According to the latest DWM these are the classic series DVD releases for the rest of the year. For the UK at least anyway. 31st Jan - The Mutants 14th Feb - The Ark 7th March - Mara Tales (Kinda / Snakedance) 28th March - Revisitations 2 (Resurrection of the Daleks, Carnival of Monsters and Seeds of Death). Planet of the Spiders Spearhead From Space / Terror of the Autons Frontios The Awakening / The Gunfighters Paradise Towers Revisitations 3 (Tomb of the Cybermen/Robots of Death/The Three Doctors) The Ambassadors of Death / The Sun Makers Day of the Daleks
Planet of the Spiders is finally coming out? About time. There are plenty of fans who don't collect the whole range, and who only buy the first and last story for each Doctor. It's puzzled me why that one has been missing from dvd for so long. Is there some connection between The Gunfighters (First Doctor) and The Awakening (Fifth Doctor)? Or between Ambassadors of Death and the Sun Makers?
Not that I know of - I don't know for sure that Ambassadors/Sun Makers is a set but apparently Gunfighters/Awakening is, but as you say I have no idea why! Given that Frontios is coming out this year it would surely have made more sense to put it with Awakening as they are consecutive stories. Are there really people buying the first and last of each Doctor!? What an odd thing to do!
They are. When I started collecting the dvds, even here there were people who suggested that if I didn't have a favorite Doctor (and, of course, I DO!) to get the first and last ones of each, basically the regeneration stories. I've heard of others doing the same on Live Journal and other DW sites. I thought about it, but it didn't last long ... I've got almost all of them. There's three currently out that I don't have (yet) but I'll get em eventually.
I can understand only buying two of each if you couldn't afford more but I don't think there is a single Doctor that I'd be happy just having the first and last. Maybe Davison or Troughton (if Power actually existed) at a push but none of the others.
I can see a lot of double dipping in my future. There are certainly a lot of mouth watering titles coming up this year especially if your a Pertwee fan. And more importantly I'll finally be able to retire most of my VHS Doctor Who's by year's end. Any idea as to the release dates for the titles in the second paragraph, not exact dates obviously.
What's wonderful about all this is the ability to pick-and-choose. I'm sure there are a lot of Star Trek fans out there who would be overjoyed to have a set of Trek episodes without Spock's Brain! There are about 30 DW stories that fall into the category of "I'll find them if they show up in a remainder bin" while there are others I'd gladly pay not only full price on first issue, but a double-dip on a special edition. There was some reason why Planet of the Spiders was so long in coming. I can't recall. I know Ambassadors had been delayed until 2 Entertain had access to (or saved enough foodstamps to pay for) the colorization technology to restore color to several episodes. But Planet wasn't in that category, I don't think. Maybe there was complication getting clearance from the writer or one of the actors. A likely reason for why some stories come out before others is because the powers that be really didn't want to end up in a situation where only the dregs were left to be released to DVD. Forgetting about the lost stories when the trough finally approaches empty in a year or so, I'm sure 2 Entertain wouldn't have wanted to be left with nothing but The Twin Dilemma, Time and the Rani and The Gunfighters to release. Steve Roberts of the restoration team was quoted by the Doctor Who Information Network in Canada a year or so ago as saying the DVD releases will continue until the 50th anniversary, so I assume that means there's still a lot more to come (including more Revisitations). It'll be interesting to see if any effort at a Blu-ray issue will occur. Not for the high-def - I know that won't work - but you can do standard-def on a Blu-ray too, and with the increased capacity, they'd probably be able to reissue a complete season's worth of stories, with extras, on only a couple of discs. Alex
Is it just me? I look at a single story, say, Earthshock. It's $15, and has one audio commentary, a few features, but the "real" content is approximately 90 minutes total. (same sort of scenario would apply to any single-story dvd) Then I compare this with NCIS, which is a full season at $20, has several audio commentaries, 20+ episodes, the same amount of bonus features, spread out over 5 or 6 discs. Why is it so easy to justify the cost for a single Doctor Who story, but I have to wait for a good sale before I plunk down money for a full season of another series?
Because Scifi is more important to you? Or maybe because you're a Dr Who Completeist fetishist Oooh, 1 more post, and 5 more days, and I get to load my avatar finally, WooHoo
Bit more info on the 2011 releases. The Awakening/Gunfighters set is called Earthstory. Ambassadors Of Death/Sunmakers is The Solar System. Both are tenuous links to say the least! The new Resurrection Of The Daleks will have the two part version of the story as an extra with a new commentary and a doc about the 5th Doctor presented by David Tennant. The new Spearhead gets a new commentary and a doc about the change in format from Troughton to Pertwee. Awakening has the deleted Kamelion scene. Tomb is Vidfired for the first time and has a new commentary. Robots of Death has new commentary, making of, Girls Girls Girls covering the 70's companions. Paradise Towers has Girls, Girls, Girls covering the 80's companions and the original rejected score as an option. Originally 11 stories were to be updated and rereleased - 9 are in the Revisition sets, Spearhead is boxed with Terror Of The Autons and the other (unnamed) won't be released after all. They have no plans to rerelease anything else at the moment.
