Quatermass and the Pit Blu-ray Review

The serial format, breaking down a story over multiple, distinct parts, has a very long history.  Silent film serials were followed by sound film serials, and up and until the 1950s the genre had fulfilled a need for audiences to be entertained in a weekly format.  Television's introduction led to the downfall of serials from Republic Films and other studios that specialized in narratives punctuated by cliffhangers.  The format did not generally translate well to television, where people expected a program to begin and end in one viewing.  In the 1950s there was no real ability for an average TV viewer to record programming to watch at a later time, you either saw the program or you hoped for a repeat.  This suited television broadcasters, who wanted viewers to experience a new story every week.

That was the evolution in the U.S., but the U.K. was not yet ready to abandon the classic serial format.  The British Broadcasting Corporation, a publicly-funded TV network, had to fill the same number of hours in a day but with fewer resources that its American commercial televison network counterparts.  The serial format had its advantages in cost, sets, costumes, production personnel and actors could be reused for several weeks at a cost significantly less than having to mount brand-new productions every week.  Serials were broadcast alongside series not only by the BBC but also the ITV affiliates for a solid three-decade period.  Here I am going to offer my thoughts on one of the best of the serials ever produced from this period, Quatermass and the Pit as presented in its November 2018 Blu-ray release. 

Restoring the Fluid Look to Analog Video

As we all know theatrical sound film releases are typically projected at 24 or 25 frames per second.  Film is a progressive medium where each film frame captures an image at a discrete point in time.  However, film must be developed before it can be exhibited and must handled by experienced technicians, making it a costly medium in which to produce artistic works.  To reduce flicker, a shutter in the camera would open or close twice for each frame.

Prior to the advent of television, celluloid film was the only commercial means to display visual moving images.  However, the introduction of wholly-electronic television broadcast and receiver systems meant a massive change.  TV broadcast cameras were able to achieve acceptable image quality by broadcasting images in an interlaced format.  A broadcast camera and a TV tube display images in a set number of lines, and the electron scanning beam inside the tube scans or displays each line sequentially, then returns and draws the next line.  (Think of a typewriter.)  When it gets to the bottom of the tube, it returns to the top of the tube and draws the next set of lines.

In order to allow the electron beam sufficient time to draw all the lines, interlacing was used.  In an interlaced format, "frames" become "fields". A field only captures the odd or the even lines of the TV camera lens.  After all the odd lines in the first field are captured, then all the even lines of the second field are captured.  In the NTSC countries, 59.94 color fields (formerly 60 fields for B&W NTSC) are captured each second.  In PAL and SECAM countries, 50 fields are captured each second.  When this is broadcast to a TV screen, the fields are displayed as they are captured.  The high number of displayed fields avoids flicker on the TV screen.

Older Sci-Fi Shows in the HD Era

So, you want some of your classic sci-fi shows on Blu-ray?  How do they do that you may ask?  Well, in many cases it depends on when and where the show was created.

In the 1950s through the mid 1980s, U.S. science fiction TV was shot entirely on film.  Classic shows like The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Star Trek, Night Gallery, Kolchak: the Night Stalker, The Six Million Dollar Man, Wonder Woman, Battlestar Galactica, The Incredible Hulk, Buck Rogers and V: The Series all had the Hollywood look.  Effects were done on film, practical where necessary, optical as required.

Then in 1986, Star Trek: The Next Generation started its seven year run.  This series initiated a revolution in special effects.  While live action was still caught on film, wholly special effects scenes depicting the Enterprise and the various ships and worlds it encounters would often be generated on video with the use of computer graphics imagery (CGI).  CGI would often make its way into the live action as well.  Unfortunately, these images would be constructed in standard definition.  This method of production continued for almost two decades, every Star Trek series (except the last season of Enterprise), Babylon 5, Farscape, Firefly, The X-Files, Hercules and Xena used this method.

Reasons to Keep a VHS Player - Films Not available on DVD/Blu-ray

Prior to the introduction of affordable home video playback devices, there exactly two ways which an average person could view a film.  He could watch it in a theater or see it on television.  Once it was out of theaters or off the air, all he would likely keep were his memories of the film.  Some people had 8 or even 16mm projectors, but film prints (or highlight reels) were not something you found in an average store.

All this began to change in the mid-to-late 70s with the introduction of Betamax and VHS, the first affordable videotape playback devices released to consumers.  VHS prevailed in the format war and by the mid 1980s they were fast becoming ubiquitous in homes.  For well over a decade, VHS was the only way most people saw films outside of the theater.  TV broadcasts could be recorded onto tape and played back again and again.  The high end Laserdisc format failed to catch on, but eventually DVD would arrive to displace VHS rather quickly as the home video market successor.

When VHS became widespread, there was huge pressure to release films and TV shows onto the new format.  In the early days rights issues were often winked at and public domain companies flew under the radar in the days before the Internet.  However, as more people found ways to make money in the home video market, rights holders became more aware of their rights and less willing to sell them for cheap or let bootleggers run riot.  A more punitive statutory copyright scheme and laws extending copyright automatically and restoring copyright to foreign works have helped in some ways to limit the material that can be released on DVDs officially.

Even though most films on VHS were released in a croppped, pan and scan format (for films intended to be shown in widescreen theatrically), sometimes they remain the only official or quasi-official way to watch a film, barring TV viewings.  Here are categories of some films or versions of films which have never seen a DVD release and give support to keep a VHS player.

Toho Godzilla and Science Fiction Films

In the VHS era, when a Godzilla or Japanese sci-fi film was released, it would always use the English dubbed version which would more or less have been shown in theaters, with Pan and Scan being applied to widescreen films.  Some films were later released on VHS or DVD having been restored to conform more to Toho's International or Preferred Version.  Often this entailed eliminating the U.S. theatrical dubbing, which was done generally by professional actors trying to sound Asian, with dubbing done by English speakers in Tokyo or Hong Kong, who were either not professionals or did not try to affect an Asian accent.

Some of these films, like Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster and especially Godzilla vs. Megalon were treated like they were in the public domain, especially the latter.  Now that Toho has restored whatever copyright may have lapsed with these films, you will not see any more releases of these films except through authorized licensees or bootleggers.  Sea Monster has both a US Dub and an International Dub, but Megalon only has an International Dub.  After Godzilla vs. Hedorah, US distributors rarely redubbed Toho films, especially when most post-Return of Godzilla films were only released to the home video market.

Outside a version that preserves original dubbing, there are other little extra bits and pieces that tend to be found on VHS releases, such as company logos, title cards and end credits.  Many US theatrical release versions were edited from the Japanese version, sometimes stock music was substituted for the Japanese soundtrack.

For these films, I will be using the following format.  On line one there is the film's title on the VHS box, followed by the official title in parentheses if different.  The second line will give the distributor and approximate release year.  The third and following lines will identify the unique features of the release.

