Doctor Who - The Claws Of Axos
One of only two stories from Doctor Who’s eighth season - a.k.a. the Year of the Master - to survive in color instead of B&W, The Claws Of Axos has always been a personal favorite of mine, perhaps as much due to repeat exposure as quality. The story is an interesting one, it’s not one where you can spot the Master’s involvement or predict his next move from a mile away (and by the Master, I mean the Master, as in the late, great Roger Delgado), and it’s shot in a fast-cutting, colorful-almost-to-the-point-of-being-psychedelic style by director Michael Ferguson. It’s engaging and eye-catching all at the same time - truly a great relief that it still exists in color. The only other existing color prints from that season are from the six-part story Colony In Space, which I’ve always frankly considered to be…well…a bit dull. But it’s high time we got to see Roger Delgado in action on DVD; if anyone at the BBC or the Doctor Who Restoration Team is taking requests, I vote for The Sea Devils next.
The video quality is worth a mention here, and I’m afraid it’s not an entirely good mention. The Claws Of Axos is one of those Doctor Who stories that was partially “junked” in the 1970s - i.e. the original color master tapes were wiped or destroyed to make room in the BBC archives for more “worthwhile” material. (I’m sure BBC Worldwide would take issue with that definition now.) Parts one and four survived the purging, but parts two and three had to be re-imported from North America and subjected to the Reverse Standards Conversion process to extrapolate viable PAL video information from the lower-resolution NTSC tapes. The result? Parts two and three just aren’t up to the same quality as parts one and two, and sadly, they’re possibly the lowest quality video to have snuck through on a Doctor Who DVD release to date (and that even includes the un-retouched North American-only Key To Time releases). There’s a lot of color crosshatching, and a lot of blobby digital artifacts - far more than I’m used to seeing on the normally impeccably restored Doctor Who DVDs.
Reverse Standards Conversion is, in fact, the subject of one of the bonus featurettes - possibly the dryest one among an unusually dry bunch of them. A “Now and Then” featurette focuses on the locations used for shooting the story outside of the studio, and how much they’ve changed in over 30 years, while “Directing Who” gives director Michael Ferguson a chance to explain some of his ahead-of-their-time ideas utilized in visualizing Axos. Unusually, the real treat here is the selection of deleted and extended scenes, including the very rare full title sequence assembled for Axos‘ original title, The Vampire From Space (good thing they changed that title - it really would’ve given the whole game away!). These raw studio tapes offer an equally rare glimpse of old pros like Jon Pertwee, Roger Delgado and Nicholas Courtney at work in their element. It may seem to drag on a bit, but it’s actually quite interesting to watch if you’re in the mood for it.
As with most Pertwee-era stories, Barry Letts and Katy Manning are on hand for the commentary, joined this time by Richard “Captain Yates” Franklin in his first appearance on any of the Doctor Who DVD features. The obligatory trivia subtitle is also available.
Overall, Claws Of Axos is one of my favorite Pertwee stories, and it’s still a load of fun - it’s just a bit of a pity about the video quality. I recognize that there was quite a bit of technical innovation at play there, but the results have me concerned about any possible DVD releases of such stories as Terror Of The Autons, The Daemons and Doctor Who And The Silurians, which were only recovered from the BBC archive junking in black & white form and were subsequently “recolorized” for their respective VHS releases. How will those fan favorites fare when the time comes to commit them to DVD? Will there even be any point? At the same time, in fairness, the Restoration Team’s VIDfire process was practically science fiction itself just a few years ago, so I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt - and, of course, to keep buying the DVDs. I might get picky about pixels - the VHS tape shouldn’t look better than the DVD - but that aside Axos is still tremendously entertaining.