DVD: The Monster Collection

Tuesday, 17 September 2013 - Reported by Chuck Foster

BBC Worldwide have released details on their collection of DVDs featuring the monstrous foes of the Doctor.

Doctor Who: The Monster Collection

These six real "hide behind the sofa" collections bring together episodes of the scariest and most iconic monsters from Doctor Who's classic and recent series.

Each title concentrates on a deadly enemy - The Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans, The Master, Davros and The Silurians - and features two separate stories from popular incarnations of the Doctor, including Matt Smith, David Tennant, Tom Baker and Jon Pertwee. These collections are perfect for younger viewers just discovering the scary delights of fifty years of Doctor Who.

Monster Collection: The Daleks (Credit: BBC Worldwide)

The Monster Collection: The Daleks (pre-order)

THE DALEKS are the most feared race in the entire universe. The hideous mutant creatures contained inside almost indestructible casings conquer and exterminate wherever they go...

The Daleks (1963): On the planet Skaro, the mutated Daleks plan a final assault on the Thals. Starring William Hartnell as the First Doctor.

Asylum of the Daleks (2012): Kidnapped by his oldest foe, the Doctor is forced on an impossible mission - to a place even the Daleks are too terrified to enter ... the Asylum. Starring Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor.

Monster Collection: The Cybermen (Credit: BBC Worldwide)

The Monster Collection: The Cybermen (pre-order)

THE CYBERMEN were once human but chose to replace all living tissue with plastic and steel. Seeing emotions as a weakness, they removed those too and now massive Cyber armies try to upgrade the universe...

The Tomb of the Cybermen (1967): The TARDIS arrives on the planet Telos where an Earth archaeological expedition, led by Professor Parry, is attempting to uncover the lost tombs of the Cybermen. Starring Patrick Troughton as the Second Doctor.

Rise of the Cybermen and The Age of Steel (2006): Lurking in the shadows are creatures made to destroy - one of The Doctor's greatest fears have come true ... the Cybermen are reborn. Starring David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor.

Monster Collection: The Sontarans (Credit: BBC Worldwide)

The Monster Collection: The Sontarans (pre-order)

THE SONTARANS are a short, battle-loving race from the planet Sontar. Bred for war, these cloned creatures have produced one of the most powerful armies in the universe.

The Time Warrior (1973): Missing scientists have been kidnapped by a Sontaran, Linx, and taken back to medieval England, where they are working under hypnosis to repair his crashed spaceship. Starring Jon Pertwee as the Third Doctor.

The Sontaran Stratagem and The Poison Sky (2008): With planet Earth choking under the poison sky, the Doctor must stop the Sontarans' threat to the planet. Starring David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor.

Monster Collection: The Master (Credit: BBC Worldwide)

The Monster Collection: The Master (pre-order)

THE MASTER is a dangerous, power-mad Time Lord and one of the Doctor’s deadliest foes. He brings death, danger and chaos to every story in which he appears.

Terror of the Autons (1971): The Master arrives on Earth at a circus run by a man named Rossini and steals a dormant Nestene energy unit from a museum. He reactivates it using a radio telescope and uses his hypnotic abilities to take control of a small plastics firm. Starring Jon Pertwee as the Third Doctor.

The End of Time parts one and two (2009-10): With almost everyone on Earth now recast in his image. The Master controls the world. He's shocked however when he realizes that one person hasn't changed... Starring David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor.

The Monster Collection: Davros (pre-order)

DAVROS is a genius scientist responsible for creating the most dangerous races in the universe – the Daleks. Ruthless and dangerous, he is determined that his creations will always win.

Genesis of the Daleks (1975): The Time Lords intercept the transmat beam taking the Doctor, Sarah and Harry back to Nerva and deposit them instead on the planet Skaro at an early point in its history. Starring Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor.

The Stolen Earth and Journey's End (2008): The return of an old enemy leaves Earth along with 26 other planets stolen from their places. As the Doctor and Donna look for the whereabouts of Earth, former companions of the Doctor assemble a resistance against the new Dalek Empire. Starring David Tennnant as the Tenth Doctor.

