Doctor Who on DVD (1 Viewer)

[RichardCrowther]

"What they are thinking", I should think, its to provide a well-balanced series of releases that are representative of the entire show during its original 26-year run, which means regularly releasing stories from every era of the show, both popular and unpopular. There is little point in leaving all the stories that no-one supposedly likes until last - that would mean that the final two years of DVD releases would be filled with nothing but allegedly "poor rubbish", and that doesn't form the basis any kind of sane business strategy.

Besides, Survival actually has a very good reputation, though, as ever, there may be a few unfavourable reviews knocking about, as there is for every story. But a great many fans believe that Survival saw the series go out on a high. Indeed, in many ways, Survival can be seen as something of a template (intentionally or otherwise) for the new series currently on air.

And, as for the The Web Planet - well, it might well have been considered "bad", even back in '64 (I wouldn't know), but that didn't stop it from gaining some of the most impressive viewing figures of any Doctor Who story ever broadcast in any decade, so it must have been doing something right.

Besides, there are many people who loved and still love The Web Planet. It takes all sorts.

 

[MichaelEl]

Well maybe, but only if you're familiar with the show in its 25-minute format and you don't mind paying a full season price for every two or three episodes. For comparison, the Star Trek: TOS set I picked up worked out to something like $3.50 for every two 50-minute episodes, the equivalent of one episode (or storyline, telefilm, whatever) of Dr. Who. The latter are usually priced something like $13-17 and generally aren't available in season sets. So, Dr. Who is vastly overpriced compared to most other t.v. shows on dvd, takes up an unnecessary amount of shelf space, and comes with annoying superfluous credits, what's not to like?

 

[AndyMcKinney]

Some points:
1. Doctor Who, though popular, is much more of a "niche" product than Star Trek, which could be considered mainstream. Star Trek is always going to sell more units than Doctor Who. Many times, niche products are priced higher for a variety of reasons: smaller duplication runs, more overhead, etc. Also, Paramount has released/rereleased Star Trek several times now (at least three times all the way through on VHS if you count the Video Club edition, twice all the way through on DVD, not to mention all the previous CED, VHS and Beta releases). It's a cash cow and has been in the home video marketplace a lot more.

Another note on pricing: $13-17 per story is in line with the other BBC titles that are available, so it's not like they're picking out Doctor Who fans for price gouging. The prices for single discs are roughly the same as they are in the UK. Besides, you're not just getting episode content on here: it takes time/money to do the massive amounts of restoration and bonus features on each of these discs, and I might add the quality of Docto Who extras far surpasses most Star Trek extras I've ever seen, movies, TV or otherwise.

2. Season sets for Doctor Who would be impossible for the first six years of the series, due to the missing episodes. Also, just think about how much further apart the releases would be, extra time it would take to work on everything, and the bonus materials would probably be curtailed if everything was in one set.

3. The US release pattern/format is entirely dependent on what they do in the UK. With the Key to Time exception (a one-time deal), Worldwide Americas can not release any stories that haven't first come out in the UK. The BBC have deemed that they'll get the most UK sales from a story at a time. It's all down to what they think the public are willing to spend in one throw. Doctor Who, while still popular, isn't a "chart buster" like it was on VHS, when it regularly topped the new release polls.

4. There have been special bundles in the UK recently, such as a Pertwee set I saw on Amazon. Perhaps Worldwide Americas will consider doing some of these bundles on down the line?

5. Unnecessary shelf space? I think if you asked, most Doctor Who fans probably prefer the stories individually packaged in their own boxes. Imagine if you were collecting this on VHS. We've become spoiled for shelf space with the arrival of DVD. You could always replace your Amarays with slimlines if you wanted...

6. Superfluous credits? By your definition, then, each set of Star Trek would also be flooded with annoying, unnecessarly extra credits. Paramount should've edited them into 2-hour movies, right? Doctor Who is being presented the way it was originally shown. If you don't like that, you are most certainly in the minority.

 

[RickER]

We already went down this movie vs. serialized road. Give me Doctor Who in all its 25 minute glory! Ecept of course when it went to 45 minutes...then give it to me in all its 45 min. glory!
Very nice posts, and good points Andy.
Might be tempted to get Survival. I was tempted by The Beginning just for its extras as well.

