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Showing posts from March, 2026

Circuit Breaker - The Black Archive Files: What's the deal?

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I often talk about how much care and attention to detail goes into the Classic Series releases to convince us fans to shell out on something a lot of us have already bought at least two or three times. Then comes along a random release out of the blue that makes you ask who does this appeal to? But some unexpected new bonus material alongside some unusual and rare episode variants perhaps gives enough value to justify buying.    Circuit Breaker is the latest multi-platform event from BBC Studios, following on from Time Lord Victorious (2020) and Doom’s Day (2023). This time focusing on the mysterious Fugitive Doctor as played by Jo Martin, who has refreshingly been heavily involved with the entire range. I’ve personally not been following the story that closely, but the premise involves the Doctor teaming up with Osgood who is now working in the Black Archive as objects from the Doctor’s personal timeline have gone missing. This new Blu-ray release features 10 Doctor Who stori...
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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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