Monster Collection: The Silurians (Credit: BBC Worldwide)

The Monster Collection: The Silurians (pre-order)

THE SILURIANS lived on Earth millions of years before humans. This reptile race was forced to hibernate and lay undiscovered for years until they eventually started to wake up...

The Silurians (1970): Investigating a nearby cave system, the Doctor discovers it is the base of a group of intelligent reptiles, termed Silurians, who went into hibernation millions of years ago but have now been revived by power from the research centre. Starring Jon Pertwee as the Third Doctor.

The Hungry Earth and Cold Blood (2010): The Doctor tries to get everyone to Rio, but nothing quite goes as planned. They arrive in a small Welsh village where the Doctor immediately senses that the ground isn't quite right. Starring Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor.

The collections are due out in the United Kingdom on 30th September 2013.

FILTER: - UK - Third Doctor - Second Doctor - First Doctor - Eleventh Doctor - Fourth Doctor

The Doctors Revisited reaches the United Kingdom

Friday, 13 September 2013 - Reported by Chuck Foster

The Doctors Revisited - The First Doctor (Credit: BBC America)

The BBC America series celebrating each of the actors to have played the Doctor will be shown on Watch, the channel's schedule has revealed.

The Doctors Revisited will be broadcast at weekends, with the premiere of The First Doctor to be shown on Saturday 12th October at 2:00pm, followed by the accompanying story The Aztecs; Sunday will then see The Second Doctor at the same time, accompanied by The Tomb of The Cybermen. The following weekend then sees The Third Doctor on the Saturday alongside Spearhead From Space, and The Fourth Doctor alongside Pyramids of Mars on Sunday.

The documentaries were orginally broadcast monthly by BBC America, and were shown in Australia and New Zealand during August by BBC Worldwide's UKTV.

Other programming to accompany the launch of Doctor Who Revisited on the 12th October includes the documentaries The Companions at 4:30pm and Doctor Who Explained at 5:30pm, both of which are repeated before The Second Doctor on the Sunday.

Watch's schedules don't currently extend beyond the 20th October, but based on the pattern above the Fifth and Sixth Doctors are expected for 26th/27th October, Seventh and Eighth on 2nd/3rd November, Ninth and Tenth on 9th/10th November, and the Eleventh on the 16th - completing the series one week before the 50th Anniversary itself!

(with thanks to SciFiBulletin)

FILTER: - Documentary - BBC America - UK - Third Doctor - Second Doctor - First Doctor - WHO50 -

An Unearthly Series - The Origins of a TV Legend

Friday, 13 September 2013 - Reported by Marcus

Compiled by:
Marcus and Paul Hayes

The nineteenth in our series of features telling the story of the creation of Doctor Who, and the people who made it happen.

Production on the new series was progressing. The main cast were under contract, scripts were being finalised, and work was well under way on the title sequence.

An experimental session, testing new electronic effects for the series, had originally been planned for Friday 19th July, and it finally took place on Friday 13th September 1963, exactly 50 years ago today.

The place was Lime Grove Studio D, the studio which would become the main home of Doctor Who for its first few years of production. The main purpose of the day was to try to achieve an effect of the Doctor's spaceship, the TARDIS, dematerialising. The TARDIS prop had been built in the shape of a Metropolitan Police box, as specified in the script by Anthony Coburn. Police boxes were a common sight in 1960s London, with more than 650 in the capital. They played an important role in police work, providing a means of communication in the days long before the two-way radio. Designed by Metropolitan Police Surveyor Gilbert MacKenzie Trench in 1929 specially for the London police, the boxes were made of concrete with a door of teak. The interiors of the boxes normally contained a stool, a table, brushes and dusters, a fire extinguisher, and a small electric heater.

The replica, built by the BBC, was made of wood. On arrival at the studios on the morning of 13th, though, it was found that the prop was too big to fit into the service lift needed to transport it to the studio on the fourth floor.

One of the crew assigned to the studio that day was Dave Mundy, who remembers:

On Friday, 13 September 1963, crew 1 was allocated to Studio D, Lime Grove, 0930-1745, programme title – ‘Dr. Who experiment’. Some experiments involved smoke generators and some electronic effects. Studio D still had the old CPS-Emitron cameras which were renowned for producing a vision 'peel-off' when pointed at a bright light... Studio D had the old tungsten 4-lights so it was very hot!

