There are few Doctor Who serials more integral to the study of the show’s evolution than The Leisure Hive. This four-part story, which kicked off season 18, Tom Baker’s last year in the role and John Nathan-Turner’s first outing as the series’ producer, was easily the most dramatic shift in the style of the show since the first full-color episode aired ten years before. The extras on the DVD of The Leisure Hive seem especially aware of this fact, making this disc an outstanding combination of a memorable story and memorable featurettes. (more…)

Okay, here’s a confession that will probably shock absolutely no one: your webmaster is a big fan of the surreal, mondo bizarro online cartoon Homestar Runner. Sure, it seldom obeys anything other than its own twisted internal logic, and to the average non-twisted mind, it probably doesn’t make a lot of sense. But I love it. And the “gateway drug” that got me hooked on the Homestar universe once and for all was a Strong Bad e-mail about the local news. (more…)

I’ll have to admit, I’m a little surprised that this six-parter arrived on DVD before, say, Death To The Daleks or The Sea Devils. Not that The Green Death isn’t memorable – it’s rightly remembered as being one of the more graphically disturbing of the third Doctor’s adventures and certainly one of the most topical – but I have a feeling that it wound up moving up in the DVD restoration and production order for the simple reason that it’s Jo Grant’s last appearance in the series, and Katy Manning happened to be in town participating in some other DVD featurettes for future Pertwee-era releases. (more…)