 

[MichaelEl]

Not to get into this again, but it seems to me there ought to be some way the BBC could set things up so you could play these discs all the way through without repeating the credits. That would at least approximate the telefilm format that was used by PBS stations. I personally don't mind sitting through credits over and over for something like the Twilight Zone, because the episodes are all self-contained. With Dr. Who, though, I want to watch a entire storyline at once, not a single segment, so repeated credits are nothing but an annoying distraction. Obviously if you're only going to watch the show as it was originally broadcast - one 25- or 45-minute segment a week - then repeated credits aren't a problem. However, as I said before, I don't think most people are going to watch the show that way now.

 

[AndyMcKinney]

Well, I often only watch one or two episodes at a time. Sometimes it's hard to squeeze in a 90-minute or 2-hour adventure, especially when I'm the only fan in the house...

 

[JeremyErwin]

There's Doctor Who Video FAQ that contains some information on how the Whovies were edited together.

 

[progrocktv]

One thing that I liked about the 25 minute format on PBS is from the start of the end credits to the end of the beginning credits on the next episode was the PERFECT amount of time to run to the bathroom and back!

 

[Tony J Case]

So you dont care if a movie is letterboxed or not, right? I mean you dont really NEED all that extra information to the left and the right of the center screen.

 

[MichaelEl]

You're talking apples and oranges. Pan and scan results in a loss of visual information throughout an entire film. Pasting together segments of a serialized t.v. show doesn't result in anything being lost except superfluous credits and cliffhanger music. On my VHS tape of THE ANDROID INVASION, for example, the first segment ends with Sarah (Elisabeth Sladen) watching from behind a door as the Doctor (Tom Baker) is being put into a cell by two androids. After the androids leave, she walks up to the cell and talks with the doctor. Then, an intercom in the wall behind Sarah swings back and the eye of one of the alien Kraals appears, at which point the music swells and the credits start. The second segment begins with the exact same scene being played out, except of course this time when the eye appears the music doesn't swell and the segment doesn't end. Obviously if the two segments were edited together properly, there would be no real loss of information except for the music swell that leads in to the end credits. In fact, I would guess these slight music cues would probably be all you would ever really lose by editing any episode of Dr. Who into a telefilm, at most a few seconds of repetitive music for 90-100 minutes of material. Again, this is hardly the same thing as chopping the sides off a Cinemascope frame.

Whether anyone here agrees me on this issue or not, I think it's clear the BBC made a mistake by allowing Lionheart to edit Dr. Who into telefilms. Obviously the show was released in the U.S. with the intention of developing a market for home video. To then put out VHS tapes and DVDs of the original serialized versions was just plain wrong, because it made it appear as if the show had been butchered. Clearly if they had no intention of releasing Dr. Who in telefilm format, they should never have allowed it to be shown that way in the first place.

 

[Ric Easton]

Sounds good if there is a CostCo in your area. None to be found around here!

 

[RickER]

This argument of if Dr. Who should be edited together just gets old. Like i said before just because your PBS showed the episodes that way doesnt mean mine did...and it didnt. It kind of like saying too that any 2 part TV show should be edited together just cause you want to watch it in movie form. Thats not the way it was made, thats not the way i want it. I want it to end with the swell of the music and go to the credits. Also, some of the episodes didnt just repeat what was already seen. Sometimes they did the ol' cliffhanger trick off inserting a scene that wasnt in the last episode. I think Destiny of the Daleks did that in one part.
At least we can all agree we like the show.

 

[JeremyErwin]

It's somewhat akin to the difference between open matte and matteing for theatrical presentation. With the latter, the focus is more tightly controlled. And with episodic endings, the climactic points can seem punchier.

 

[Tony J Case]

No, not really. The show was growing popular in the US well before the home video market was around. Back in the early to mid 80's (Who's hayday in the US), it was a rental only market - and a TV show release on tape was unheard of aside from a very small handful of Anime.

 

[RichardCrowther]

A few points here - 1) I thought just about everyone moaned about how poorly restored the Star Trek episodes are (especially from the original 60s series) didn't they? If I had a choice between spending a bit of cash on some grubby prints of an old show, or spending a bit more cash on lovingly restored prints of an old show, I know which I'd go for.

