News Season 12 Classic Series Blu-Ray Announced

[Mr Awe]

BBC Worldwide has announced that Tom Baker's first season as the Doctor will be released on Blu-Ray as Doctor Who: The Collection – Season 12, on 11th June 2018 in the UK and on June 26, 2018 in the US..

For fans of Doctor Who and collectors of Classic Who seasons, the Blu-Ray has limited edition packaging with artwork by Lee Binding and has been restored and up-scaled to HD by Peter Crocker and Mark Ayres. The new release also has a wealth of new bonus content.

Follow the link for the bonus features, Season 12 Blu-Ray.

Personally, I'll try resisting buying this set, but I'm not sure that I'll have the will power. I have all the Classic DVDs. I suspect that the video improvement will be minimal to non-existent compared to the DVDs. Afterall, the source material is standard definition and had been restored for the DVDs. On the plus side, there are new sound mixes and new bonus features. It doesn't help that this is one of my favorite seasons!

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

Really, the allure for me is the new CGI effects for Revenge and the new making-of docus for it and the Sontaran Experiement. Beyond that, I'm like you - not seeing the point here.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Afterall, the source material is standard deviation and had been restored for the DVDs.

Yeah, I see absolutely no point in this. There's no reason for any of classic Doctor Who to be on Blu-Ray other than a cash grab.

 

[Haggis and tatties]

There won't be much point to this other than a novelty as most people will at this point have some form of player that will already upscale their DVDs to fit their 1080p tv's but apart from that this will basically be the versions from the restoration DVD collection just dumped onto a BR disc, ok i suppose for those that never collected the renovated ones this is the way to go.

And did the renovation dvd ROTCM not already have new effects along with a few other classics with added new CGI effects.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

I wish Revenge had newer effects in it. To be honest, I'm surprised they didn't announce further SFX additions for Ark in Space, which I always felt was shortchanged somewhat.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

As far as I know, they've never done season sets for classic Who. That's why I never bought any classic episodes, 1 episode per DVD seemed crazy to me, especially at BBC prices.

Blu-rays hold more, so doing it in that format makes sense. I hope they eventually do all the classic seasons this way.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

As far as I know, they've never done season sets for classic Who.

Warner Bros. did a season set for the "Key to Time" season for the North America market at a point when several of the individual stories hadn't been released yet on DVD.

I"m glad to see season box sets. There are people who would like to have the classic series on DVD or Blu-Ray, but not all of the individual releases are still in print. Box sets are convenient.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Amazon has classic series DVD's anywhere from $8 to $20, for one "serial". Probably another reason I could never collect them , not to mention the room that would take up.

Hopfully a season of 4-10 "serials" ends up closer to the $8 each range.

What about one bigger set for each classic Doctor. It might keep the cost down as far as packaging at least.

 

[kirk55555]

Yeah, I see absolutely no point in this. There's no reason for any of classic Doctor Who to be on Blu-Ray other than a cash grab.

Unless its a reasonable price. As someone who wasn't collecting any Classic Who DVDs until a few years ago, in the US about 75% of the DVDs are way too damn expensive, because they're out of print. Now, the season 12 stuff isn't as bad price wise as some things right now, but if they manage not to try to screw over the fans too badly, I'll definitely pick it up, especially since I don't have any of the Season 12 serials on DVD and I want this to succeed so that they'll possibly release more season sets.

Now, I see it doesn't have the US release price yet but in the UK it seems to be 40 pounds. If that ends up being $40 US, that would be good. If its $50ish that is a bit much, but I know Doctor Who DVDs in general tend to be over priced. If its anything above $50 US then I'll buy it when ebay or an amazon seller eventually has it for half the price.

Warner Bros. did a season set for the "Key to Time" season for the North America market at a point when several of the individual stories hadn't been released yet on DVD.

I"m glad to see season box sets. There are people who would like to have the classic series on DVD or Blu-Ray, but not all of the individual releases are still in print. Box sets are convenient.

Also, The Trial of a Timelord Season was released all together in the US on DVD, and I have that set. I was really happy to get it.