Meanwhile, after the months of behind-the-scenes work that had so far been carried out on Doctor Who, details of the new series were finally beginning to be released to the public for the first time. The BBC had held a launch for its autumn television season with Controller of Programmes Stuart Hood in Blackpool on September 12th 1963, and the following day a report on the event and the new season's shows appeared in The Times newspaper. The article mainly concentrated on the return of the controversial satirical series That Was The Week That Was, but at the end mentioned in passing:

A new family series, "Dr. Who", which borders on science fiction, will be screened on Saturdays...

While only a small acknowledgement in a report on a whole season's worth of programming, this is believed to be one of the first mentions - if not the first mention - of Doctor Who in the media.

Progress was being made on the scripts for the new series. The launch date had now been delayed for a further week and the show would now debut on Saturday 23rd November 1963.

On Monday 16th September, script editor David Whitaker updated the production team on the latest running order for the first few months of the show. The first three stories were unchanged. The series would begin with Tribe of Gum, followed by The Robots, and A Journey to Cathay. A story based on miniaturising the crew, favoured by Whitaker, was now slotted in at number four and had been assigned to author Robert Gould.

The fifth slot was now assigned to Terry Nation's story The Mutants. It had been commissioned by Whitaker after Nation submitted a storyline entitled The Survivors about a race of aliens who had survived an apocalyptic war. Nation's agent, Beryl Vertue, the future mother-in-law of showrunner Steven Moffat, had succeeded in negotiating a higher-than-usual fee for the writer and he was paid £262 per episode.

The sixth story had now been allocated to another established writer, Malcolm Hulke, who had proposed two stories for the series. One, The Hidden Planet, featured a world identical to Earth but hidden on the opposite side of the Sun. The other, the one that was accepted, was set in Roman Britain, just before the departure of the occupying forces.

Rex Tucker, who had been due to share directing duties with Waris Hussein, had left for a holiday in Majorca and it was decided he would not return to the project. Tucker had never been happy working on Doctor Who and it was agreed that when he returned from holiday he would move to other projects. In his place the young but experienced staff director Christopher Barry was pencilled in to direct the second and sixth stories of the series. Richard Martin was assigned the fourth.

Whitaker set out his thoughts about the series as follows:

These six stories, covering thirty four episodes, are, as has already been stated, not finalised - however they do provide a statement of flavour and intention. The first, second and third serials have been commissioned and are in various stages of development - the first being complete, the second being written in draft, the third in preparation and the fifth delivered in draft. Serials four and six are in discussion stages.

Doctor Who Story Plan

Tribe of Gum: Written by Anthony Coburn. Directed by Waris Hussein
The Robots: Written by Anthony Coburn. Directed by Christopher Barry
A Journey to Cathay: Written by John Lucarotti. Directed by Waris Hussein
Miniscules [sic] story. Written by Robert Gould. Directed by Richard Martin
The Mutants. Written by Terry Nation. Directed by Waris Hussein
Story Six: Written by Malcolm Hulke. Directed by Christopher Barry

With a pilot planned for recording on Friday 27th September, work had been completed on the score for the first story. The incidental music was written by Norman Kay, a well-known television and film composer. The music was performed by a group of seven musicians and recorded at the Camden Theatre on the evening of Wednesday 18th September.

SOURCES: The Handbook: The First Doctor – The William Hartnell Years: 1963-1966, David J Howe, Mark Stammers, Stephen James Walker (Doctor Who Books, 1994); BBC Prospero

FILTER: - The Story of Doctor Who

Full Guest Line-Up Announced For BFI's Tenth Doctor Event

Thursday, 12 September 2013 - Reported by John Bowman

Catherine Tate will be among the guests joining David Tennant later this month for the question-and-answer panel at the BFI's special event celebrating the Tenth Doctor's era.

The Stolen Earth and Journey's End, which formed the Series 4 finale, are being shown on Sunday 29th September at 2pm when, as reported last month, Tennant will be the headline guest. It has now been confirmed that he will be joined by Tate, with the other guests named as the episodes' director, Graeme Harper, plus producer Phil Collinson and casting director Andy Pryor.

