Doctor Who Series 1-4 Blu-ray Box Set - What's the deal?

 UPDATE 05/02/24 - Replacement discs are being issued for The Specials Disc 2 (The End of Time disc) to correct the wrong screengrabs on the scene selection menu and subtitles. 

 

2023 saw another new release of Series 1-4 in the UK on Blu-ray. Containing new upscales of the standard definition episodes (this time at the correct speed!). Some fans have asked me is this release worth getting? That’s a very tricky thing to answer. In truth (with the exception of The Next Doctor, I’ll get on to that), this is the best release this of these episodes hands down - but there are some caveats. I’ll attempt to answer the question in more detail.

 

Now we have had a bit of time to digest this release, (there was far too much going on in November and December in the Whoniverse to look at this properly) I thought this package could do with a proper write up explaining my thoughts.

 

The Packaging

In terms of how box set is laid out, it was definitely the right approach. Using 5 standard amary Blu-ray cases inside a box makes it easy to access the episodes, display them on the shelf and store them. I’m not a fan of digipacks and big bulky packaging these days, it suits The Collection, but most of the time it’s not practical as I just want to access the episodes quickly without having to do some origami.

A full on detailed booklet would have been a really nice addition with some details. The originals that came with the DVDs were exceptional. But at least we do have a leaflet listing what is on each disc which is important.

Now onto the artwork itself. I’m not here to slag of an artist, I know people who like the design. The artwork is fine, but personally I prefer Stuart Crouch’s Blu-ray covers from a decade ago.

With so many brilliant artists working on Doctor Who merchandise from Big Finish to the DVDs, we are very lucky to have such brilliant, talented fans designing merchandise that shines on our shelves. But that sadly means when something is just fine - not in any way bad but perhaps not up to that very high standard that’s been set. Plus when you’ve seen those gorgeous steelbooks from a few years ago, I do think the if the box set had used a more dynamic and eye grabbing design, it would have helped shift more copies. Remember the vast majority of people buying these sets are fans who have shelled out possibly several times on owning these episodes, people want an upgrade as much as they can in as many ways as they can. To build a Doctor Who home media Collection that looks impressive is sometimes as much of a thrill as the contents.

Having the Doctors in silhouette is a strange decision. It doesn’t jump out on the shelves of HMV. It also the front doesn’t scream Doctor Who other than the logo when you first see it. I recognise Eccleston and Tennant because I’m a nerd for Doctor Who publicity photos, but would the casual immediately think that’s them from a quick glance?

But as I said the artwork is fine and I don’t think the artist who created it did a bad job.

 

The Episodes

The important bit.

With the exception of The Next Doctor, these are by far the best releases of these episodes to date. I’ll break this down further.

Frame Rates

For the first time on Blu-ray, all the episodes play at the correct speed. For the 2013 release the Blu-ray masters were originally produced for the US, therefor were slowed down slightly to match the 30 frames per second standards as opposed to 24 fps used in the UK (Note – the US release of this set under Series 1-13 is still rendered at 30fps).

It might seem like a small, hardly noticeable thing, but the 2013 version adds a few minutes onto each episode – which when totalled with the entire series adds a good few hours. The sound slowing and pitch correction from 2013 also introduced some artefacts into the sound, which are now gone. Plus watching the episodes at a slower speed made the lockdown watch-a-longs quite tricky to keep in time. This to me was the most important thing about this release and I’m pleased they’ve fixed it.

 

Picture Quality

If you have the 2013 Blu-rays then you won’t see a significant increase in clarity. At the end of the day this is standard def television and unless you use AI (which has massive pros and cons) it’s as good as it’s going to get. The picture does look good though for what is coming up to be 20 years-old next year. The main thing that lets it down now is the softness of the CGI. But it still holds up really well.

The restoration was overseen by Paul Vanezis who works on the classic series releases, so it’s been handle by someone in the know.

Planet of the Dead, The Waters of Mars and The End of Time were made and transmitted in HD. But the new encodes are an improvement.

TJDW has produced an excellent comparison video here:

 

Audio Quality

I’m not an audiophile, but to me the sound is a little bit clearer. No leaps and bounds, but slightly better. It may have been nice is the original stereo mixes as used on the vanilla DVDs had been included (as some argue the dialogue is clearer).

 

Audio Description

The original DVD box sets included optional Audio Description for the visually impaired and blind. This was omitted from the 2013 release, but is back here now thankfully.

 

The Next Doctor

I believe overall every episode on this set is better than the previous releases with the exception of The Next Doctor. Sadly there are several cases of missing dialogue throughout this episode, with dialogue from Jackson Lake, the Doctor and a few deletes from the Cybermen.

