they may decide to replace the faulty discs.

hello. the audio on my season 5 is driving me nuts. the background noise is drowning out the dialog. help

Far more troubling is the video problems that have been reported with the Complete Series 6 Blu-Ray sets, at least the ones released in the UK. In some scenes of some episodes, the bottom half of the picture (well, bottom 40%) of the picture looks much more "grainy" than the upper portion of the picture.

No idea if this problem affected the US sets**, but the BBC finally re-issued a corrected set for the UK).


**The reason I say this is that the UK sets were released 1080i/50 and the US ones 1080i/60, so they're not the exact same encode, unlike the US/UK sets of Torchwood series 1-3. I've not heard anyone say for sure whether the US sets have the same problem or not.