The sell-out screenings are part of the BFI's Doctor Who At 50 season, curated by Dick Fiddy and Justin Johnson.

Check here for returns or try the BFI on the day for stand-bys.

FILTER: - Special Events - UK - Catherine Tate - David Tennant - BFI - WHO50 - Tenth Doctor

The Day of the Doctor: new promotional image and press details released

Wednesday, 11 September 2013 - Reported by Chuck Foster

The BBC have released a new promotional image for the 50th Anniversary Special, The Day Of The Doctor, which is once again presented in the style of a movie poster:

The Day of the Doctor - Promotional Poster (landscape) (Credit: BBC/Adrian Rogers)

The Day of the Doctor - Promotional Poster (square) (Credit: BBC/Adrian Rogers)

The Day of the Doctor - Promotional Poster (portrait) (Credit: BBC/Adrian Rogers)

A full press release of the run-up to the anniversary episode has now been published:

Fifty years of Doctor Who to culminate in The Day Of The Doctor

The countdown starts here as the BBC reveals its plans to take over TV and radio to mark the Doctor’s 50th anniversary.

With special programmes planned across the BBC, the celebrations will peak on 23 November with the anniversary episode, revealed as The Day Of The Doctor. Starring Matt Smith, David Tennant and Jenna Coleman with Billie Piper and John Hurt, the special for BBC One has been confirmed as feature-length, with 75 minutes of adventure.

Matt Smith, who plays the Doctor, says: “The Day Of The Doctor is nearly here! Hope you all enjoy. There’s lots more coming your way, as the countdown to the 50th begins now.”

Each channel will be home to unique content, celebrating the wealth of history and talent from the last 50 years.

BBC Two will broadcast a number of new commissions, focusing on telling the story behind the show. For one night only, Professor Brian Cox will take an audience of celebrity guests and members of the public on a journey into the wonderful universe of the Doctor, from the lecture hall of the Royal Institution of Great Britain (1x60 minutess). Drawing on the latest theories, as well as 200 years of scientific discoveries and the genius of Einstein, Brian tries to answer the classic questions raised by the Doctor: Can you really travel in time? Does extra-terrestrial life exist in our galaxy? And how do you build something as fantastical as the TARDIS?

In an hour-long special, BBC Two’s flagship arts programme The Culture Show presents Me, You And Doctor Who (1x60 minutes), with lifelong fan Matthew Sweet exploring the cultural significance of the BBC’s longest running TV drama, arguing that it’s one of the most important cultural artefacts of modern Britain. Put simply, Doctor Who matters. He’ll examine how the show has become a cultural force in its own right and tell the stories of some of the unsung cultural heroes, who pioneered its innovative music, design and storytelling.

BBC Two wraps up its coverage with the previously announced An Adventure In Space and Time (1x90 minutes), which will tell the story of the genesis of Doctor Who and the many personalities involved. Written by Mark Gatiss, the drama stars David Bradley (the Harry Potter films); Brian Cox (The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Identity), Jessica Raine (Call The Midwife) and Sacha Dhawan (History Boys, Last Tango In Halifax).

Steven Moffat, lead writer and executive producer of Doctor Who, says: "Fifty years has turned Doctor Who from a television show into a cultural landmark. Personally I can't wait to see what it becomes after a hundred."

Update 11 Sep: the BBC have informed us that the broadcast of An Unearthly Child is currently unconfirmed, pending the resolution of issues with one of the episodes - more details as and when we are updated. BBC Four will introduce audiences to the first Doctor, William Hartnell, with a special re-run of the first-ever story, which marked the start of 50 years of history. The four episodes are being shown in a restored format, not previously broadcast in the UK.

There will also be programmes across CBBC with 12 Again (1x30 minutes) bringing together CBBC’s super-fan Chris Johnson, impressionist Jon Culshaw, Tommy Knight (Luke Smith), Warwick Davis (Porridge), Neve McIntosh (Madame Vastra), Dan Starkey (Strax) Louise Jameson (Leela) and the seventh Doctor, Sylvester McCoy, to share their memories of watching TV’s top Time Lord when they were young.