Godzilla Raids Again
Video Treasures 1989
Uses "Gigantis the Fire Monster" Title Card, matching the dubbing which calls Godzilla "Gigantis" among other things.  DVD releases use a video generated Godzilla Raids Again Title Card, but the original dubbing remains intact.

Half Human
Rhino Home Video 1990
US Version by DCA which added John Carradine and other American actors to the film.  The remaining Japanese footage is narrated over, not dubbed.  The Japanese version is unofficially banned in Japan due to ethnic stereotyping of native characters in the film to which Ainu people took offense.

The Mysterians
Star Classics 1989
RKO Dubbed version.  The Media Blasters DVD contains the Japanese version and uses a 21st century dub.

Varan the Unbelievable (Varan)
VCI Home Video 1990, 1994
US Version by Crown International which added Myron Healey and other American actors to the film and narration over the remaining Japanese footage.  The Media Blasters DVD contains the Japanese version and no English dubbing.

The Human Vapor (The Human Vapour)
Prism Entertainment 1986
US Theatrical Release Version by Brenco Pictures

The Last War
Video Gems 1985
US TV Release Version by Brenco TV

Gorath
Prism Entertainment 1986
US Theatrical Release Version by Brenco Pictures

Attack of the Mushroom People (Matango)
Something Weird Video 1996
US TV Release Version by AIP TV.  The Media Blasters DVD contains the same International Version dubbing as the AIP TV version, AIP did not produce its own dubs for films released directly to TV.

Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster (Ebirah, Horror of the Deep)
Video Treasures 1989, GoodTimes Home Video 1992, 1997, 1998
US TV Release Version by Walter Reade

Son of Godzilla
Video Treasures 1987, Anchor Bay 1997
US TV Release Version by Walter Reade

Yog Monster from Space (Space Amoeba)
Trans-Atlantis Video 1987
US Theatrical Version by AIP

Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster (Godzilla vs. Hedorah)
Orion Pictures 1989, Simitar Entertainment 1990
US Theatrical Version by AIP

Lake of Dracula
Paramount/Gateway 1994
International Version by Toho International

Godzilla on Monster Island (Godzilla vs. Gigan)
Family Tyme Video 1989
US Theatrical Release by Cinema Shares

Godzilla vs. Megalon
GoodTimes Home Video 1985, 1986, Video Treasures 1986, Viking Entertainment 1988, United American Video Corp 1991, Burbank Video 1993, Alpha Video 1993, UAV Entertainment 1994 (has Cinema Shares logo, which is often omitted), GoodTimes Home Video 1996, Anchor Bay 1996, 1997, UAV Entertainment 1998 (almost certainly more)
US Theatrical Release by Cinema Shares.  The Media Blasters DVD and Blu-ray use the original uncensored Japanese version with Japanese title credits, the English title credits can be seen as an extra on those few DVDs which had extras included on them by mistake.

Godzilla vs. the Cosmic Monster (Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla)
GoodTimes Home Video 1993, UAV Entertainment 1994
US Theatrical Release by Cinema Shares

Last Days of Planet Earth (Prophecies of Nostradamus)
Paramount/Gateway 1994
International Version by Toho International.  The Japanese version is unofficially banned in Japan because some of the portrayals of mutants were deemed offensive to Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors.

Evil of Dracula
Paramount/Gateway 1994
International Version by Toho International

EPSY
Paramount/Gateway 1994
International Version by Toho International

Godzilla 1985 ( The Return of Godzilla)
New World Video 1985, StarMaker Entertainment 1992, Anchor Bay 1997
US Theatrical Release by New World Pictures, which added Raymond Burr and other American actors to the film.

Of course, you can probably find everything from these cassettes online, but that would not be legal and the picture and audio quality may be pretty poor.  Of course, depending on how many times a VHS tape was watched and the equipment used, it may be nearly unwatchable as well.  If you want a visual representation of the VHS box art for these cassettes, you can find most of them here : http://www.tohokingdom.com/articles/art_boxart.htm

Sandy Frank Gamera Films non-MST3K :

These films were released under the "Just for Kids" Celebrity's Feature Creatures label.  They are not the same as the US Theatrical or original TV versions.  Sandy Frank took the Japanese versions, removed the opening credits and closing titles and inserted generic new titles over an image of water.  For Gamera, Sandy Frank had the film redubbed.  The US Theatrical version, "Gammera the Invincible" introduced American actors including Brian Donlevy, edits the film and uses different dubbing,  but there were apparently Hong Kong International Version dubs in place for the later films.  Gamera vs. Zigra was never released to theaters or TV by AIP unlike the other Gamera films of the 1966-71 period.  The five films are :

Gamera
Gamera vs. Baragon
Gamera vs. Gaos
Gamera vs. Guiron
Gamera vs. Zigra

Sandy Frank released Gamera and Gamera vs. Guiron as double-bill on Laserdisc.  The same thing occurred with Gamera vs. Gaos and Gamera vs. Zigra.  I doubt the enhanced quality of the Laserdisc makes these films any more watchable.    See the LaserDisc Database for details.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 :

MST3K has had a colorful release history over the years.  In the VHS era, Rhino Home Video would release individual episodes.  This was not unreasonable because each episode was feature length, usually between 95-100 minutes.  One of the earliest episodes released on VHS was The Amazing Colossal Man. This was the only episode that neither Rhino nor Shout Factory has released on disc.  Of course, MST3K used to say at the end of every episode "keep circulating the tapes" during its first few seasons, which encouraged viewers to trade off the air tape recordings with their fellow fans.  It is very easy to find MST3K episodes that have been removed from circulation if you know where to look.

Doctor Who :

Omnibus Format (a.k.a. the Movie Versions)

In the 1980s, BBC Video began releasing Doctor Who stories on VHS (and to a much lesser extent on Beta and Laserdisc).  In the United States, these stories were released through CBS/Fox Home Video (earlier known as Playtime).  Most of these stories saw later episodic releases on VHS in the UK but only a few in the US or Australia received unedited re-releases.

The Seeds of Death (never released unedited on tape in the U.K.)

Spearhead from Space

Day of the Daleks

The Time Warrior (never released unedited on tape in the U.K.)

Death to the Daleks

The Ark in Space

Revenge of the Cybermen

Terror of the Zygons (later released in episodic format on VHS as a special edition)

The Brain of Morbius (severely edited, later released in episodic format on VHS as a special edition)

The Deadly Assassin (only released in the U.K. unedited)

The Robots of Death

The Talons of Weng-Chiang (never released unedited on tape in the U.K.)

Many First Doctor VHS releases had the next episode title or the cliffhanger ending removed from the last episode.  In The Daleks, Episode 7 ends just before the explosion that knocks the ship's crew to the floor.  In The Web Planet, the edit required computer generated titles to be used instead of the scrolling titles of the original even though that episode did not have a cliffhanger ending.