I don’t really know how this happened. It’s not Paul Vanezis fault as I don’t think he edited the audio. My guess is they have used an unfinished early edit of the episode. All the missing dialogue were likely ADR (Additional Dialogue Recordings) that were added at a very late stage. Essentially what I think we got here is an early edit. I think this is too big an error and is worthy of a replacement discs.

There are a few other inconsistencies with the episode as well. The transmitted version is correctly missing the Cyberman stomps in the scene where the children are being led to the Cyberman workhouse. These are present on the Blu-ray and all other commercial releases of the episode with the exception I believe of the ‘vanilla’ 2009 release.

There is also an issue with the credits, which I’ll talk about in the next section.

 

Opening and Closing Credits

The title captions, on-screen credits, and closing credits have been remade for everything up to and including The Next Doctor. This makes it much more legible to read. And of course taking advantage of the HD render of the closing titles done for the specials.

That said the credits for The Specials (The Next Doctor - The Waters of Mars + The End of Time Part 2) use the more old fashioned slow moving style credits that are presented in two columns which is incorrect. On the original transmission the credits were presented in the newer scrolling method.

 

Incorrect formatting for The Waters of Mars from 2023 Blu-ray

(screencap taken by phone)

As broadcast credits for The Waters of Mars from BBC iPlayer

Comparison Video by Andrew Hsieh.

I can’t really call this a fault though. As it is correct. Just not what transmitted.

 

The End of Time – Part 1 however does use the original transmission credits. This is likely because they purposely sought out original masters as other physical

media releases have used a different version of the “TO BE CONTINUED” text (presented as a tame plain text version as opposed to a big 3D text).

 

There is one minuscule error that has been spotted on 42 in which instead of a fade up with the title caption it just appears. But that’s the only error as such.

 

Other Episode Issues

When it comes to correctly matching the original transmission it’s a mixed bag. Some faults have been corrected such as the audio fault on Rose, the missing Two Years Later caption on Blink.

There are a couple that aren’t though. The different music track on the gramophone in The Unicorn and The Wasp (this might be forced upon them due to rights issues) and Cyberman stops in The Next Doctor are still present.

I can’t call these errors as a) previous box set releases have used these versions b) some of them may be a necessity due to rights issues. But these things don’t match the original transmissions. These are also present on the previous box sets so they are in no way unique. However some of the transmitted versions are present on the masters used for the bare-bone release and DVD files

In 2007 Doctor Who took a week off due to Eurovision. Instead of the usual Next Time trailer on BBC One, they produced a “Coming Up” trailer teasing the rest of the series. The box sets and iPlayer instead use the originally planned Next Time trailer.

Also on The Girl in the Fireplace, there is an erroneous BBC logo over the opening Versailles shot. Not a big one, but it shouldn't be there. 

Ideally I what I would have liked used as masters on this Blu-ray are the original transmitted versions of these stories as I consider them to be default version. But sometimes what is used isn’t an error, and is in fact what the production team originally intended.

 

Audio Commentaries

Whilst nothing new was recorded for this set, there are some commentaries that are new to disc. On the original DVD and Blu-ray box sets for The Specials, there was no commentary available for The Next Doctor, Planet of Dead and The Waters of Mars. However at the time the BBC produced their own commentary tracks for the website and the long defunct BBC Radio 7. For the three specials these were:

The Next Doctor – With Russell T Davies and Julie Gardner

Planet of the Dead – With David Tennant, Julie Gardner and James Strong

The Waters of Mars – With David Tennant, Russell T Davies and Julie Gardner

The decision to include these is fantastic. Now every RTD1 story has a commentary on disc! Something I have always wanted. It always seemed silly to me not to put those commentaries on the original DVDs.

There is an unfortunate caveat, the podcast commentaries have been put on disc out of sync with the visuals. Whilst it’s still better than nothing, it’s not a smooth watch.

The Last of the Time Lords also has a commentary issue. On previous UK releases, the commentary featuring David Tennant, Freema Agyeman and John Barrowman contained JB bursting into song. This couldn’t be cleared for the US release of the set, so instead the podcast commentary made for the website with Russell T Davies and Julie Gardner was used. For unknown reasons the podcast audio was used on this new set, with the cast commentary omitted.

In some ways it’s a good thing as the podcast commentary has never been available on disc before in the UK. But I would still like to have the cast one available. At least for those who are keeping the old release they have options.

 

Minisodes

Born Again (the 2005 Children in Need Special) at last finally uses the correct sound mix. The previous box sets used an early edit by mistake with Murray Gold’s score and the cloister bell sound effect omitted. Finally it can be watched as intended.

Born Again and Time Crash haven’t been upscaled in the same way as the full episodes. But they look fine.

I’ll talk about the unreleased mini episodes later.

