Season 17, the penultimate season starring Tom Baker as the Doctor, will be the next to be released as part of the Doctor Who Collection series.  

Doctor Who – The Collection: Season 17 was originally shown between September 1979 and January 1980 consists of the following stories
 

In 1979, Tom Baker’s Doctor was in full flight. With Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy) as script editor, the series leaned into Baker’s penchant for humour and paired his Doctor with a regenerated Romana (Lalla Ward) as his travelling companion. Together, they would form one of the most popular Doctor/companion duos of all time.

Although Season 17 was halted behind-the-scenes by strike action (resulting in the season finale being abandoned part-way through production), it remains a beloved slice of Doctor Who history, featuring the return of Davros and the Daleks, and one of the all-time classic stories, Douglas Adams’ own City Of Death.

With all episodes newly remastered from the best available sources, this Blu-ray box set also includes extensive and exclusive Special Features including:

 

• BRAND NEW DOCUMENTARIES
• Including a Making-Of documentary for Destiny Of The Daleks, and new featurette for The Creature From The Pit.
• TOM TALKS
• A candid interview with Tom Baker as he gives us his unique take on life, the universe and everything.
• DOUGLAS ADAMS TRIBUTE
• Friends and colleagues remember the Doctor Who writer/script editor and creator of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.
• IN CONVERSATION
• Matthew Sweet chats to Bob Baker, writer of Nightmare Of Eden, co-creator of K9 and one of the creative forces behind Wallace & Gromit.
•  BEHIND THE SOFA
• New episodes with actors Colin Baker, Katy Manning, Matthew Waterhouse, Nicola Bryant, June Hudson, Graeme Harper & Mat Irvine
•  LALLA WARD INTERVIEW
• An extensive interview discussing her first year on the programme.
• UPDATED SPECIAL EFFECTS
• View Nightmare Of Eden with optional new effects
• SHADA
• An updated version of the ‘lost’ story, completed with enhanced animation and presented in six episodes for the very first time, alongside the original 1992 VHS and 2017 versions
• EXCLUSIVE NEW AUDIO COMMENTARIES
• With Tom Baker on episodes of Destiny Of The Daleks and City Of Death, and Lalla Ward & Catherine Schell on City Of Death
• EXTENDED EPISODE
• An early cut of The Creature From The Pit Part Three
• BLU-RAY TRAILER
• A familiar face returns in a brand new mini-episode of classic Doctor Who
• IMMERSIVE 5.1 SURROUND SOUND
• On Destiny Of The Daleks and Shada
• RARE GEMS FROM THE ARCHIVES
• BBC archive material covering the promotion of this season
• CONVENTION FOOTAGE
• A triumphant 1997 appearance from Tom Baker
• HD PHOTO GALLERIES
• Including many previously unseen images
•  PRODUCTION SUBTITLES
• Behind-the-scenes information and trivia on every episode
•  SCRIPTS, COSTUME DESIGNS, RARE BBC PRODUCTION FILES AND OTHER RARITIES FROM OUR PDF ARCHIVE

 

 

The Collection will be released on 13th December 2021 and is available to pre-order on Amazon

BBC Studios have announced that the first Doctor story Galaxy 4 will be released as an animated reconstruction later this year. 

Galaxy 4 was the first story of Season 3 of Doctor Who and was originally shown on BBC 1 in September 1965. It starred William Hartnell as The Doctor, with Maureen O'Brien playing Vicki and Peter Purves playing Steven. The story was wiped after transmission and most of the story is missing from the archives. 

The animated version of the story will be released in the UK on the 15th November 2021 and BBC Studios have today released a sneak peek of what’s included in the release.

The release follows the success of the existing animations, which are filling a gap in the missing Doctor Who archive. Thanks to fans who recorded the audio on domestic machines at the time of broadcast, audio-only recordings of all four episodes have survived and have been used here to create a brand new fully animated presentation of the entirety of this lost classic.

This will be presented alongside the original Episode 3, which was recovered from a collector in 2011 and over five minutes of original footage from the otherwise lost Episode 1.

The two-disc release gives fans the opportunity to enjoy the four new animated episodes of Galaxy 4, in either colour or black and white. The release will also include:

• Remastered Surviving Original Episode 3
• ​Remastered Surviving Clip from Episode 1
• Telesnap Reconstructions of Episodes 1,2 and 4.
• Audio Commentaries 
• Making Of Documentary
• Finding Galaxy 4 Documentary
• Photo Gallery
• Production Subtitles 

Gary Russell, Executive Producer from Big Finish  said

BFI Southbank will host a special screening of all 4 episodes of the newly animated story Galaxy 4 on 7th November 2021; tickets go on sale on 16th September at 11:30 to BFI Champions and Patrons, at 12:30 to BFI Members and at 16:00 to the general public.