While all the Third Doctor episodes were broadcast with the usual Derbyshire-theme in the U.K., some had the theme replaced by a version composed on a Delaware synthesizer.  Some of these episodes were broadcast in Australia with this arrangement.  This theme can be heard on certain VHS releases like Carnival of Monsters and Frontier in Space.  On the DVDs you may be able to find it as an extra, but it will not be attached to the credits.

Also, some of the Third Doctor stories were presented in B&W on VHS because colorization techniques had not sufficiently advanced to allow for color.  Color fades in and out for Episodes 2-7 of The Ambassadors of Death and there is only a five minute segment of color in The Mind of Evil presented as an extra on the tape.

In terms of extras found on VHS which were not ported over to DVD, the only one of any prominence is the "Making of Doctor Who" documentary attached to the release of Silver Nemesis.  In the U.K., the release of Shada was originally accompanied by a fascimile of its script, but this was not ported over to the U.S.  Similarly, the VHS release of The Crusade/The Space Museum came with postcards and a TARDIS keychain in the U.K. (the U.S. did not get the keychain).  The Space Museum was released separately, but The Crusade was not.

The final category are the tapes in the Doctor Who VHS range which were never released on DVD.  "Years" tapes, which for Hartnell, Troughton, Daleks and Cybermen, were not released on DVD.  The episodes contained on them were released on DVD, but not the linking material from the actors.  Nor were either Baker Years tapes released.  The Curse of the Fatal Death was not released on DVD, but it is available online officially.
  

Doctor Who Missing Story Options

One of the unfortunate realities of being a Classic Doctor Who fan is that as far as the televised serials go, a substantial portion of the adventures from the First and Second Doctors' eras are missing.  Of the fifty serials produced during the sixties, eighteen are still missing telecine of more than 50% of their episodes.  Here are the list of serials with episodes missing/total number of episodes :

Marco Polo - 7/7
Galaxy 4 - 1,2, 4/4
Mission to the Unknown - 1/1
The Myth Makers - 4/4
The Daleks' Master Plan - 1, 3-4, 6-9, 11-12/12
The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve - 4/4
The Celestial Toymaker - 1-3/4
The Savages - 4/4
The Smugglers - 4/4
The Power of the Daleks - 6/6
The Highlanders - 4/4
The Macra Terror - 4/4
The Faceless Ones - 2, 4-6/6
The Evil of the Daleks - 1, 3-7/7
The Abominable Snowmen - 1, 3-6/6
Fury from the Deep - 6/6
The Wheel in Space - 1-2, 4-5/6
The Space Pirates 1, 3-6/6

In addition eight serials are still missing at least one episode :

The Reign of Terror - 4-5/6
The Crusade - 2, 4/4
The Tenth Planet - 4/4
The Underwater Menace - 1, 4/4
The Moonbase - 1, 3/4
The Ice Warriors - 2-3/6
The Web of Fear - 3/6
The Invasion - 1, 4/8

All episodes existing from these serials have been released on DVD with one exception.  That exception, The Underwater Menace Episode 2, can be viewed without too much difficulty these days.

Regarding the eighteen mostly or completely missing serials, there are several alternatives to be able to enjoy their plots.  Target Novelizations, Scripts, Reconstructions, Audio Recordings, and Telesnap Photonovels.

1.  Target Novelizations

Chronologically, these novelizations of Doctor Who stories were the first way in which a fan could enjoy these missing stories.  Until re-runs of Doctor Who became commonplace in the 1980s and video releases became available, they were the primary (legitimate) way in which a fan could enjoy any story after it had been broadcast.

One distinctive feature of the early Target novelizations is that they do not necessarily use the same title as the TV serial did.  The book "Doctor Who and the Cybermen" was the novelization of The Moonbase. Fortunately, this was the only missing episode story whose title did not have an immediately obvious connection to the title of its corresponding televised story.  The Daleks' Masterplan had to published in two volumes due to the size of the story.  Volume 1 is Mission to the Unknown and Volume 2 is the Destruction of Time.

One advantage for the Target Novelizations is that the TV script author frequently also wrote the novelization.  David Whittaker wrote the script and novelization of The Crusades, Ian Stuart Black The Savages and the Macra Terror, William Emms Galaxy Four, Brian Hayles The Ice Warriors, Victor Pemberton The Fury from the Deep, Donald Cotton The Myth Makers. Gerry Davis was co-creator of the Cybermen and script editor for The Celestial Toymaker and The Moonbase, whose novelizations he wrote.  He also authored the actual script and novelization for The Highlanders.  Terrance Dicks, who was the most prolific author of the Target Novelizations, wrote the novelizations for many stories produced just before he became script editor on The War Games.  John Lucarotti wrote both TV and novel treatments for Marco Polo and The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve.

In certain cases, the novelizations do not necessarily describe the same events that were depicted on-screen.  Lucarotti's novelization of The Massacre is an important example.  The novelization followed Lucarotti's original scripts before they were heavily edited by script editor Donald Tosh.  There is a lot more to do with the confusion of the Doctor and his physical double the Abbot of Amboise in the book than on the TV. Episodes with doubles were very difficult to do in the 1960s with TV video cameras, and Hartnell was on holiday for Episode 2, so that material had to be cut, much to Lucarotti's chagrin.

BBC Audio and AudioGo have released audiobooks of some of these novelizations.  They are The Highlanders, Fury from the Deep, The Daleks' Masterpan (in two parts), The Abominable Snowmen, The Moonbase (as Doctor Who and the Cybermen), The Myth Makers and The Ice Warriors.  Trade paperbacks of these stories, except for the Dalek stories (among the last novelizations written) can usually be found pretty inexpensively online.

2.  Scripts Project

If you want to know what was actually planned to be shown and said on the screen, you could read the scripts for the missing episodes.  They are available here : http://homepages.bw.edu/~jcurtis/Scripts/scripts_project.htm

That site has not been updated in years, so it still claims Galaxy 4, The Underwate Menace, The Enemy of the World and The Web of Fear are still missing episodes that have been recovered.  There may be minor discrepancies in some of the scripts between what was supposed to be said and what was actually said on-screen.  It also has scripts for the uncompleted Shada serial.  Finally, it has the complete scripts for Dimensions in Time and The Curse of the Fatal Death, even though the video for these productions is not hard to find.

Titan Books published a series of the original shooting scripts under the line Doctor Who: The Scripts. Missing stories released in this trade-paperback form were The Power of the Daleks, Galaxy 4 and The Crusade.  The Tomb of the Cybermen's script was published in this line before its televised before it was recovered.