Besides, when 60s Trek was first released on DVD, it too was released in "parts" - i.e., two episodes to a disc. The only difference being that the Trek DVDs didn't have any extras to speak of, whereas the the Doctor Who discs are always packed with them.

There is nothing to stop the BBC re-releasing these discs in season sets, as Paramount did with Trek, once each season is completed.

It's also comlpetely unfeasible to restore an entire season's worth of stories to the level we get now (and supply the extras) without it taking at least twice the amount of time to get all the season's released as it will take to release each story in turn, as and when deem feasible.

2) I'm not sure where this apparent hatred of the cliffhangers/credits/titles comes from. It is merely presenting the programme the way it was made and intended to be seen. This is no different to presenting films on DVD in a cut the director intended. TV is an art-form just as important as cinema, and the fact that someone came along well after initial broadcast and mutilated each story into "movie" format, does not mean that those same bastardizations should be given further promotion by being distributed twenty or thirty years after the fact. I doubt most parties would want to see compilation versions of their favourite Doctor Who stories eating up bitrate (either at the expense of extras or the main feature's picture quality), any more than fans of the James Bond film OHMSS would want to see the abominable two-part version that premiered on TV included on that film's disc release.

Compilation versions simply couldn't be achieved via branching - many, many episodes feature vital and obvious differences between cliffhanger and resolution, the 60s stories especially so, since many re-caps involved completely different takes being used, sometimes with vastly different camera angles and performance nuances (sometimes including movie-serial-style cheats), so which take do they use? It would involve including a whole other disc to incorporate a movie-length version for each story, further raising the price, leading to fewer sales and more complaints, and all for a niche "extra" that only a precious few would watch.

And Star Trek discs doubtless sell thousands of extra copies than Doctor Who discs (regardless of price), so Paramount can no doubt afford to charge less.

 

[MichaelEl]

It probably has something to do with the fact that the telefilms are the only version of Dr. Who many fans of the show have ever seen. For more than five years back in the late 80s/early 90s, I watched the show religiously Saturday evenings on my local PBS station. In fact, as I mentioned before, I saw basically every episode from Pertwee to McCoy, and all were presented in telefilm format. Seeing the *original* versions on VHS was a jarring experience, to say the least. Not being aware at the time of how Dr. Who had originally been presented, I was wondering if the show had somehow been chopped up by some insane person at the BBC. (You have to remember this was in the days before the internet, so online episode guides and the IMDb were nowhere to be found.)

Now, given that the telefilm versions already exist as master tapes somewhere, one would think it might have at least crossed someone's mind to simply release transfers of those on DVD, especially given the familiarity many Americans have with that format. Even if the telefilms had never been produced by Lionheart, it seems to me that someone, somewhere at the BBC might have wondered what it would be like to combine segments together into complete episodes, and perhaps released a few on television to get fan reaction. The whole idea just seems like a natural thing to do, at least to me.

As to the combining of segments being somehow disrespectful, I would point out that none of the directors probably ever dreamed that Dr. Who would one day be presented with the clarity and resolution of a DVD, and therefore probably didn't worry so much about how bad some of the effects and makeup were. If you really want to get picky then, maybe the BBC should only release exact copies of the no-doubt inferior tapes which originally aired, and include commercials and station identification. Of course it should be totally taboo to redo the effects using CGI, as apparently has been done with some of the episodes.

BTW, a year or so ago, Paramount came out with an enhanced DVD of the original WAR OF THE WORLDS from 1953. The image on this is so sharp you can now see the wires holding up the Martian spacecraft. You would likely have never seen those wires in an original IB Technicolor print, because the combining of the different color elements created a much softer image. This no doubt went into the thinking of the director and effects people at the time, which was probably why they didn't expend any effort to try and hide the wires. The question then, is: was it disrespectful for Paramount to release WAR OF THE WORLDS in a way clearly not intended by the director? I don't see anyone complaining. I also don't see many complaining about the enhanced STAR TREK episodes that are airing on American television, even though they contain CGI-enhanced effects and even backgrounds. It would appear then that altering a film or t.v. show from the way it was originally intended isn't a problem for most people, as long as they consider the alteration to be some kind of enhancement. Obviously a lot of Dr. Who fans don't consider editing individual segments into telefilms to be an enhancement, but there are those that do, including me.

