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AI on Classic Doctor Who. Why it's bad.

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   I can’t believe I am writing a post like this, but I really fear for the future of The Collection.     The restoration work carried out on Classic Doctor Who had always been to such a high standard. When the show started coming out on Blu-ray in 2018 I was incredibly impressed how the picture looked. Free from DVD compression, allowing the master tapes of episodes shot on 2” or 1”inch video tape to shine through. There was picture noise, a bit of blurriness at times, but that was ok. No-one complained because we all knew how the episodes were made back in the 20 th Century. You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. So I have to question why BBC Studios decided to risk all of that by starting to use AI to upscale the footage? In principle it may sound good, maybe even beneficial to the episodes, but the problem is AI is just what an algorithm thinks an image should look like, leaving in its wake a huge number artefacts that change how an episode looks. P...
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Series 1-4 - New and Missing Special Features

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In response to my previous article talking about the new Series 1-4 box set, ( you can read the original here ) some further items that have been identified that are different from the original releases. Simeon Carter (with a little bit of help from myself) has written a guide to these and he has kindly given me permission to publish it here. I've recently received this set and have been going through the features. With the help of Matthew Purchase, I've spotted a couple of very small things that are new and to my knowledge haven't been commented on yet. I've also noticed a couple of very slight omissions. So thought I'd produce an up to date list of what's new and what's missing across this set, in terms of special features. (In terms of the episodes themselves I know that The Next Doctor has some missing dialogue and the credits are not as broadcast for some of the other 2009 Specials. But this is the first time the episodes have been released on...
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Have the 60’s set have got even more complicated?

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It was about a year ago I last wrote on this blog about 60’s The Collection Blu-ray’s, celebrating the news that the animation was in fact continuing, despite BBC America pulling out of funding. With The Celestial Toymaker due to be released next month, it will take us over the 50% mark for number of missing episodes animated. Such an achievement. Also, with Season 15 coming out next month, we will appropriately be 15 seasons sets into The Collection, with another 11 seasons to go. We are reaching a sort of crunch time. Assuming the next Collection set after Season 15 isn’t a 60’s season, for an even spread of box sets throughout the remainder of the range, ever other set really needs to be a black and white season. According to The Mirror, The Smugglers was mentioned alongside The Underwater Menace for animation. Seeing as we haven’t had that yet, maybe we can assume it’s the next serial up for the treatment? This would leave 4 of the 5 remaining 60’s sets tantalisingly close to c...
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Doctor Who New Series Commentary Guide

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I was looking around online for an update list of the commentaries available for modern Who having discovered the original podcast commentaries were still available hidden away on the BBC website. For the ones on DVD, the contributors weren’t listed in the booklet. To make things easier for me I decided to write up who’s on them and with links to the podcasts and iPlayer commentaries to make things easier.   Series 1 Rose DVD / Blu-ray - Russell T Davies (Writer), Julie Gardner (Executive Producer), Phil Collinson (Producer) The End of the World DVD / Blu-ray - Phil Collinson (Producer), Will Cohen (VFX Producer) The Unquiet Dead DVD / Blu-ray - Simon Callow (Charles Dickens), Mark Gatiss (Writer), Euros Lyn (Director) Aliens of London DVD / Blu-ray - David Verrey (Joseph Green), Julie Gardner (Executive Producer), Will Cohen (VFX Producer) World War Three DVD / Blu-ray - Annette Badland (Margaret Blaine), Phil Collinson (Producer), Helen Raynor (Script ...
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