Still no Terror Of The Zygons. I can't believe The Horns Of Nimon and The Creature From The Pit on out already and not Terror Of The Zygons.
I can understand why they are stretching out the classics though - can't have a final year of Nimon/Pit/Paradise Towers etc. Though yes I really want Zygons soon - one of only two 4th Doctor/Sarah Jane stories that, for me, is as good as its reputation - The Ark In Space would be the other. Apparently commentaries for Sensorites & Colony In Space are being recorded this week.
Well if they're saving Terror Of The Zygons til the end of the run I hope they do the same for The Mind Of Evil and The Face Of Evil.
Probably for the reason I suggested earlier - they don't want to be left with the barrel-scrapings once they reach the end of the line. Though not everyone's enamored of Terror of the Zygons, so it could show up. One other thing to bear in mind is that 2 Entertain is in contact with the producers of the TV series. During Season 4 they put out The Invasion of Time so it could be timed for release when the Sontaran 2-parter aired (they also put out the Bred for War compilation with the other Sontaran stories). I believe K-9 and Company and The Invisible Enemy, which introduced K-9, was timed to come out around the time either School Reunion or The Sarah Jane Adventures started up. So the absence of certain stories could be due to, say, Moffatt telling 2 Entertain that he's planning a Zygons story for Season 7 or something. Because NCIS has only a couple of short features, and no commentaries. The BBC puts out the effort to treat every Doctor Who story like it's a movie - which it is. Yes, it's a bit odd when we're dealing with 2-episode stories. But there's about 3 of them in total compared to the vast majority being 4 to 6 episodes in length. I might get flamed for this, but it also means that fans treat each story (good or bad) in Doctor Who with respect, as opposed to the assembly line nature of most US TV shows. Name me without looking the title and give the basic plot of the 15th episode of Season 3 of NCIS. Without looking it up. Now ask DW fans to name the title and plot of the 3rd story of Season 7. Most can do it by rote.* NCIS is a great show, don't get me wrong. So is Fringe. But none of those shows justify multiple documentaries, commentaries, etc. for each episode. Doctor Who does. Even if the story is crap, they'll do a documentary on why it was crap (see Trial of a Time Lord for an example). You tell me that's not fascinating stuff, especially for people who'll be watching these DVDs years from now. It's not impossible for a full-length season to come out as one box, with all the special features - see The Key to Time. But I'd rather have to pay extra and see the stories come out in random order, than give up the special features. I just bought Spearhead from Space and I greatly enjoyed it's main feature, a faux UNIT Training Film that had been created for the DVD (they even got Nick Courtney to narrate it as the Brigadier). Let's see NCIS put together a faux documentary on the department hosted by Jethro Gibbs. Alex *The Ambassadors of Death; space probe returns to earth and its occupants cause havoc.
I've never seen any proof that up that argument and it's been brought up alot over the years. Plus there's been rumors for over a year that they were going to bring back the Zygons.
Other than a few special features, is there anything that makes these re-releases worth getting. I picked up the re-release of "Remembrance of the Daleks" but it wasn't worth it. They still didn't have the licensing to use the original music in the cafe scene for R1 releases so I essentially wasted money buying it twice. A few special features aren't worth re-buying the same story in my opinion.
Well if Robots of Death had been rereleased on its own I'd have been tempted to get it because the original disc's pretty poor extras wise, not going to get it as part of a set though, especially given that I already own a perfectly good copy of Tomb and aren't that interested in The Three Doctors.
No Ambassadors of Death release in 2011. The Restoration Team is saying it's taking too long to restore the color, so it's been pushed back to 2012. http://gallifreynewsbase.blogspot.com/2011/01/dwn260111142912-ambassadors-delayed.html Well, of course if you already have a thing, if the thing is reissued it's easy enough to do research and decide for yourself if it's worth buying the new version. If you bought it expecting the Beatles song to be there, for example, it was widely reported here and in the various news pages, and even on Wikipedia, that the song wasn't in the Region 1 reissue. So you shouldn't have been taken by surprise. Not these days. It's just like I plan to do major research before I invest in the upcoming Star Wars original trilogy Blu-rays to make sure they don't have the same compatibility issues the THX 1138 Blu-ray did (it won't play on many Blu-ray models unless you invest in memory expansion); I won't blind-buy. And that was a lesson learned after I blind-bought THX-1138. Otherwise, the majority of the people who buy the reissues never bought the originals, which themselves might have become scarce. Last week I saw a copy of Spearhead from Space in a store for the very first time. It's been technically out here in Canada for nearly a decade. When Remembrance came out I was under the impression it had NEVER been issued in North America at all (my post is probably still bouncing around the TrekBBS archives). If you already have a story, no there's no reason to buy a new version of anything unless you're a completest, especially if special features mean nothing. Though there is suppose to be, for example, improved picture quality in the upcoming Spearhead reissue. I may or may not double-dip. I'll decide when it comes out. Alex
Well, phooey. Still, "pushed back" isn't "canceled," and it'll look great when it does come out. I wonder what will replace it in the release schedule?