3.  Audio Recordings

Fortunately, several fans did more to preserve these episodes in some form for the long term than the BBC.  They recorded their sound onto tapes while the episodes were being broadcast.  Every missing episode's audio survives.  BBC Radio, in the early 90s, began to release the missing stories with audio narration onto compact cassette tape, but never finished the range.  They released The Power of the Daleks, The Macra Terror and The Evil of the Daleks and Fury from the Deep.  Tom Baker did the narration for both Dalek stories and Fury, Colin Baker provided narration for Macra.

From 1999 to 2006, the BBC Radio Collection released the audio with linking narration on CD for all missing stories.  In every case, an actor who played a companion in the story provided the narration (William Russell, Carole Ann Ford, Peter Purves, Anneke Wills, Frazer Hines and Wendy Padbury).  The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve was the first story released in this line, and it had both a cassette and CD release. All further releases were solely on CD as far as I can tell.

The audio on the CD releases has been restored compared to the old cassette releases.  In the cassette version of Evil of the Daleks, episode 1 has a scene cut where the Doctor and Jamie are in a pub due to the music of the Beatles playing on the jukebox in the background.  The CD version has the scene and substitutes different music.

The Macra Terror was released twice on CD during this timeframe, the first time with Colin Baker as narrator (taken from the cassette release), the second time with Anneke Wills (who was actually in the serial) as the narrator.  Wills narrated version was only included in the box set Doctor Who: The Lost TV Episodes - Collection Four.

Audio for the missing episodes of The Crusades and The Moonbase without narration can be found on their respective Lost in Time DVDs.

The Audio Recordings are best purchased in the five "Doctor Who": The Lost TV Episodes Collections.

4.  Telesnap Photonovels

The use of John Cura's Tele-Snap service, offered from 1947-1969, provided a way in which directors or actors could preserve a portion of their televised performance in a visual medium.  No consumer cost-effective recording technology existed at the time to record the transmitted TV image.  Videotape was not a consumer technology in the 1960s and 25 minutes of 16mm film (about 1000 feet) was too expensive for a home viewer.

Cura pointed a single shot camera at a TV screen at an exposure of 1/25 a second.  This enabled him to capture exactly one video field from his TV screen.  Each photo would fit into half a frame of 35mm film, the size of each telesnapped photo thus being 18x24mm.  Cura would be able to make a visual record of program with 60-80 images per episode.  Telesnaps exist for all the missing episodes except for the following :

Marco Polo Episode 4 : The only episode of that serial not directed by Waris Hussein, telesnaps from the other episodes came from Hussein's personal archive.

Galaxy 4, Mission to the Unknown, The Myth Makers, The Daleks' Master Plan, The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve, The Celestial Toymaker : Cura's services were not contracted during this period when John Wiles had control over production budgets.  Actor Robert Jewell took 20 photographs of Episode 7 of the Daleks' Masterplan off his TV screen using a similar method to Cura.

Cura's last telesnapped episode was The Mind Robber Episode 3, so the The Invasion and The Space Pirates could not telesnapped by him. Cura died in mid-1969 and was too ill to handle further telesnap work.

Details about the telesnaps can be found here : http://missingepisodes.blogspot.com/p/tele-snaps.html

The BBC, on its website, produced photonovels for all the stories with telesnaps except for Marco Polo, The Reign of Terror, The Tenth Planet.  They can be found here : http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/photonovels/

Finally, the Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition issues 34 (First Doctor), 35 (Second Doctor Part 1) and 36 (Second Doctor Part 2), have telesnap spreads for all the missing episodes for which telesnaps exist.

5.  Reconstructions

The purpose of a reconstruction is ideally to combine telesnap images with the surviving audio from the episodes.  Clips of episodes, sometimes taken from clips censored when the program was sold overseas, or amateur telecine or 8mm home movies shot on set can be added.  Narrations or captions are used to describe action when the audio is unclear.  When telesnaps are available, this can give a reasonably authentic presentation of the episode.  However, since there are only 60-80 images available, many images are repeated.  Sometimes publicity photos and photos taken on the set are used for serials with a dearth of available visual information.

While several people and groups have created reconstructions over the years, the reconstructions from Loose Cannon Productions are the most consistent in overall quality and coverage.  They have reconstructed every story, even for stories where no telesnaps exist.  They often have had to use publicity photographs, computer animations, photoshopping and transplanting the actors from roles in other shows and clips from other episodes to make up for the lack of authentic images.  They even included interviews with some of the actors from these stories on their VHS releases.  Their VHS releases were free for the cost of the videotape, but relied upon a network of volunteers to transfer the material.  They stated they would refuse to release their material in DVD or better quality, but downloads of their recons are available via bittorrent.

Interestingly, Loose Cannon did the Marco Polo recon twice.  First "in color", using a large number of color photographs taken for that story.  The second time, in black and white, came when the telesnaps for six of the episodes were found in director Waris Hussein's private collection.

The BBC has done relatively few telesnap reconstructions.  They did a 30-minute abridged version of Marco Polo on The Edge of Destruction DVD.  They did a telesnap reconstruction for The Tenth Planet Episode 4 for the VHS release and it can also be found on the story's DVD.  The Web of Fear Episode 3 was also a telesnapped reconstruction for its DVD.  While they had no telesnaps, the BBC did an abridged reconstructon of Galaxy 4 using the recovered Episode 3 and five minutes of recovered footage from Episode 1 and whatever else they could find, and it can be found on the Aztecs: Special Edition DVD.  The Ice Warriors Episodes 2 and 3 were given an abridged and combined reconstruction for the VHS, and this can be found on the story's DVD.

The Power of the Daleks was released by BBC Radio Collection on MP3-CD with a full telesnap reconstruction.  This was the only time the BBC has done a full reconstruction of a story with more than one missing episode.  The CD unfortunately is out-of-print.  The Daleks' Masterplan, The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear were also released on the MP3-CD format, but did not have telesnap reconstructions.

6.  Animation

The following DVDs have full animation reconstructions with the surviving audio of their missing episodes on their DVD releases:

The Reign of Terror
The Tenth Planet
The Moonbase
The Ice Warriors
The Invasion

The Invasion was the first time a missing episode had been fully animated for an official BBC release, and it was done by Cosgrove Hall Films in 2005.  The remainder were done in 2013-2014 period by Planet 55, except for the Ice Warriors, which was done by Qurios Entertainment.  Cosgrove had the difficulty of recreating missing episodes without telesnaps as references, while the other episodes had telesnaps available.

On the VHS releases of The Reign of Terror and The Invasion, linking narration (and stills and clips for Reign) were provided respectively by Carole Ann Ford and Nicholas Courtney.  While the latter can be found on The Invasion's DVD release, the former is not present on The Reign of Terror's DVD release. William Russell did linking narration for the VHS The Crusade, which can be found in its DVD in the Lost in Time set.

Conclusion, Which is Best?