 

[diankra]

There's enough 'not on DVD' material, plus the new sound mix, to make it more worthwhile than the usual triple dip.

 

[Mr Awe]

There's enough 'not on DVD' material, plus the new sound mix, to make it more worthwhile than the usual triple dip.

I can see how this would be a great thing for new collectors. The extra Tom Baker interview makes it a little tempting for me, but otherwise I'm happy with my DVDs! But, any chance to get classic Who out in front of more people is a good thing.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

It's too bad when they came up with Blu-Ray they insisted that only HD content could be placed on them. Probably a good move to eliminate market confusion but it'd be great to get a whole season of DVD quality material on a single disc or two. With old TV series like Doctor Who there's no real need for upscaled discs when almost all players and TVs are capable of doing it themselves.

 

[Mr Soak]

There are SD only BDs. Discotek in the US has released the enitirity of Samurai Pizza Cats and the 80s' Wonderful Wizard of Oz cartoon, on one disc (each). Both are 52 half-hour episodes.

 

[Qonundrum]

Blu-Rays do tend to be manufactured better, have a coating to prevent scratches form occurring as easily... sound quality will be a bit higher, a lot more if a lossless codec or even uncompressed format is used... bit rot likely won't set in, and these are newer pressings as well...

If the content has to be upscaled then they might be losing out on compression-related benefits due to space taken up by artificial and pointless enlargement over native interlaced PAL (lesser resolution = more free space, reduced compression as a result, etc). Even then, there might still be a color gamut improvement... and MPEG2, the DVD compression method, is still used for Blu-Ray, though H.264 may be used nowadays as modern players have enough processing power to handle the newer codec. I've no clue if PAL or NTSC interlace native format video can be saved on blu-ray or if upscaling to 1080P is mandatory. But weren't there 720P blu-ray discs for a while?

From what I've seen, five 44-minute TV episodes on a blu-ray disc is pushing it (but is visually quite good), and I've never seen more than six eps per disc. Anything more and too much artifacting would render the process pointless.

I'd have to see an actual episode... might be good, or at least not as bad as one might theorize.

Players and TV sets don't all upscale equally, as a standard, and professional equipment will still do a better job than any home use device. If they get the standardization right it'll look okay, I've seen some upscaling look okay but it'll never replace genuine HD.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

There are SD only BDs. Discotek in the US has released the enitirity of Samurai Pizza Cats and the 80s' Wonderful Wizard of Oz cartoon, on one disc (each). Both are 52 half-hour episodes.

hmm, interesting

 

[Mr Soak]

I hadn't seen the cover before, but I noticed they're using the new logo. I wonder if the entire franchise is going to be rebranded under one logo.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

I hadn't seen the cover before, but I noticed they're using the new logo. I wonder if the entire franchise is going to be rebranded under one logo.

Yes.
The new release of An Unearthly Child in Germany gets delayed because the publisher got surprised by the mandatory rebranding.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

I don't like that they would use the current logo on classic releases for two reasons.

One, those classic logos are connected to their classic Doctors. They're like fingerprints more or less.

Two, if they go on to release every classic series, what are the chances they do so before Jodie leaves in a few years? At that point do they keep using this new design or switch to the next one, thereby having different logos anyway?

 

[Allyn Gibson]

I don't mind the Whitaker logo -- I think it's quite sharp, honestly -- but Ar-Pharazon makes a good point. Logos will change by the time a comprehensive boxed set program is finished. For an archival release like this, I'd much rather see the actual on-screen logo from the period on the packaging.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

I don't mind the Whitaker logo -- I think it's quite sharp, honestly -- but Ar-Pharazon makes a good point. Logos will change by the time a comprehensive boxed set program is finished. For an archival release like this, I'd much rather see the actual on-screen logo from the period on the packaging.

I don't mind the logo either. Outside of some overlapping with 4/5 and 9/10, they've pretty much each had their own look, if not font.

The issue is, if they do all classic series', whatever appears on the spines will look a little cluttered if they use something different there. So maybe something consistent on the spine and each Doctor's logo on the front?

Though my 9-12 DVD's and BD's have the different spines and it doesn't actually bother me.