Blue Peter will launch an exciting new competition giving viewers aged between six and 14 the opportunity to design a new gadget that will become part of the iconic science fiction series. Two live Blue Peter specials will see presenters Barney, Lindsey and Radzi joined by aliens and monsters, with viewers challenging Matt Smith to answer their Doctor Who questions.

BBC Three will be home to several exciting entertainment commissions. Audiences will be encouraged to get involved and vote in Doctor Who: Monsters And Villains Weekend, as we countdown to the top Doctor Who monster. For those less familiar with the show, Doctor Who: The Ultimate Guide will introduce fans and viewers to a wealth of archive material and act as a guide to all things Who. A further exciting commission to be announced later this year will see the celebrations finish with a bang.

Danny Cohen, Director of BBC Television, says: “Doctor Who is a titan of British television and I’m incredibly proud to have it on the BBC. It's an astonishing achievement for a drama to reach its 50th anniversary. I'd like to thank every person - on both sides of the camera - who has been involved with its creative journey over so many years.”

It’s not just TV where audiences will be able join in the celebrations; programming across Radio 2, Radio 1 and Radio 4 Extra will also mark the 50th.

BBC Radio 2 will ask Who Is The Doctor? in a 90-minute documentary featuring newly recorded interviews and exclusive archive material. The programme will look at the lasting appeal of Doctor Who and ask how much of its continued success can be attributed to its basic formula.

In The Blagger’s Guide To Doctor Who, David Quantick will give the iconic Doctor the Blagger’s treatment. He’ll be finding out the answers to questions such as, why do Americans think Tom Baker is still Doctor Who? How many Doctors have there really been? Were the Daleks really named after an encyclopaedia?

Finally, Graham Norton will be broadcasting his weekly Radio 2 show live (Saturday 23 November, 10am) from the Doctor Who Celebration in London. In a special three-hour show, Graham will take a ride in the TARDIS and will also be chatting with some of the series’ stars and fans.

Music is a key part of Doctor Who, from the famous theme tune to soaring melodies, but the show has also inspired a whole new phenomenon – Time Lord Rock (TROCK). Radio 1 will look at this genre of music inspired by the Doctor and his journeys through space and time with a 60-minute documentary.

Meanwhile, Radio 4 Extra travels back to 1963 with a three-hour special programme, Who Made Who?, to look at the world that inspired the television series. Doctor Who may have come from other times, but his roots were very much in the present of 1960s Britain. This distinctive programme combines audio from the archive, new interviews and extracts from audio versions of Doctor Who. Additionally, the station will broadcast readings and dramas featuring the great Doctor.

There will also be special content across the official website and on BBC iPlayer.

FILTER: - Day of the Doctor - Series Specials - Press - Broadcasting

Fiftieth Anniversary details revealed

Tuesday, 10 September 2013 - Reported by Chuck Foster

The BBC have revealed some details about their programming for the Fiftieth Anniversary celebrations, which will include:

The Anniversary Special itself, which has been named The Day of the Doctor and will be 75 minutes long.
The 90 minute drama An Adventure in Space and Time
A BBC Two lecture by Professor Brian Cox on the science behind the hit show
A Culture Show special by Matthew Sweet, entitled Me, You and Doctor Who
A BBC Radio 2 documentary entitled Who is the Doctor?
A repeat run of a restored version of the very first story, An Unearthly Child, on BBC Four
A primer to the series with Doctor Who: The Ultimate Guide

Exact times will be revealed at a later date.

Note: the news item has since been removed from the BBC News site

FILTER: - Day of the Doctor - WHO50 - Series Specials

BFI: Seventh And Ninth Doctor Panels Plus Eighth Doctor Guests

Monday, 9 September 2013 - Reported by John Bowman

Videos of the guest panels from the two most recent celebratory screenings by the BFI were released today.

The BFI is running a Doctor Who At 50 season throughout this year, curated by Justin Johnson and Dick Fiddy, and a six-minute excerpt from the question-and-answer session at the Seventh Doctor event, held on Saturday 27th July and which saw a big-screen showing of Remembrance of the Daleks, features Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred, and Ben Aaronovitch in conversation with Johnson.

