Classic DVDs - Nearing the End

[OmahaStar]

Over the weekend, I picked up Frontios and The Awakening, then realized these were the last two Fifth Doctor stories to be released.

The entirety of both Five and Six are now released. And that doesn't leave much left in the catalog. The following stories are (at this point) unannounced for release in the US. The last release information I saw was for January 2012, so I'm counting those stories as released for the purposes of this post.

Third - 53 - The Ambassadors of Death, 56 - The Mind of Evil, 59 - The Daemons, 72 - Death to the Daleks (total - 4 stories)

Fourth - 80 - Terror of the Zygons, 89 - The Face of Evil, 107 - Nightmare of Eden, and 109 - Shada (total - 4 stories)

Seventh - 151 - Dragonfire, 153 - The Happiness Patrol, and 155 - The Greatest Show in the Galaxy (total - 3 stories)

Of the ones that exist in full and can be released from the first two Doctors:

First - 7 - The Sensorites, 8 - The Reign of Terror, 9 - Planet of the Giants (total - 3 stories)

Second - 39 - The Ice Warriors, 47 - The Krotons (total - 2 stories)

That's a total of 16 unreleased stories. Figuring two releases per month, they could be done by September 2012.

"This can't be how it ends" - the Eighth Doctor.

I wonder if they will be doing a sort of Lost in Time meets The Invasion series, with animation on the lost episodes? Unless they are going to focus on re-releasing previously-released stories (like the Five Doctors special edition), the end is fast approaching.

 

[Whofan]

They have been re-releasing some stuff with better special features and improved picture quality, although I think only the improved Key To Time, Rememberance of the Daleks, Five Doctors and Talons of Weng-Chiang have been released so far in the US.


There will be among others, an updated Tomb of the Cybermen (Which will have the 'vidfire' technology to make it more like the original broadcast-the original release lacked this) and Vengeance on Varos (Which mainly believe to be the best Colin Baker story, but it had a limited run on DVD due to low sales).


There is of course Blu-ray as a possibility, but the original series and a good chunk of the new before the specials of course was not in HD. It might make the film parts-exteriors-look better but I doubt it would improve the video that much.

 

[zarkon]

Tenth Planet & Ice Warriors are probably going to be released with animated reconstructions for the missing episodes.

I'd love serials with more missing content like Celestial Toymaker or Power of the Daleks to get the treatment, but I assume given how long it took for Reign to get greenlighted, the budget isn't there.

 

[VDCNI]

The next few releases in the UK at least are supposed to be

Jan - UNIT Box Set (Invasion of The Dinosaurs/The Android Invasion)
Feb - The Sensorites
March - Revisitations 3 (Tomb Of The Cybermen/The Three Doctors/Robots Of Death)

Oddly as the colourisation of episode 1 of Invasion Of The Dinosaurs isn't up to scratch they are supposed to be including it as an extra and the proper first episode will be in B&W.

Given we're getting Reign with the missing episodes animated you can only assume the same will happen with Tenth Planet & Ice Warriors. Especially when they are making the effort to create a 'new' third episode of Planet Of The Giants to restore it to being a 4 parter which it was before they combined the final two episodes before transmission.

Given their schedule is essentially monthly and even though we might have more box sets (Dragonfire & Happiness Patrol will be the Ace box set for example) I can't see them finishing these before 2013.

 

[The Wormhole]

The next few releases in the UK at least are supposed to be

Jan - UNIT Box Set (Invasion of The Dinosaurs/The Android Invasion)
Feb - The Sensorites
March - Revisitations 3 (Tomb Of The Cybermen/The Three Doctors/Robots Of Death)

It's pretty similar in North America. Except that instead of box sets, we're getting those released individually. Also, February is going to have a special edition re-release of The Caves of Androzani.

 

[23skidoo]

Second - 39 - The Ice Warriors

That one doesn't exist in full. It's missing 2 episodes. Which makes it a candidate for animated reconstruction. Frankly, if they can get a company that'll do it quickly and cheaply enough, all the lost stories could be reconstructed. I'm not holding my breath, but I don't believe those who claim there's no demand for these sorts of releases. If 2 Entertain is willing to put out The Twin Dilemma and The Ark and other ultra-obscure (or unpopular) stories, people will buy an animated reconstruction of The Myth Makers.

Back in 2009 a member of the Doctor Who Restoration Team attended an event in Canada and stated that 2 Entertain intended to continue issuing Doctor Who on DVD until the 50th anniversary in late 2013. Time will tell if they stick to that schedule. The way things are going 2 years from now physical media may no longer be issued for anything.

