By comparison to most of the earlier Doctor Who stories released on DVD, there was a wealth of material available to BBC Video when it came time to release the first Sylvester McCoy-era DVD, and this disc may make the most of it by giving us only the best of it, and not necessarily everything.
Some fans might be a bit shocked to find not much more than some trailers, outtakes, and a couple of alternate angle sequences, but one has to look at it in hindsight: yes, Remembrance Of The Daleks was the first story of the show’s 25th anniversary season in 1988, and yes, it featured the seventh Doctor’s first brush with the perennially popular Daleks (who themselves had been absent from the show for three years), and yes, it was the show’s turning point into a new renaissance that was cut short by the BBC the next year. But by this time, Doctor Who was in decline, losing massive chunks of the general viewing audience to Coronation Street, a popular soap on rival ITV. Where Doctor Who’s 20th anniversary celebration drew widespread media attention, its 25th was hailed by dead silence from the media, if not necessarily the marketing licensees.
The story, incidentally, still holds up, with the possible exception of Keff McCulloch’s dance music soundtrack (included in its entirety here as an isolated score audio track), which wore thin its welcome even in 1988 with its repeated synthetic “hand claps”. The effects, not altered in any way here, demonstrate that Doctor Who, despite its legendary low budget, wasn’t that far behind its contemporaries across the pond. Sure, Star Trek: The Next Generation was leading the pack by a wide margin, having gotten a big boost from it’s first season’s library of space shots done by Industrial Light & Magic. But in 1988 and 1989, Doctor Who was no slouch – and neither was the BBC’s in-house squad of pyromaniacs…erm, pyrotechnic experts. I only get confused because of one massive explosion, included in its raw form in a spectacular multi-angle bonus sequence, which set off car alarms around London and was initially reported to police by panicked residents as an IRA bombing (!). In less explosive ways, Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred may indeed be at their best here, with Ace enthusiastic about her travels and as yet unencumbered with the angst heaped onto her during season 26.
Another lovely thing about the Remembrance Of The Daleks DVD is that it restores the cliffhangers, which have gone unseen by the vast majority of the Stateside audience who had only seen PBS airings of the series. The cliffhanger of part one in particular is classic, not only humorously explaining how Daleks climb stairs but leaving viewers on the edge of their seats with the Doctor literally in a Dalek’s gunsights. The cliffhanger from part two isn’t bad either.
The audio commentary by McCoy and Aldred is amusing, with lots of trivia that hasn’t necessarily been heard before (such as why the cliffhanger to part three didn’t seem to carry much weight for the actors – thanks to one of them having cracked a particularly naughty joke before the cameras rolled, meaning no one could look anyone else in the eye without cracking up), and an overall relaxed feel. They’re not really there to expand the viewer’s mind, but to watch – for the first time since the original broadcast, in McCoy’s case – and have a laugh. They talk about what the guest actors have gone on to do since, a few scenes that were improvised by McCoy so as to keep viewers’ interest during potentially dull exposition scenes, and so on; it’s less like attending a formal lecture and more like having Sylv and Sophie sitting in your living room reminiscing. For those who want more fannish info, there’s yet another nifty “informational subtitle” option with some harder facts about the show and its historical context in terms of both the Doctor Who mythos and British television in general circa 1988.
Overall, it’s a very nice package, and makes me wonder if, with the announcement of a Key To Time DVD box set, we might also get season 26 as a full-season collection.