In my personal opinion, currently the best option, when available is to watch the official BBC releases with the animated episodes.  In my opinion, they are well done and tend to be reasonably faithful to their source material.  They have the advantage of showing motion, something all the other methods generally lack. Doctor Who is more than just talking heads.  It is interesting to compare the approaches taken by the three different animation teams employed.  However, this only applies to five stories.

Reconstructions would be my first recommendation for most stories.  Doctor Who was meant to be a visual medium, and with the telesnaps, clips and stills, some measure of what was put on screen may be experienced.  Reading a script loses all the performance or flipping through telesnaps, so the audio remains of great importance.  Loose Cannon has done every story, and their recons are the overall best you can find.  Fortunately they can be found without having to send VHS tapes to be copied.

The Target novelizations, generally targeted for a juvenile readership, are usually quick reads.  An adult could easily finish them in one long evening.  The audio releases make for good trips in the car.

Classic Who DVD - Recognizing a Body of Work

Now that the Classic Doctor Who DVD line has just about come to an end, I think it is a good time to recognize the achievements of the range and the team that put it together.

DVDs were a huge boon to TV series collectors and fans.  For the first time, series after series began to be released on DVD.  The smaller size of DVDs made it much easier to store on a shelf than large VHS tapes. Stores could stock many more titles on DVD than on VHS, and successful television shows can take up comparatively enormous amounts of shelf space.  DVDs were better quality, easier to navigate and more robust over multiple viewings.  Rewinding tapes was a thing of the past, a chore which no one regretted. Moreover, since many TV series had not been previously released, or were very expensive when first released, there was less of a feeling of rebuying all over again.

Doctor Who, like Star Trek, was an early pioneer in releasing stories on home video.  The concept of releasing a season or a series of a TV did not yet exist when the range was begun.  Additionally, several episodes were returned to the BBC up until 1992, so the idea of a "Complete Season 7, 8, 9 10 or 11" was not yet feasible.  There was a serious mistake made at the start of the VHS line, releasing stories in the "omnibus" or movie format.  In this format, the cliffhangers and the credits in-between episodes would be edited together to form one movie-length story.  With the 1989 release of The Daleks, this butchery ceased but the BBC never fully replaced the omnibus editions with episodic editions, especially in America.

It took the BBC twenty years (1983-2003) to release all the available episodes of Doctor Who on VHS format.  When the Classic Series ended in 1989, only fourteen stories had been released, most of them "movietized".  The situation had become much improved during the next ten years.  Roughly around 1992, a team of specialists at the BBC were able to re-colorize some Third Doctor stories by combining the color information from inferior NTSC color videotapes with 16mm black and white telecine recordings of the stories.  What became known as the Doctor Who Restoration Team started with this success.  While its presence was visibly or invisibly noticeable on several VHS releases, it wasn't until the DVD range that the RT really became famous within fandom.

In its attempts to restore the classic stores as much as possible, the RT really helped establish several breakthrough technologies.  The first of course is VidFIRE, the process of restoring the fluid video look to telecines.  This has been applied on virtually every First and Second Doctor DVD, often with spectacular results.  Second must be Reverse Standards Conversion (RSC), to reverse the process where the RT only had NTSC videotapes that had been transferred from PAL in the 1970s.  Conversions in the 1970s were crude and probably were little more advanced than repeating every fifth frame and dropping 100 lines.  The RT fixed the juddery and jagged recordings originally made using RSC.  Third is NTSC Telecine Colorization.  If the NTSC tape quality was not sufficient for broadcast, as in a recording made off-the-air, then the color information from the NTSC video would be combined with the higher quality telecine and VidFIRE to make the best possible representation for the video.  Fourth is Chroma Dot Recovery, where color information could be decoded by dots recorded by the telecine, even though it was recording a black and white TV screen.  This allowed for the pain-staking process of colorizing several B&W telecine episodes where no color video survived.  Fifth is using high quality scans of the original negatives of the 16mm and 35mm inserts when available.  This method was used to clean up the titles of the Second through Sixth Doctors, and in stories where the original filmed inserts were available, these dramatically improved the picture quality over the actual inserts recorded on the video.  Sixth is the recreation of the title and end credits, eliminating fuzzy and crooked text with properly sharp and solid text that the viewer would have originally seen on broadcast.

No videotaped series has anything near the restoration work that a long-running show like Doctor Who has seen.  Videotape restoration would appear to me to have been a very neglected field of study.  Part of the reason is due to the fact that videotape was widely seen as inferior to film and relegated to budget shows with artistic merit to match.  Another reason is that restoration is costly and time consuming; in the DVD age, production companies want to get as much material as the public will buy as quickly as possible.  Videotapes and telerecordings/kinescopes are often not in the greatest shape to begin with, so the material that a restorer would have to work with is not particularly inspiring.

The DVD medium is as close to an ideal format as has yet been devised to watch a TV show like Doctor Who.  While not suitable for losslessly compressed video, the format's 720 pixel horizontal resolution notably exceeds the ~400 horizontal pixel resolution of analog tapes on which it was recorded. The format has the capability to make the episodes look as good as they are likely to ever get.  The RT has improved their transfers over the years, as demonstrated with the Special Editions replacing early DVD releases.  When counting for the Special Editions, it took the BBC only 11 years (it would have been 10 without episode discoveries) to release all Classic Doctor Who serials to DVD (2003-2014).  As the range has more-or-less reached its end, the resulting corpus is very consistent.  There are remarkably few errors to speak of despite the vast amount of work required to get these episodes in the shape that they were presented on the DVDs.  There are no embarrassing gaps with only omnibus-releases; off-air-recordings of repeated stories in the serial format may be better than the official VHS releases.

The improvements of the DVDs over VHS are obvious to anyone, even if they have to be shown an A-B comparison.  However, there are more than just the stories to consider.  Every story has subtitles and most have audio commentaries, sometimes more than one.  The sheer amount of extras reminds one of the phrase "an embarrassment of riches."  Most DVDs include extras like scans of Radio Times listings for the story, making-of-commentaries, restoration documentaries, spoofs, parodies, deleted scenes, out-takes, alternate edits or CGI effects, optional "movie" versions, rare production photos and other behind-the-scenes materials, interviews, trailers and continuity announcements, the list goes on and on.  Region 2 releases always had a liner-note card that summarized the features and gave some story background.  Special features were rare on VHS releases.  Other series released on DVD generally do not possess the breadth of special features that the Doctor Who DVDs can boast.

Physically and aesthetically, the DVDs are very satisfying.  DVDs weigh less than VHS tapes and take up much less room.  Each story has its own DVD case and cover, even if it was only released in a box set.  Stories with two and three discs take up as much room as a story with a single disc (with one exception, Lost in Time).  Stories can be stacked in broadcast order without difficulty and can fit snuggly into three shelves at least 7" tall and 28.5" wide.  By contrast, due to the pairing of certain VHS (The Daleks 30th Anniversary) stories in the same box, you could not completely sort by story with using the retail boxes.  Also, the plastic DVD cases are less likely to show visible shelf wear than the black cardboard VHS boxes.  The cover design and the disc menus have been consistent since 2001.