The general assumption is 2012 will see the last "new" releases of complete stories. After that I expect there to be several more special editions of previous releases. I hope we see more reconstructions - The Tenth Planet is the obvious one since there's only one missing episode (I'd have rather they finished that one before doing Reign of Terror - maybe there's been some sign Episode 4 might exist somewhere and 2 Entertain is holding out?) but I'm convinced were 2 Entertain to go whole hog and reconstruct The Daleks Master Plan that would be a huge seller for them; ditto Troughton's two Daleks stories and the legendary Marco Polo.

Release to Blu-ray is problematic. They could simply put the standard definition material onto BD (that would allow some of the longer stories to be done on a single disc, at least) but the video/film mix simply wouldn't work very well. We've seen snippets of the classic series on Blu-ray and the image quality leaves a lot to be desired. As long as Blu-ray remains backwards compatible with DVD I honestly don't see the point (and this goes for the still-strong industry of releasing old TV shows on DVD). I do expect to see the first few seasons of the revival upconverted before long, however. The 1996 TV movie, and the only story completely shot on film, Spearhead from Space, are also possibilities.

Having said all that, if someone in the next while makes the breakthrough and figures out how to successfully upconvert old video and 16 mm film to high def, all bets are off. Actually, British video standard is higher resolution than NTSC anyway, so it has a bit of an advantage from the go.

One thing I do expect to see in 2013, for those with deep deep pockets, is a massive box set of everything released to date. That'll make the 104-disc Law & Order set look like a coaster collection.

Alex

 

[ATimson]

Release to Blu-ray is problematic. They could simply put the standard definition material onto BD (that would allow some of the longer stories to be done on a single disc, at least) but the video/film mix simply wouldn't work very well. We've seen snippets of the classic series on Blu-ray and the image quality leaves a lot to be desired. As long as Blu-ray remains backwards compatible with DVD I honestly don't see the point (and this goes for the still-strong industry of releasing old TV shows on DVD).

The one point that I see is that Blu-rays can be encoded with newer compression algorithms than the MPEG-2 that DVDs are limited to, so it'll be less noisy. It won't matter to most people, but it will make a difference.

 

[VDCNI]

According to the DVD release twitter, Terror Of The Zygons won't be coming out in 2012.

Shame as that is my favourite 4th Doctor/Sarah story. I wonder if we might see a Liz Sladen tribute on it.

 

[Worf2DS9]

I've just ordered the new release of "Day of the Daleks", which includes the refurbished special edition with new fx, dalek voices, etc. I've never seen this story before, but this one intrigued me enough to check it out.

 

[The Wormhole]

According to the DVD release twitter, Terror Of The Zygons won't be coming out in 2012.

Shame as that is my favourite 4th Doctor/Sarah story. I wonder if we might see a Liz Sladen tribute on it.

Considering all the 2011 releases have been announced and that we already know releases for the first three months of 2012, I consider confirmation that Terror of the Zygons will be released in 2012 to be good news.

 

[ChristopherPike]

Revisiting selected stories will probably happen. "Vengeance on Varos" will bring the Sixth Doctor back to the table. They'll probably pick a Fifth Doctor tale to redo to ensure all the incarnations are represented during the 50th Anniversary. Silver Nemesis could've been better. Heck, I was a huge TV Movie nut and that's been out twice, still lacking certain things from the archive - more trimmed footage or tweeks attempted, like Daleks and the original Gordon Tipple voice-over put back into the opening scene.

When the New Series has been around for 10 years, maybe they'll begin extending the Classic line to Christopher Eccleston's year and the kind of in-depth extras never before seen.

 

[23skidoo]

The one point that I see is that Blu-rays can be encoded with newer compression algorithms than the MPEG-2 that DVDs are limited to, so it'll be less noisy. It won't matter to most people, but it will make a difference.

That's true. But considering the original series hardly had pristine imagery even when it first aired (see, for example, the surprisingly blurry exterior film footage in episode 1 of Day of the Daleks which appears to have been from the original) its sort of like trying to improve the sound on an old audio cassette. You can clean it up a bit but it'll still hiss.

That said, a major issue with the new LCD sets is they are not very friendly towards older video and film (one reason I got a plasma), so if some sort of upconverting or recompression makes the images on, say, Monster of Peladon look viewable on LCD sets then that would be worth the upgrade.

Ironically one possible way around a lot of this would be to "filmize" the video footage, which I have seen done with some items released even to DVD (an example being The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson; a DVD of highlights that came out a few years back that i have used filmizing rather than the original videotape look). This would be somewhat ironic since 2 Entertain and the restoration team have spent the last number of years reprocessing older stories via vidFIRE to replicate the original videotape look. I'd be interested in finding out if the unVidFIREd version of Tomb of the Cybermen released nearly a decade ago might actually be more HD-friendly than the VidFIRE version that's coming out in a few months.

Alex

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

They have been re-releasing some stuff with better special features and improved picture quality, although I think only the improved Key To Time, Rememberance of the Daleks, Five Doctors and Talons of Weng-Chiang have been released so far in the US.