Sorry to belabor the point here, but I find the suggestion that the telefilm format is disrespectful of Dr. Who to be somewhat disingenuous.

 

[Tony J Case]

Actually, no that would not be the case. Here's a quote from Steve Roberts discussing the magnification of flaws when presented on DVD. Specifically, the discussion was about the join where the floor meets the wall in the "white" void in The Mind Robber - but it applies here too:

Anyway just to clarify what you're saying is that what we see on DVD by the time the RT remaster the film and Vidfire it is about the same or possibly still somewhat below the actual transmission seen in the 60's? Therefore wires seen in Tomb of the Cybermen could be seen as easily as now if you were looking for them?

And Steve Responds:

Absolutely!

Remember, for the most part we are remastering from a film recording - effectively a film camera pointing at a 405 line TV tube. There will be an obvious reduction in quality simply from the process of converting to film, plus any subsequent optical printing stage (to make prints for international distribution) will further decrease the resolution and fidelity of the picture.

I can guarantee that 'Tomb' would have looked much clearer and sharper watching off-air in the 1960's than it does watching now off DVD.

By the way, I thought for a bit - here's a list of cliffhangers that are different from the reprise. Not a COMPLETE list, mind you - just what me and some fans could brainstorm up - but it'll give you a good idea of excatly how muct you are missing:

* The end of episode one of The Daleks was recorded twice, with two different takes used.

* The episode one cliffhanger to The Sensorites is different to the reprise.

* At the end of Episode Four of The Ice Warriors, the aforementioned Ice Warriors threaten to let all the air out of their airlock unless the Doctor agrees to their demands. We then have a huge dramatic beat of the Doctor's eyes darting fearfully from side to side for several seconds as the credits begin. The reprise at the beginning of the next episode simply has the Doctor agree and the door pop open, with no gap between the demand and the capitulation.

* The Seeds of Death part 5 omits a huge amount of detail from the reprise in part 6, so as not to give away the fact that the Doctor's not really in any danger.

* Both The Tomb of the Cybermen and The Invasion have the same scenes in the reprise, but they are clearly from different takes.

* The reprise to Planet of the Spiders 6 has a massive extra scene added in between bits of recap.

* Episode 1 of The Deadly Assassin slyly leaves out the one shot that explains what's going on.

* Episode 3 of Destiny Of The Daleks totally omits the dramatic shots of Davros' awakening from the end of episode 2. When we first see Davros in this episode, he's already conscious!

* Part one of Resurrection of the Daleks, Davison's reaction to seeing the Dalek in the warehouse at the end of Part One is missing at the start of Part Two.

* The Mark of the Rani included George Stephenson in the reprise, but not in the cliffhanger

* Rememberance of the Daleks episode 3, where the Doctor reacts to the Dalek shuttle landing, saying something like "Again, I could be wrong" or so.

* And finally, the beginning scene inside the Tardis at the opening of The Runaway Bride was reshot, and was not what was shown at Doomsday.

And of course that's not counting all the 60's episodes shot (nearly) live to tape where they routinely re-shot the cliffhanger reprise the next week.

 

[Roger_R]

The first VHS releases were like that. Fans hated it and so BBC went back to releasing the original versions.

They were talking about including the compilation version of Genesis of the Daleks unrestored on its DVD-release, but it would have required a third disc and so it was abandoned. The compilations didn't just have the episodes spliced together, some of them also had stuff cut for time.

 

[MichaelEl]

I can certainly understand why people who are famiiar with the serialized version wouldn't enjoy the telefilms, but - unlike some here - I can understand the converse as well. Maybe the answer to this dilemma is for the BBC to simply offer the Lionheart telefilms for downloading off their website or maybe itunes - for a fee, of course! That would perhaps satisfy the few (or perhaps millions) who are interested in the telefilms, and it would also allow them to see if there's market for such a thing. Certainly it couldn't cost them too much - if anything - to do that.

 

[Tony J Case]

Sorry - forgot to include this in the previous reply.


Millions? Try more like few - VERY few. Genesis of the Daleks - the biggest seller in the range to date - moved 17,000 copies (or thereabouts, so we're told). There's been a boost in sales from the success of the new series sure, but it's still VERY much a niche market. The handful of sales that doing that would generate couldn’t possibly offset any costs.