That’s More Like It!
Back when the universe was less than half its present size (well, 1999 anyway) and the next big thing was the idea of putting movies onto shiny silver CDs and calling them DVDs, BBC Video released its first Doctor Who DVD in Britain. It was The Five Doctors*. Only it wasn’t really—it was the “Special Edition” made in the mid-1990s where they took out all the rubbish-but-charming circa-1983 special effects and replaced them with rubbish-but-not-charming CGI, made the the thing longer by adding film trims (that were cut for a reason—namely, they were boring and slowed down the pace) and generally monkeyed around with the edit without actually consulting the director or writer. (Have you gotten the idea that I’m not a fan of the Special Edition?)
Anyway, rather like the original versions of Star Wars and Blade Runner, it was impossible for years to get the transmission version of The Five Doctors. (Not that it was actually ever available commercially in the first place—the original VHS version had some nasty edits done to it as well). The Special Edition supplanted the old one on VHS and then became the DVD release. And the DVD release was not the filled-to-the-gills-with-extras version we’ve come to expect from Classic Who releases. This was the early days of DVD and so it’s as vanilla as the Classic Who DVDs ever got: no commentaries, no featurettes, no extras from the raft 20th anniversary hooplah on news and light entertainment programs in 1983. (The North American release at least had an amusing commentary by Terrance Dicks and Peter Davison)
Well, guess what? You can get the original Star Wars and Blade Runner on DVD and you can get the original transmission version of the Five Doctors now too. It’s coming out on DVD in 2008! With a ton of extras too.
And it has the Special Edition if you really want to see redundant shots of menacing corridors and Sarah Jane bunging rocks ineffectively and Rassilon’s voice badly remixed and a time scoop effect that looks even more dated than the one used in the original 1983 story. I know which one I’ll be watching.
*Which all fans know really should be called “Three Doctors, An Imposter and two clips from Shada, a story by Douglas Adams”
Posted by Graeme on Friday, January 25 at 1:20 pm
4 Comments...
So *that’s* where those crappy effects that I saw on Youtube came from.
Posted by Kari on 01/25 at 05:18 PM
So it looks like I’ll have yet another version of THE FIVE DOCTORS in my collection. I have the first North American VHS version, then the special edition that also came with THE KINGS DEMONS, and then I bought it when it came on DVD. (It was actually my first DOCTOR WHO DVD)
Posted by Douglas Grandy on 01/25 at 09:20 PM
In 1999, Doctor Who was a long-dead show famed largely for its cheapness. Presumably the powers-that-be were trying to create incentive to purchase, in a new high-end format, a 1983 shot-on-video production that much of the target audience had on VHS already. It’s tempting to quibble about this initial release after a decade of The Restoration Team spoiling us rotten, but it did help make all the subsequent releases possible. It’s fun to hear Peter Moffatt complain about it on the Two Doctors commentary, though.
Posted by Curt on 01/27 at 01:34 PM
As ever Curt, you’re being *way* too reasonable to be a Doctor Who fan. I’m sure that going for what was perceived to be a more modern high-end version for the new format was precisely their thinking. But the Special Edition wasn’t exactly well received on VHS either.
I should point out that when DWM reviewed the original Five Doctors DVD in 1999—and this was one of the few occasions I found myself agreeing with Vanessa Bishop on anything—one of the things the makers were taken to task for was not including any special features, especially 20th anniversary material produced in 1983. In fact she pretty much listed everything that is now on the 25th Anniversary DVD! So the lack of effort / materials was noted even back then.
Posted by Graeme on 01/28 at 09:09 AM
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