Doctor Who fans like making lists, and as the 60th anniversary approaches the internet has been inescapably swamped with top tens (or, for the thematically astute, top 60s) of best stories. You know the form: Androzani, Talons, Human Nature/Family of Blood, too many lists featuring The Dalek Invasion of Earth and not enough featuring The Myth Makers.1
I love a good list as much as the next man, but rather than add to the noise and use up more precious, dwindling internet space with a list that will only upset people because of the inclusion of Delta and the Bannermen, let me offer up a top ten of something else that deserves plenty of attention.
Us fans are absolutely spoiled when it comes to home media. Doctor Who on DVD and Blu-ray gets the kind of attention that is generally reserved for cinematic masterpieces, particularly when it comes to what is now troublingly called ‘the classic series’, which has been painstakingly restored a story at a time with a quality and attention to detail that can only be a labour of love by the Doctor Who Restoration Team (I can’t believe anyone involved is getting paid for more than a fraction the hours or expertise they put in). Archive sources have been scoured for the best quality versions, episodes with colour missing have had colour put back into them, missing episodes have been reconstructed or animated, and the whole lot has been released with an abundance of extra features – archive material, related programmes, documentaries new and old, optional surround sound mixes2, optional new special effects3, special editions4, all of which not only maintain the high standard set by some of the very earliest DVD releases but consistently aim to eclipse what has come before.
It’s all too easy to take for granted, but you only have to look at the considerably less special features included with most television Blu-ray releases (and indeed many expensive ‘special editions’ of big budget movies) to see how lucky we are. The gorgeously-packaged and lovingly curated The Collection Blu-rays continue to allow us to view stories we have seen countless times in a new light, and (glances around guiltily) I’d even go so far as to say that some of the extra features are more entertaining than the stories they accompany.
So let’s celebrate some of the best ones. The countdown begins next week!
First up: ‘it would have been such a poison chalice because they hated it so much…’
- I bloody love The Dalek Invasion of Earth, though that is for reasons more subjective than objective, and the film version is better. None of that is a reason not to put it on a list, but the recent Doctor Who Magazine readers’ poll has it as the best Hartnell, which suggests that either most fans haven’t even bothered to get to know The Massacre, The Gunfighters, The Myth Makers and The Crusade (to name but a few superior stories), or that most fans are blind to shabby direction and mediocre dialogue. Or that they’re not into history. Perhaps all three. ↩︎
- The work Mark Ayres does on sound is breathtaking, and creating surround sound mixes of material recorded for television in the 1970s is not only a labour of love but a labour of determined lunatic virtuoso brilliance. ↩︎
- To be honest I’m less keen on the option to watch shonky model effects replaced by shonky CGI that doesn’t match the material around it. It’s even less fathomable when the shonky CGI replaces excellent model effects (cf The Invasion of Time, The Invisible Enemy, Enlightenment). I’ll sort of make an exception for Day of the Daleks, where they went to the trouble of using exactly the same camera and location to shoot new material to improve the underwhelming original with brilliant results – but why go to all that trouble to match the material if you’re going to stick some CGI buildings in as well? All of that said, I fully acknowledge that the optional new effects are just that – optional – and that they’re switched off by default. I’m not complaining about them, they’re just not for me. And if they bring some of you joy – well, a lot of you reckon The Dalek Invasion of Earth is the best Hartnell, so I already think you’re a weird bunch. ↩︎
- Some of the McCoy special editions are now more or less the definitive versions of those stories, and with good reason. ↩︎
Talk To Rex 