2006 (and beyond) Doctor Who plans announced! (1 Viewer)

[Tony J Case]

A bit of news from Doctor Who Monthly regarding the DVD line up through the end of the year:

* The Sontaran Experiment (October 2006)
* The Invasion (November 2006)
* Return of the Master Box Set : The Keeper of Traken, Logopolis, Castrovalva (January 2007)

Even better: the two missing episodes from The Invasion are being animated by Cosgrove/Hall - the studio that did the Scream of the Shakla (and Danger Mouse, of course). Most excellent!

Now of course the above release dates apply to R2, no release dates mentioned for R1 yet - but theyre coming here eventually too!

Coupled with the upcoming Hand of Fear in July and Mark of the Rani in September, 2006 looks to be a kick ass year! Color me excited!

***EDIT***

Also, I found this tidbit from Steve Roberts:
Number of release slots is up from six per year to ten per year. Six 'Special Edition' releases as per normal, plus four 'vanilla' releases - except they aren't really vanilla. At a minimum they will have the full RT picture and sound remaster, commentary and production text notes, but they may also have a single featurette or a trailer or something as well.

Very good news indeed.

 

[MatthewLouwrens]

Really exciting news. I'm most excited that they're using the soundtrack of the missing Invasion episodes to get them animated - it's an idea I've long thought should be considered.

Interesting to see how the increased release numbers will go. Apparently there will be a price reduction for the "vanilla" releases.

 

[seanOhara]

I really like that they're doing boxsets now -- I just they'd do more, bigger, and cheaper.

I wonder if they're counting Return of the Master as one or three releases?

 

[Malcolm Cleugh]

The boxsets are already cheaper than the standard releases you get 3 stories for 1.5 times the price of one (UK rrp are £19.99 for a single story but the two boxsets so far have been £29.99). The only downside is the extras are reduced, so far not a commentary on every episode for the sets released so far. Also some titles like Invasion have been 2 disks for £19.99 whereas the boxsets and I guess Return of the Master will only be 3 disks.
So per disk prices similar but you do get 3 stories for your money.

Return of the Master is one release, it seems they are sticking with January as the DW boxset date (after Lost in Time 2005 and Beginning 2006).
So in 2007 there will be a further 5 releases with full extras and 4 of the stripped down releases.
The UK has traditionally had the full releases in
January, March, May, July, September and November although some of the dates slipped this year.
I can not see a release in December as that will be lost in the Christmas market so the 4 new stripped down releases will I guess be in 4 out of February, April, June, August and October.

 

[Lenny Rakes]

Will Cosgrove/Hall use traditional 2D animation, or 3D computer animation?

 

[Tony J Case]

Well, if it's anything like Shalka, then it not traditional pen and ink animation, but it's not 3D computer "Toy Story" like animation either. Well, here - take a look for yourself. Here is a 30 second teaser trailer and this is episode one of Scream of the Shalka, their previous Doctor WHo effort for BBCI.

They said that they've managed to refine the techniques they used for Shalka, so it should look even better than those two examples.

 

[Lenny Rakes]

After checking out the link, I think it looks interesting. I will have to check it out again, when they are done with the two missing episodes of The Invasion.

I always thought they should use 3D computer animation to restore the missing Dr Who episodes. Although this would be very expensive plus the restored episodes probably would not return enough profit, to justify the expense of the process.