 

Confidential

As this set didn’t set out to add any new extras, nearly all of the versions of Doctor Who Confidential match the previous box sets, usually in the cutdown form.

There are however two cut-down episodes that have been further cut-down from Series 1.

The episode Why on Earth? has a very tiny yet puzzling edit. A clip from Aliens of London was edited to remove Rose’s line “You’re so gay”, which she says to the Doctor. Whilst I understand the terminology is outdated, what makes it puzzling is that the line is present within the episode elsewhere on this set. Why edit out Confidential but leave it intact elsewhere? I just can’t explain it.

The World of Who episode has a cuts that makes much more sense. Footage from behind the scenes of John Barrowman’s naked scenes have been vastly edited to make it more sensitive. In the un-edited version John Barrowman talks about how much he enjoyed being naked filming those scenes. In light of more recent revelations which I won’t go into here, this edit makes a lot of sense and to some degree I’d argue necessary.

The Confidential episode Desert Storm is (assuming by mistake) is presented in Standard Definition, despite being in HD on every other release so far to date. I assume this happened because they tracked down different masters to make sure it played at the correct speed.

There is also another small error on Bring Back the Doctor (Rose) episode where half-way through the end credits it cuts off. Why this happened I have no idea.

At least at the time of writing, all this content is intact via the Whoniverse on iPlayer, including the full unedited Confidential. Those are my default version now anyway (at least while they are available).

 

The New Extra

Whilst this set hasn’t given us many new extras, there is one. On the third disc of the specials is a 20 minute newly shot feature containing individual interviews with Russell T Davies and David Tennant. In this feature shot during a recording break of the 60^th Anniversary specials, the pair talk about Series 1-4, the rest of the modern series and the future for the show.

Whilst it’s not essential viewing, it’s a nice little extra and was more interesting than I was expecting.

 

The Missing Specials Bonus Disc

Included on the 2019 Specials Steelbook and US release of The Complete David Tennant Collection was a bonus disc containing the two animated specials; The Infinite Quest and Dreamland, The Sarah Jane Adventures – The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith (featuring David Tennant as The Doctor) and another exclusive David Tennant interview marking the 10^th anniversary of him leaving the role.

It would have been nice to include it on this new set. The interview and HD versions of Dreamland and the SJA episodes have never been made available elsewhere and would have helped sweetened the deal with this new set. They are a key part of this era of the show.

 

What else could have been included?

Whilst it would be very welcome, I know there was no budget for this release to make Collection style content. A few new bits of archive content would have been very welcome.

The first thing that immediately springs to mind is BBC Online/Red Button interactive episode Attack of the Graske. Whilst I’d imagine it would be tricky to retain the interactive element on disc, I would have been very happy even to see a edit without these bits. It seems incredible there’s footage of David Tennant as Doctor Who that isn’t available on disc.

Another canonical piece of media, again from Series 2 is the TARDISodes. These 13 mini-scenes acted as teaser for the forthcoming episodes in 2006, available on the BBC website and could be obtained via texting on the phone. I’m perplexed they weren’t included back on the original box sets. They are on YouTube, but only in 144p. It would be nice to see them properly.

A very simple thing to include would have been the podcast commentaries. Now hidden away on the official website, putting these on disc would have given these episodes something new in being able to sync the visuals to the sound easily. There are a few podcast commentaries on here, but a lot more were produced from Series 2 onwards.

Anything else you could have mopped up would have been welcomed as well. Such as the David Tennant Dalek and Cyberman introductions from the old 2009 DVDs.

 

Should I buy this release?

To put it simply, (with the exception of The Next Doctor) these are the best releases of these episodes on disc. Yes there might be the odd niggle here and there - but that’s probably worth sacrificing in order to have the correct speeds and best quality available.

If you are owning these on disc for the first time, get it as there is still a wealth of Special Features to enjoy that aren’t available anywhere digitally.

If you only own the DVDs, then the picture upgrade is worthwhile.

If you own any of the previous Blu-ray releases, then it might be worth weighing up how much the slowdown bothers you plus what else I have said in this article. The picture quality isn’t noticeably better, but there are lots of benefits.

If you are in Region 1 and thinking about buying the Series 1-13 set to get these discs, I would probably leave it if you own the episodes already. Without the benefits of the slowdown, there’s not a huge benefit here over the 2013 masters.

Things to keep

To round this off, I’ve put together a list of things that are on the previous Blu-ray releases that might be worth keeping if you are thinking about trading in your old releases.

• Doctor Who Confidential Cut-downs: Series 1(unedited)
• The Last of the Time Lords Cast Commentary
• The Next Doctor (less errors)
• Doctor Who Confidential – Desert Storm (Planet of the Dead) in HD