While buying individual stories or thematic box sets is something of a pain, the BBC deserves great credit for releasing Classic Doctor Who with a great deal of respect for the show.  It could easily have taken a "just get it out there", cash-in mentality to the range.  It has devoted substantial resources to the show post-cancellation, and the returns were not guaranteed.  It (and by extension the U.K. citizens who pay for their television licence) spearheaded research into restoration techniques and the production of special features. Here I add my own small "voice" to the praise which the line so richly deserves.

Doctor Who New Series Disc Importing

Since Doctor Who began broadcasting new episodes in 2005, the BBC has been releasing DVDs and later Blu-rays of the series.  For an American collector, purchasing these episodes can get very expensive, even from amazon.com.  I purchased all the "classic" Doctor Who serials in their "pure", U.K. Region 2 format from amazon.co.uk.

For purposes of this article, 25i=50i and 29.97i = 59.94i.  25i is 25 interlaced frames, 50i is 50 interlaced fields, 29.97i is 29.97 interlaced frames and 59.94i is 59.94 interlaced fields.  An interlaced field breaks up a complete frame into odd and even scanlines.

Story Format

Standard Resolution

The Ninth Doctor, series 1, and the Tenth Doctor, series 2-4 and the Tenth Doctor Special The Day of the Doctor were originally recorded and broadcast using the standard standard definition widescreen PAL format 576/25i.  They used a post-processing effect to give the program a more film-like progressive scan (25p) quality.

High Resolution

The later Tenth Doctor Specials, starting with Planet of the Dead and all the Eleventh Doctor stories, were recorded in high definition 1080/25p and usually broadcast on BBC HD or BBC One HD in the 1080/25i format.  The fact that the interlaced format is used should make no difference in the picture quality.  25 frames splits evenly into 50 odd and even fields.  Progressive, segmented Frame treats 25i material as 25p material for all intents and purposes.

3D

The Day of the Doctor, the 50th Anniversary Special, was recorded in 3D.  It was broadcast in 3D on the BBC Red Button HD channel.  According to the instructions, the user needed to set his TV to Side-by-Side mode to watch the broadcast.  There is a Top-and-bottom mode, but side-by-side officially supports 1080 @ 50Hz.  Both methods are designed to squeeze the 1080 3D signal in the same bandwidth allocated for a 1080i broadcast channel.  In side by side, the left and right 3D frames are combined horizontally, and when displayed, half the horizontal resolution is lost.  In top and bottom, the left frame is stacked on the right frame, and when displayed half the vertical resolution is lost.  The left and right images are stretched back to the proper aspect ratio when displayed on a TV. See here for more detail : http://www.cnet.com/news/how-3d-content-works-blu-ray-vs-broadcast/

This leads me to discuss the two 3DTV systems on the market today, Active 3D and Passive 3D.  Active 3D uses expensive shutter glasses to block the eye from seeing the wrong frame.  Passive 3D uses inexpensive polarized glasses to filter out the light emitted from the wrong frame.  Passive 3D is also used in theaters because the glasses are practically given away.  However, due to the way that passive 3D works, (left frame = odd lines displayed, right frame = even lines displayed) the effective resolution of each 3D frame is 1920x540, so the top and bottom mode is typically not used for 1080.  Active 3D has its issues as well, including crosstalk, headaches, expensive, battery powered and uncomfortable glasses and people trying to wear those glasses over eyeglasses.  See here for more detail : http://www.cnet.com/news/active-3d-vs-passive-3d-whats-better/

Disc Format

DVD supports 576/25i for PAL countries and 480/29.97i for NTSC countries.  When released on PAL DVD, the BBC could transfer the show very easily since DVD supported 576/25i.  When released on NTSC, 576/25i material has to be converted to 480/29.97i.  Lines must be dropped or blended and detail is lost because of the reduction in resolution.  Because of the increased NTSC field rate, certain fields have to be repeated or blended and this can create stutter in motion, especially during camera movement.

Blu-ray supports 1080/24p and 1080/23.976p, 1080/29.97i and 1080/25i.  It does not natively support 1080/25p, although many players may be able to play this format.  Any product advertised that uses a progressive frame format will be in 1080/24p or 1080/23.976p, usually the latter.

Blu-Ray 3D only supports 1080/23.976p x 2.  However, its 3D format uses frame packing/stacking, and technically the resolution is 1920x2025 @ 23.976p.  (45 blanking lines separate the left and the right imgaes) With frame packing, the full 1920x1080 frame for each eye is transmitted, so the full horizontal and vertical resolution of each 3D frame is preserved.  Whether your TV will show the full resolution depends on the type of 3D used.

(There are also 720 resolutions in 2D and 3D Blu-ray, but Doctor Who always uses 1080 resolution on Blu-rays.)

Doctor Who on DVD

For Classic and New Series Doctor Who, up and until they started recording in HD, everything that has been released on DVD is essentially the best the program can look without an upconversion.  In this case, Region 2 is the way to go.  Not only do you get the series in its native format, you can always buy the discs cheaper.  Series 1-4 is contained in a very reasonably priced DVD boxset.  Additionally, certain issues with music rights, which cause edits for overseas releases, are almost never an issue with Region 2 discs.  All Region 2 DVDs are region locked to Region 2 (and most also support Region 4), however, bypassing region encoding on DVDs is easy enough.

Doctor Who on Blu-ray

For Blu-ray, the issue is more complex.  First let's deal with the region encoding issue.

The good news : All Doctor Who U.K. Blu-rays, with a few exceptions, are region free, except for :

The bad news : The upconversions of Series 1-4 in the The Complete Serials 1-7 U.K. Boxset are Region B locked.  The separate releases of these Series in Australia may also be Region B locked.  I do not yet know whether The Day of the Doctor or The Time of the Doctor U.K. releases are Region B locked.

Second, we must address the slowdown that comes when converting 25i/p material to 23.976p material, as is the case for Series 1-4 and The Next Doctor on Blu-ray.  The episodes run roughly 4.1% longer when converted.  The action will seem a little slower, but only by comparison.  The pitch of the audio, including voices are also affected by up to half a semitone.  The audio is pitch shifted during the conversion software.  I have read that the scrolling credits will appear markedly less smooth.  The slowdown does not occur with the DVD releases of this material.  While this may add something close to two minutes to each episode, it is nowhere near as much as an issue as for example in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz, a fifteen hour long film made for PAL TV.  See here for a discussion of the choices The Criterion Collection made to the frame rate of Fassbinder's epic masterpiece when releasing it on DVD in the U.S. : http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/732-reality-at-25-24-frames-per-second

However, the video quality improves generally due to more efficient encoding techniques of Blu-ray, the use of more recent and improved mastering software and professional upscaling.