The panel at the Seventh Doctor event (via the BFI YouTube channel)

Meanwhile, the Ninth Doctor event - held on Saturday 24th August with Bad Wolf and The Parting of The Ways being screened - spawned a longer video, with Joe Ahearne, Phil Collinson, and Bruno Langley on the panel.

The panel at the Ninth Doctor event (via the BFI YouTube channel)

The next event, which will mark the Tenth Doctor's era, is to take place at the BFI on Sunday 29th September when the episodes The Stolen Earth and Journey's End will be shown and - as previously reported - David Tennant will be among the special guests. As with all the other events in the BFI season it has sold out, but returns are possible - keep checking here - as are stand-bys on the day.

Less than a week after that - and again as previously reported - Paul McGann will be the headline guest on Saturday 5th October at the sold-out event in honour of his time as the Eighth Doctor, with a screening of the TV Movie taking place. The full guest line-up, announced today, will be Daphne Ashbrook, Geoffrey Sax, Andrew Cartmel, Gary Russell, Nicholas Briggs, and Jason Haigh-Ellery. Cartmel, Briggs, Russell, and Haigh-Ellery will be forming a panel to talk about the years between the McGann movie and the show's return, while McGann, Ashbrook, and Sax will be the panel guests following the screening.

Yesterday, Ashbrook revealed on her website that she would be taking part, commenting:

I can't wait to see Paul McGann, Gary Russell, Jason Haigh Ellory [sic] and Andrew Cartmel. And Geoffrey Sax, whom I haven't seen since we shot the movie in 1996!

The event will be followed by a signing at the BFI Shop of advance copies of the BBC's 50th-anniversary book Doctor Who - The Vault, due out on Thursday 24th October, with author Marcus Hearn. Check here for returns for the Eighth Doctor event or try for stand-bys on the day.

FILTER: - Ninth Doctor - Special Events - Online - Eighth Doctor - Seventh Doctor - BFI - WHO50

Auton Carnival Mask Sells For Thousands In Online Auction

Sunday, 8 September 2013 - Reported by John Bowman

A rare Auton carnival mask from the Third Doctor story Terror of the Autons fetched more than £5,000 when it was auctioned on eBay.

The painted fibreglass head, with felt eyes, was sold on the online auction site by London-based miss-p73, who said in the item description that it had been given to her family in the late-1970s when her father worked for a studio transport company. She added that the accompanying foam rubber hat had long since perished, and said that the mask had been "much loved and played with" in her youth, which had led to it being "a bit chipped and scraped".

After 51 bids the prop - which was only available to buyers in the UK - finally went for £5,154 when the auction ended on Thursday 5th September just after 10.25pm.

The carnival masks were worn by the Autons to disguise their true nature as they handed out deadly plastic daffodils to unsuspecting members of the public.

The four-part adventure started Jon Pertwee's second series as the Doctor. Written by Robert Holmes and directed by Barry Letts, it aired between 2nd and 23rd January 1971. Not only did the story feature the second appearance of the Autons in the show, it also marked the debuts of Katy Manning, Roger Delgado, and Richard Franklin as, respectively, Jo Grant, the Master, and Captain Mike Yates.

With Thanks To Tony Clark

FILTER: - Online - Third Doctor - Auctions

The Ninth Doctor Revisited On BBC America

Sunday, 8 September 2013 - Reported by John Bowman

The episodes Bad Wolf and The Parting of the Ways are to be shown by BBC America on Sunday 29th September when the channel marks the Ninth Doctor's era in its celebratory strand Doctor Who: The Doctors Revisited.

The stories, which formed the finale of the show's first series on its return to TV, marked the end of the Christopher Eccleston era, and saw his Doctor - aided by companions Rose, played by Billie Piper, and Captain Jack Harkness, portrayed by John Barrowman - taking on the might of the Daleks.

Preceding the episodes will be the special documentary Doctor Who: The Doctors Revisited – The Ninth Doctor, featuring Steven Moffat, Neil Gaiman, Noel Clarke, and Barrowman among the participants discussing Eccleston's portrayal of a no-nonsense, hard-hitting, and straight-talking Doctor. The documentary will air at 8pm ET/PT.

The stories, written by Russell T Davies and directed by Joe Ahearne, originally aired in June 2005.