The new animated release will be available online and in-store as is available to pre-order on DVD, Blu-ray, and as a Limited Edition Blu-ray Steelbook   

 

  

BBC Studios have announced that the second Doctor story, The Evil of the Daleks is to be released as an animated special edition on 27th September 2021.

Today's announcement comes on the 54th anniversary of the broadcast of the last episode of the original version which brought an end to the 4th season of Doctor Who. 

The Evil of the Daleks is the mostly-missing ninth and final serial of the fourth season of Doctor Who, which originally aired in seven weekly parts from 20th May to 1st July 1967. 

Following the success of the existing animations, The Evil of the Daleks fills another gap in the missing Doctor Who content lost in the purge of the BBC archive soon after the programme’s original transmission. However, audio-only recordings of all seven episodes have survived and have been used here to create a brand new fully animated presentation of this lost classic, featuring the original surviving second episode.

The Doctor (Patrick Troughton) stars alongside his travel companion Jamie (Frazer Hines). The story unfolds as the Doctor and Jamie set out to find the missing time machine, bringing them face to face with a very old enemy - the Daleks, who have a new masterplan to conquer the universe. The Daleks force the Doctor to help them on their quest to ‘humanise’ themselves into deadlier living weapons.

This particular story is notable for introducing the Doctor’s new companion Victoria Waterfield (Deborah Watling), first seen in the surviving second episode, and also for presenting the Dalek Emperor.

The three-disc release gives fans the opportunity to enjoy The Evil of the Daleks, available in either colour or black and white. The release will include:

• Remastered Surviving Original Episode 2
• ​Telesnap Reconstructions – 6 episodes
• Audio Commentaries 
• Audiobook, with a recorded commentary by Tom Baker
• Making Of
• Photo Gallery

Anne Marie Walsh, Director of the 2021 production said

 

The TV Director Frank Cox has died at the age of 80.

 

Frank Cox worked on two early stories of Doctor Who.

In 1964 at the age of 23, he became Doctor Who's fourth Director, taking charge for the episode The Brink of Disaster, the second part of The Edge of Destruction, and an episode that involved just the four main cast members. 

He returned to the series later that year looking after the final two episodes of The Sensorites, Kidnap and A Desperate Venture. 

 

Doctor Who was one of the first programmes Cox worked on following completion of the BBC Directors training course. He went on to direct programmes such as The Revenue Men,  Mogul, Warship, Sutherland's Law, Softly Softly: Task Force, EastEnders and High Road. 

He also worked as a producer on many series throughout the 1980s and 90s

The last programme he directed was Taggart for STV

Frank Cox was married to the actress Bridget Turner, who played Alice Cassini in the 2007 story Gridlock. She died in 2014

 

BBC Studios has announced a new standard packaging range to Doctor Who: The Collection  

The first titles to join this standard packaging range will be Season 12 and Season 19, which are available to pre-order now.  

Doctor Who: The Collection offers fans the opportunity to build their own home archive of classic content, and has proved hugely popular with collectors and fans of the TV series. The new standard packaging range is being introduced in response to this success, offering fans a second opportunity to fill gaps in their collection, and enjoy the classic era of Doctor Who.  

New releases within the Collection range will be marketed as Doctor Who: The Collection Limited  Edition Packaging, with the standard edition range marketed as Doctor Who: The Collection.  

Releases within the Doctor Who: The Collection Limited Edition Packaging range will continue to offer fans bespoke, premium packaging featuring a beautifully presented box containing the discs and a  full-length, premium-printed booklet that includes illustrations and in-depth, behind the scenes insight.

Releases within the new, standard packaging Doctor Who: The Collection range will feature a  standard, plastic Blu-ray case inside a slipcase, with a condensed, standard-printed 12-page booklet featuring disc-breakdowns and selected illustrations. The new range will include all of the watchable content and special features included in the Limited Edition Packaging release and will be available ongoing.  

Season 12 sees Tom Baker’s first outing as the Doctor and features five stories over 20 episodes,  including The Ark in Space and Genesis of the Daleks. The Doctor is accompanied by Sarah Jane  Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) and Harry Sullivan (Ian Marter) and was first broadcast on the BBC between  December 1974 and May 1975.  

Season 19 introduces fans to Peter Davison’s first series as the Fifth Doctor, and sees the Doctor and his companions Tegan (Janet Fielding), Nyssa (Sarah Sutton) and Adric (Matthew Waterhouse) face off against The Master, the terrifying Mara, the Terileptils, the Plasmatons, Monarch and the revamped Cybermen, in seven stories across 26 episodes. 