There will be among others, an updated Tomb of the Cybermen (Which will have the 'vidfire' technology to make it more like the original broadcast-the original release lacked this) and Vengeance on Varos (Which mainly believe to be the best Colin Baker story, but it had a limited run on DVD due to low sales).


There is of course Blu-ray as a possibility, but the original series and a good chunk of the new before the specials of course was not in HD. It might make the film parts-exteriors-look better but I doubt it would improve the video that much.

A better version of The Five Doctors than the 25th anniversary edition?

 

[Rarewolf]

That's true. But considering the original series hardly had pristine imagery even when it first aired (see, for example, the surprisingly blurry exterior film footage in episode 1 of Day of the Daleks which appears to have been from the original)

They simply didn't have the means to present film at any better clarity for broadcast during the original run. Any filmed sequences you've seen at higher quality are surviving inserts have been newly transfered at scanned. Some of the Dalek's Masterplan footage looks amazing for instance. IIRC its a 35mm insert.

Look at the restoration article for New Beginnings - Castrovalva to see the difference.

The trouble with some of the 60s and 70s episodes is the best copy we have is a telerecording of broadcast film. If they were recorded out of phase that produced a double image (half of one frame half another) so no matter what you do to it, we're stuck with it.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

Heck, I was a huge TV Movie nut and that's been out twice, still lacking certain things from the archive - more trimmed footage or tweeks attempted, like Daleks and the original Gordon Tipple voice-over put back into the opening scene.

I'm really disappointed that none of the actors appear in the making-of documentaries for that one. They didn't even get Daphne Ashbrook for the commentary track. That's a real shame since Sylvester McCoy is only in the film for the 1st 15 minutes and Paul McGann is really shy and not particularly useful for commentary track purposes.

They have been re-releasing some stuff with better special features and improved picture quality, although I think only the improved Key To Time, Rememberance of the Daleks, Five Doctors and Talons of Weng-Chiang have been released so far in the US.

A better version of The Five Doctors than the 25th anniversary edition?

I believe he's referring to the 25th Anniversay Edition.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

^ Just checking. I'd hate to think they "got me" with the only classic series DVD I own so far.

 

[Rarewolf]

Heck, I was a huge TV Movie nut and that's been out twice, still lacking certain things from the archive - more trimmed footage or tweeks attempted, like Daleks and the original Gordon Tipple voice-over put back into the opening scene.

It's mostly in the Universal film vaults. A HD transfer of the original film, with remade SFX ala TNG, and 5.1 remix, is technically possible, but it would cost too much to retrieve from the vaults.

Some things such as the Tipple intro have leaked out (and on Youtube) from a DVD Eric Roberts sells at conventions.

They didn't even get Daphne Ashbrook for the commentary track.

They wanted to, but she couldn't make the dates.

 

[Newspaper Taxi]

What are the chances of us getting "Doctor (number) Boxsets" after all of the DVDs are out? For the first two Doctors they can just cobble together all of the existing material for their respective boxsets.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

I suspect that will be the next step, repackaging existing classic series DVDs in full season sets. Good news is that Seasons 1 & 2 are almost entirely intact. "Marco Polo" is the big gap. "Reign of Terror" is getting animated replacement episodes. Perhaps they would consider doing the same thing for the missing 2 episodes of "The Crusade"?

Most of Patrick Troughton's final season is available. With the exception of "The Space Pirates," there's an uninterrupted run of complete stories at the end of his tenure from "The Dominators" through "The War Games."

Seasons 3-5 are the big problems.

 

[23skidoo]

It's just been announced that 2 Entertain plans to issue Shada and the More Than 30 Years in the TARDIS documentary as a box set in 2012 (no date given but it's a no-brainer they'll try to time it for when the novelisation of Shada is published next spring, though the inclusion of the documentary makes it a good candidate for the anniversary year, too). Meanwhile, Terror of the Zygons is not expected to see release in 2012, so we know at least one title that'll most likely be coming out in 2013:

http://www.doctorwhonews.net/2011/10/dwn2610111800008-potential-shada-dvd.html

Heck, I was a huge TV Movie nut and that's been out twice, still lacking certain things from the archive - more trimmed footage or tweeks attempted, like Daleks and the original Gordon Tipple voice-over put back into the opening scene.

It's mostly in the Universal film vaults. A HD transfer of the original film, with remade SFX ala TNG, and 5.1 remix, is technically possible, but it would cost too much to retrieve from the vaults.

Huh? Why, is there some troll down there demanding a pound of gold from anyone who wants to enter the sacred chasm? Most vaults I know are a bunch of shelves, catalogued, with some guy or gal out front you give the code number or whatever to. It ain't Torchwood or that place that locked up the Lost Ark.

Yeah, there might be licensing costs, but that's been settled - exhibit A being the fact you can buy the TV movie at Best Buy in Walla Walla, Washington (or wherever).

Alex