However, as the Series 1-7 box set was a limited edition in the U.S., and it goes in and out of print.  The U.K. doesn't have this problem.  Amazon is advertising it for $349.98 while Amazon UK has it for £165.24.  Assuming £1=$1.70, the U.K. version is cheaper.

The Complete Seasons 5, 6 and 7, all use 1080/25i, so I am sure that they will not suffer from slowdown.  I also understand that the bare-bones story releases (the discs they release before the Complete releases) also do not have this problem.  Neither should The Time of the Doctor Blu-ray.  The Complete Season 5 is missing the Next Time trailers and has a wrong version of the Children in Need special.

The Complete Tenth Doctor Specials, regardless of region, use 1080/29.97i.  HDTVs sold in formerly PAL countries apparently do not have a problem with the NTSC field/frame rates.  I have read the results are a bit mixed, and should not be an issue with the DVDs, but typically resolution trumps frame rate.

The Complete Serials 1-7 U.K. Boxset contains the previous standalone releases of The Complete Tenth Doctor Specials and The Complete Seasons 5, 6 and 7.  Series 1-4 is new.  The Complete Serials 1-7 U.S. Boxset contains newer masters of The Complete Tenth Doctor Specials and The Complete Seasons 5, 6 and 7 and everything is in 23.976p.

Unfortunately, The Day of the Doctor Blu-ray will suffer from slowdown regardless of the country it is released in.  This is because the Blu-ray 3D spec only supports 1080 lines at 23.976 frames per second.  The accompanying DVD in the U.K. release should not suffer from this problem, but then it is not in its native 3D format either.

Spearhead from Space, the only Classic Doctor Who story that has been released on Blu-ray, was released because it was shot solely on 16mm film.  The BBC retained the film and thus could scan it in HD and transfer it to Blu-ray with a noticeable upgrade in quality over DVD.  Any other classic Who stories would have to be upconverted from 756/25i and thus would not be worth the expense.  On the Region B Blu-ray, the disc is encoded in 1080 /25i, while for Region A, the disc is using 1080/23.976p.

On a closely related matter, An Adventure in Space and Time, which is only currently available as a Blu-ray in the U.S. and Canada, must suffer from the slowdown.  If you want to see it in its native speed but not its native resolution, you can buy the U.K. DVD.  The Blu-ray is not region encoded, so I am sure that it will be a relatively popular reverse-import.

Notwithstanding the slowdown issue, buying Blu-ray from Amazon.co.uk. is still cheaper than buying anything in the U.S. in most instances.  If you care more about consistency and picture quality, buy the U.S. Complete Series 1-7.  If you care more about speed issues, then buy the U.K. DVD Series 1-4 and the Complete Specials and Series 5-7.

Doctor Who on DVD for North America

I can say without a doubt that the classic Doctor Who is the most expensive series to buy today.  Twenty-six seasons (or portions thereof) are sold not in season/series box set like every other TV program released in the past decade, but by story.  Nor are complete seasons available for download.  Of the 157 stories produced before the year 2000 (including Shada and the TV Movie but not The Curse of the Fatal Death which had been released on VHS), 18 do not have a sufficient number of existing episodes to release separately, two stories with half their episodes can be released (The Underwater Menace & The Crusades), but only Underwater Menace will be released.  That leaves 137 stories that have been released on DVD since 1999.

As of October, 2015 all Classic Doctor Who stories will have been released with the exceptions noted above. Now is the best time to begin purchasing DVDs if you haven't already.  Unlike the VHS releases, which were released over a span of 21 years, the DVD releases were never released as movie editions which eliminated the cliffhangers (The Seeds of Death, Spearhead from Space, Day of the Daleks, The Time Warrior, Death to the Daleks, The Ark in Space, Revenge of the Cybermen, Terror of the Zygons, The Deadly Assassin, The Robots of Death and The Talons of Weng-Chiang).  Other stories were noticeably edited (The Web Planet, Carnival of Monsters, Pyramids of Mars (also movie), The Brain of Morbius (also movie)).  Thus with DVDs you can have an almost totally consistent release of the series, (with the obnoxious release of The Chase in the US and Australia)  More importantly, for the First and Second Doctors, almost all of their episodes have been subject to the VidFIRE treatment to restore the video look to the film telecines that exist today (exceptions include The Time Meddler and Episode 1 of the Crusade. The Moonbase DVD in the U.S. should have had the process applied byt did not)  The Third Doctor's stories that are only available as B&W film telecine and poor quality NTSC tapes have also been colorized with the best technology available.  The Restoration Team that has supervised the releases of Doctor Who has done an extraordinary job with the existing library to produce the best quality releases.

The U.K., (Region 2/Region B) the U.S. (Region 1/Region A) and Australia (Region 4/Region B) are the three major markets for releases of Doctor Who (including the current series, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures).  Everything is available (except for Seasons 4 & 5 of Sarah Jane Blu-ray) in some form or another in each region.  Nonetheless, if you wish to purchase a uniform collection, you should really purchase the Region 2 U.K. releases.

First, new Doctor Who releases in the U.K. begin expensive, but within a few months the prices almost always fall sharply.  New Doctor Who releases in the U.S. begin expensive and seemingly remain expensive to purchase new, seemingly no matter how old.  Older titles (by DVD release date) in the U.K. are often extremely inexpensive (£5-6).

Second, every story is still in print and can be purchased new, today, in the U.K.  In the U.S., there are several stories that have gone out of print, and the prices for them can rise dramatically.  The stories that are out of print in the U.S., with no planned Special Edition to replace them, are :

The Sensorites
The Rescue / The Romans
The Web Planet
The Time Meddler
The Gunfighters
The Invasion
The Krotons
The War Games
Terror of the Autons
Colony in Space
The Time Monster
Planet of the Spiders
City of Death
Black Orchid
Earthshock (included in a barebones edition for The Doctors Revisited Volume Two)
Time-Flight
The Awakening
Frontios
Planet of Fire
Attack of the Cybermen
The Mark of the Rani
The Two Doctors
Happiness Patrol
Dragonfire

Battlefield

Ghost Light
The Curse of Fenric

2003 is the first year where prior DVD releases have not been superceded.  Here are the stories were originally released and have been later replaced with Special Editions :

The Aztecs
The Tomb of the Cybermen
The Seeds of Death
Spearhead from Space
Inferno
The Claws of Axos
The Three Doctors
Carnival of Monsters
The Green Death
The Ark in Space
The Robots of Death
The Talons of Weng-Chiang
The Ribos Operation	US Only Key to Time Box Set
The Pirate Planet	US Only Key to Time Box Set
The Stones of Blood	US Only Key to Time Box Set
The Androids of Tara	US Only Key to Time Box Set
The Power of Kroll	US Only Key to Time Box Set
The Armageddon Factor	US Only Key to Time Box Set
The Visitation
The Five Doctors
Resurrection of the Daleks
The Caves of Androzani
Vengeance on Varos
Remembrance of the Daleks
Doctor Who – The Movie	UK Only

Special Editions are more expensive than the earlier releases, but contain more extras (usually an extra disc) and improved picture and sound quality.  Most Special Editions today have dropped in price so much as to make them not any more expensive than buying now-OOP original DVD releases.