Doctor Who – The Collection: Season 12 (£51.05 RRP) and Doctor Who – The Collection: Season 19  (£51.05 RRP) can be pre-ordered now from Amazon and will be available from Monday 31 May  2021.  

The next release in the Doctor Who: The Collection range will be Season 24, the first staring the Seventh Doctor Sylvester McCoy.

First shown in 1987, the box set can be pre-ordered from today ahead of a release date later this year.

Season 24 first aired in 1987 and saw the Seventh Doctor and companion Mel, played by Bonnie Langford, travel through space and time traversing alien planets, a hostile futuristic tower block, 1950s Wales and finally, the mysterious colony of Iceworld, where the Doctor meets Ace played by Sophie Aldred.

The Doctor is faced with enemies including the Rani (Kate O’Mara) and the terrifying Tetrapsi n Time and the Rani, Kroagnon and his cleaning robots in Paradise Towers, the ruthless Bannermen in Delta and the Bannermen and Kane (Edward Peel), the murderous ruler of Ice world in Dragonfire.

These four stories have been newly remastered alongside extensive and exclusive special features including

• EXTENDED VERSIONS of all four stories, featuring previously unseen material
• IMMERSIVE 5.1 SURROUND SOUND – on all four stories and extended versions
• ISOLATED SCORES – on all four stories
• BRAND NEW DOCUMENTARIES - Including a feature-length overview of Season 24 -Here’s To The Future, plus The Making Of Delta And The Bannermen.
• RARE STUDIO & LOCATION FOOTAGE - Over 25 hours of raw material never seen before, including behind-the-scenes footage from the regeneration scene
• IN CONVERSATION - Matthew Sweet interviews Sylvester McCoy about his life, career, and time as the Seventh Doctor.
• BEHIND THE SOFA - Four new episodes with Sylvester McCoy, Bonnie Langford, Sophie Aldred, Peter Davison, Janet Fielding, Sarah Sutton, Colin Baker & Michael Jayston
• THE DOCTOR’S TABLE - Sylvester McCoy, Bonnie Langford, Sophie Aldred and Clive Merrison reminisce about the making of the season.
• RARE GEMS FROM THE ARCHIVES - Hours of footage covering the promotion of this season including lots of previously unreleased material.
• AN AUDIENCE WITH LADY STEPHENS - A brand new interview with Season 24 actor and rocky Horror cult figure Patricia Quinn
• BLU-RAY TRAILER - A brand new mini-episode
• CONVENTION FOOTAGE
• HD PHOTO GALLERIES - Including many previously unseen images.
• INFO TEXT - Behind-the-scenes information and trivia on every episode.
• SCRIPTS, costume designs, rare BBC production files and other rarities from the archive

The eight-disc box set also includes hours of special features previously released on DVD and Blu-Ray.

Doctor Who – The Collection: Season 24 can be pre-ordered now from Amazon and will be released later this year.

 

BBC Studios have announced the next instalment in the Doctor Who: The Collection range will be the Third Doctor's second season, Season 8.

Starring Jon Pertwee and Katy Manning, this hotly anticipated instalment can be pre-ordered now and will be available from 23rd February 2021.
 

Stranded on 20th Century Earth, the Third Doctor teams up with UNIT and new companion Jo Grant to thwart alien invasions! And that’s not all, he must also contend with the arrival of his deadliest foe – arch-nemesis the Master.

Battling Autons, Axons, an alien mind parasite and a mighty Daemon, the Doctor, Jo and UNIT must defend the Earth – and its future pioneers - in five action-packed adventures.

 

With all episodes newly remastered, this Blu-ray box set also contains extensive and exclusive special features including:

 

• Behind the Sofa - New episodes with Katy Manning, Stewart Bevan, Janet Fielding, Sarah Sutton, Sacha Dhawan and Anjli Mohindra.
• In Conversation - Matthew Sweet chats to companion Katy Manning.
• A Devils Weekend - Actors Katy Manning and John Levene take a personal trip back to the picturesque village of Aldbourne, 50 years after they recorded the Doctor Who story The Daemons there. 
• The Direct Route - Doctor Who directors Michael Briant, Graeme Harper and Tim Combe take an epic road trip to all the filming locations from Season 8 as they discuss directing the show in the early 1970s.
• Terrance and Me - Lifelong Doctor Who fan, Frank Skinner sets out to meet the family, friends and colleagues of the late, much-loved writer, Terrance Dicks.
• Blu-Ray trailer - A specially shot mini-episode
• Extended Episode 1 of The Claws of Axos
• 90-minute omnibus edition of The Daemons
• Immersive 5.1 surround sound on Terror of the Autons and The Daemons
• Optional updated special effects and CSO clean-up on Terror of the Autons
• Unseen studio footage
• Rare archive treats
• Convention footage
• HD photo galleries
• Scripts, costume designs, rare BBC production files

The eight-disc box set also includes hours of special features previously released on DVD.