The Doctors Revisited: The Ninth Doctor (via YouTube)

FILTER: - Steven Moffat - Ninth Doctor - USA - BBC America - John Barrowman

Complete Series 1-7: Blu-ray details

Friday, 6 September 2013 - Reported by Chuck Foster

BBC Worldwide has announced the release of Doctor Who: The Complete Series 1-7 Box Set on Blu-ray for release in the United Kingdom on 4th November and in North America on 5th November:

Doctor Who: The Complete Series 1-7 Boxed Set (Blu-ray) (Credit: BBC)

The Complete Series 1-7 Boxed Set (Blu-ray) (available for preorder UK/US)
Starring Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, Matt Smith

“Do you wanna come with me? 'Cause if you do, then I should warn you, you're gonna see all sorts of things. Ghosts from the past. Aliens from the future. The day the Earth died in a ball of flame. It won't be quiet, it won't be safe and it won't be calm. But I'll tell you what it will be: the trip of a lifetime.”

- The Ninth Doctor

Fantastic! Allons-y! Geronimo! For the first time ever, the epic adventures of the Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh Doctors are brought together in high definition in a special Blu-ray release

The set includes the complete adventures of the Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston, Thor: The Dark World) and Tenth Doctor (David Tennant, Broadchurch, Fright Night), available in newly remastered Blu-ray versions at full 1080p resolution for the first time ever, sitting alongside those of the Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) in this high definition collection

Doctor Who: The Complete First Series, starring Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper
Doctor Who: The Complete Second Series, starring David Tennant and Billie Piper
Doctor Who: The Complete Third Series, starring David Tennant and Freema Agyeman
Doctor Who: The Complete Fourth Series, starring David Tennant and Catherine Tate

Also included in1080p Resolution:

Doctor Who: The Complete Specials, starring David Tennant
Doctor Who: The Complete Fifth Series, starring Matt Smith and Karen Gillan
Doctor Who: The Complete Sixth Series, starring Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill
Doctor Who: The Complete Seventh Series, starring Matt Smith, Karen Gillan, Arthur Darvill, and Jenna-Louise Coleman

Bonus Blu-ray disc includes:

“The Doctor Who Ultimate List of Lists” from BBC AMERICA’s The Brit List - BBC AMERICA’s pop culture correspondent, Asha Leo, is joined by special guest John Barrowman (“Torchwood,” “Doctor Who”) to announce the rankings of the “Top Five Companions,” “Top Five Scariest Moments,” “Top Five Best Monsters,” “Top Five Guest Stars” and “Top Five Things You’ll Only See on Doctor Who.”
Doctor Who at the Proms 2010 - Doctor Who’s own Karen Gillen and Arthur Darvill host a spectacular evening of music from the series played live by the London Philharmonic Orchestra at London’s historic Royal Albert Hall. Includes video projections, appearances by the monsters and a special guest appearance from 11th Doctor Matt Smith. For the first time, the collection will include the full 90-minute concert and has been remastered in 5.1 Surround Sound.
Doctor Who: The Best of the Christmas Specials - This previously unreleased special from December 2011 takes an inside look at the very best moments from the incredible Doctor Who Christmas specials that have captivated audiences around the world. A collection of fans from the celebrity, comedy, sci-fi and digital worlds discuss their favorite moments from both David Tennant and Matt Smith era Christmas episodes.

Doctor Who: The Complete Series 1-7 Boxed Set (Blu-ray) - USA Packaging (Credit: BBC Worldwide)

Doctor Who: The Complete Series 1-7 Boxed Set (Blu-ray) - USA Contents (Credit: BBC Worldwide)

In addition, the North American release will include a bonus gift in the form of the original Doctor Who Universal Remote Control Sonic Screwdriver, three artwork cards featuring the three Doctors, plus an exclusive comic book.

The 29 disc collection contains each series in its own individual Blu-ray case, and it is expected that the four remastered Eccleston/Tennant series will be available individually at a later date.

Acknowledgements: BBC Worldwide, additional North American details thanks to TV Shows on DVD

FILTER: - Merchandise - Series 6/32 - Eleventh Doctor - Tenth Doctor - Series 5/31 - Ninth Doctor

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