Third, copyright clearances are easiest in the U.K., which makes export versions for the U.S. and Australia comparatively more expensive.  Moreover, sometimes music cannot be cleared and must be replaced.  In one instance in the first episode of The Chase, two minutes had to be excised from the U.S. and Australian DVD releases because the Doctor and his companions were watching a concert of The Beatles.  The footage is available on the VHS version of these stories for each country.  Similarly, The Beatles can be heard on the soundtrack of Remembrance of the Daleks on all VHS copies, but that had to be replaced for the U.S. DVD releases.

Fourth, since 2006 the BBC has been releasing story collections of the classic serials in Region 2.  These collections can follow a particular monster like Beneath the Surface, which collects the Silurian and Sea Devil stories, a series of related stories, New Beginnings, which presents the stories surrounding the Fourth Doctor's regeneration, or a looser collection of weaker selling titles like Earthstory, which includes the First Doctor story The Gunfighters and the Fifth Doctor story The Awakening.  In the U.K., virtually none of these box sets had the stories released separately.  Most of the box sets that made it to the U.S. also allowed the stories to be purchased separately.  There are at least nine box sets that never saw a U.S. release, and while the prices may have been high in the beginning, the prices on them have so decreased as to make them very good bargains.  In the U.S. you would have to purchase these stories separately at increased cost.

	US Release	UK Release	Stories Available Separately in US?	Stories Available Separately in UK?
Earthstory	No	Yes	Yes	No
Bred for War	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Mara Tales	No	Yes	Yes	No
Revisitations 1-3	No	Yes	Yes	No
Peladon Tales	No	Yes	Yes	No
Mannequin Mania	No	Yes	Yes	No
Time-Flight & Arc of Infinity	No	Yes	Yes	No
Beneath the Surface	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
New Beginnings	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
The Beginning	Yes	Yes	No	No
E-Space Trilogy	Yes	Yes	No	No
The Key to Time	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Lost in Time	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
The Invisible Enemy with K-9 and Company	Yes	Yes	No	No
The Black Guardian Trilogy	Yes	Yes	No	No
Dalek War	Yes	Yes	No	No
The Space Museum & The Chase	Yes	Yes	No	No
The Key to Time (Original Edition)	Yes	No	Yes	N/A
The Doctors Revisited 1-4	Yes	No	Yes	N/A
The Doctors Revisited 5-8	Yes	No	Yes	N/A

Finally, the packaging of the U.K. releases is superior to the U.S. releases.  Each U.K. release came with a booklet discussing the story and giving a listing and description of all the special features on the disc.  These booklets are not available as a paper copy on the U.S. releases.  Also, some U.S. box sets like The Beginning, The Invisible Enemy with K-9 and Company and The Space Museum & The Chase did not have separate cases for each story.

There are, however, a pair of hurdles if you wish to buy Region 2 DVDs outside of the U.K.  First, you must find a seller willing to ship to your country and be prepared to pay for shipping.  Amazon.co.uk. will ship Region 2 U.K. DVDs or Region B U.K. Blu-rays to the U.S., and their shipping charges are very reasonable.  There is a delivery charge of £0.99 per CD, DVD or Blu-ray and a £2.09 combined delivery charge.  This delivery charge does not increase on the number of items in the order.  The delivery time is 5-7 business days.  No VAT or U.S. state sales tax is collected unless perhaps you live in a state where Amazon.com collects the tax.

Second, you will need a region 2 or region free DVD player to play these discs.  I think that the vast majority of people who play Region 2 DVDs in a Region 1 country these days use VLC Player.  VLC will work fine with Doctor Who Region 2 DVDs, so long as the drive does not have a region code (RPC-1) is hard-coded to Region 2.  I now recommend using MakeMKV to backup your Doctor Who episodes.  MakeMKV is a modern program that is trialware, but you can always get a new trial period when it upgrades to a new version.  MakeMKV will easily rip all video and audio tracks losslessly from a disc.

Ripping four episodes of Doctor Who takes about 15 minutes on my PC.  To figure out what to rip, I use VLC or PowerDVD to select each individual episode and mark down the Title number when that episode plays.  Having a list of the episode times helps, which are provided at the excellent and venerable Doctor Who: A Brief History of Time Travel site : http://www.shannonsullivan.com/drwho/

Even though the PS3 will not play PAL content from a DVD, even if the DVD is a region free copy, it has no problems playing the extracted, uncompressed content via a media server.  My flat screen LCD and my CRTs have no trouble displaying the resulting streamed video.  With the latter, presumably the PS3 is outputing an NTSC-compatible video signal (NTSC color encoding, 525 lines/59.94i), and it does it very well.  While the PS3 does not natively play MKV files, with PS3 Media Server, that is not a problem.

Last month, I began ordering all available DVDs from Amazon.co.uk, buying the regularly released boxsets (not limited editions) to save money. On Amazon.co.uk, you can only order 50 items at a time, so for a complete classic Doctor Who set you will need at least two orders.  I was able to get my first batch of purchases into two orders, but the site can get error prone when trying to order so many things at one time.  Prices fluctuate frequently on Doctor Who DVDs, so you may get a better or worse price depending on when you put an item in your shopping basket versus when you actually complete an order.

Fortunately, the value between the British Pound Sterling and the U.S. Dollar has been fairly favorable for the past three years, generally hovering around $1 USD equaling between £1.50-1.70.  However, your credit card will charge a fee to perform the conversion.  My card charged me approximately 3% of the total cost of the order, including shipping.

If you place a large order, Amazon will ship out DVDs several at a time.  You will not get one big box, but maybe eight smaller shipments.  Each time a shipment is sent from the factory, your card will get charged.  I have not encountered a damaged disc, but three cases have had some minor issues with damage.  Also, for one story, the DVD insert booklet was not present, but I understand that the issue does occasionally rear itself.

Having purchased all the Region 2 Doctor Who DVDs, I can definitely say that now is the time to buy.  The BBC apparently is not keen about producing new Special Editions of previously released stories.  The last was back in August, 2013.  Additionally, there are no classic episodes left to be released, save for The Underwater Menace Episode 2.  That story may receive a release with animation or telesnap reconstruction, probably the latter.  Buy before stories go out of print.