Doctor Who – The Collection: Season 8 can be pre-ordered now from Amazon

 

The Doctor Who Feature - The Doctor Who Cookbook - Revisited has won the 2020 Royal Television Society's West of England Award for best production of Features and Factual Entertainment Programme/Content or Series. 

 

The feature, produced by Moon Balloon Productions, was included in the Season 23 boxset. It featured Toby Hadoke enticing brave cast members, including Colin Baker, Janet Fielding, Nicola Bryant, Frazer Hines, Sarah Sutton and Terry Molloy, to tackle their original recipes from the 1986 cookbook, written by Gary Downie. 

 

FACTUAL ENTERTAINMENT AND FEATURES - Nominees

• Countryfile: Evacuee Special (BBC Studios Unscripted Productions)
• Beat the Chef  (Twofour)
• Rick Stein’s Secret France (Denhams)
• Doctor Who: The Doctor Who Cookbook - Revisited  (Moon Balloon Production) - WINNER

The judges described the winner as

 

The award was presented at an online ceremony to Chris Chapman, head of Moon Balloon Productions.

 

BBC Studios have revealed the artwork and extras for Doctor Who: Fury From The Deep

 

Starring Patrick Troughton as The Doctor, the new animated release will be available on DVD, Blu-ray and Steelbook from 14th September 2020.

Pre-orders are available now from Amazon.

Following the success of existing animations The Power of the Daleks, The Faceless Ones, Shada and The Macra Terror, Fury From The Deep fills another gap in missing Doctor Who content lost in the purge of the BBC’s archive in 1975.   

The three-disc release gives fans the opportunity to enjoy Fury From The Deep in high definition, either in full colour or in black & white. The release will include the surviving clips from the original 1968 production as well.

Fury From The Deep is told across six episodes and stars Frazer Hines and Deborah Watling. The storyline concerns a colony of sentient, parasitic seaweed, last seen in the eighteenth century, returning to attack a number of gas instillations in the North Sea in an attempt to take over humanity.

Animated episodes from Big Finish Creative Limited in association with Digitoonz Media & Entertainment and Thaumaturgy are joined by a wealth of extras.

A making-of featurette ‘The Cruel Sea - Surviving Fury From The Deep’ sees original cast members Frazer Hines, June Murphy and Brian Cullingford revisit filming locations with production assistant Michael Briant, assistant floor manager Margot Hayhoe and helicopter pilot Mike Smith. 

Other contributors to this segment include writer Victor Pemberton and actress Deborah Watling. There’s also an archive audio interview with director Hugh David.

 

Additional material includes: 

·         Audio commentaries

·         The Cruel Sea – Surviving Fury From The Deep

·         Original surviving footage

·         Behind The Scenes 8mm footage

·         Animating Fury From The Deep

·         Archive interviews with Peter Day and Victor Pemberton

·         Teaser Trailer

·         Photo Gallery

·         The Slide Audio Drama

·         PDF scripts

RRP:

DVD – £20.42 / Blu-Ray - £25.52 / Blu-Ray Steelbook - £40.84

 

The BBC has released more details about the March release of the Doctor Who missing serial The Faceless Ones.

The story will be released on DVD, Blu-Ray and SteelBook on 16th March 2020 and is now available to pre-order now from Amazon.

The Faceless Ones is the mostly missing eighth serial of the fourth season of Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in six weekly parts from April to May 1967. Starring Patrick Troughton as the Doctor, the story concerns a sinister race of identity-stealing aliens known as the Chameleons.

Only two of the six episodes are held in the BBC film archives with snippets of footage and still images existing from the other four. Fortunately, off-air recordings of the soundtrack also still exist, making the animation of a complete serial possible once again.

The six new animated episodes are being made in full colour and high definition and will include the following exclusive special features:

• Photographic reconstruction of the story, including surviving footage of episodes 1 & 3
• Audio commentary on episodes 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6
• ‘Making of the animated series’
• Camera script PDF’s
• Surviving film fragments from the story
• x5 ‘Easter Egg’ surprises
• Coming Soon Fury from the Deep trailer