Doctor Who: The Time Warrior
As many fan historians have pointed out, The Time Warrior was the beginning of the end of an era for Doctor Who, and it’s that theme which drives the bonus material on this DVD featuring the first appearances of the lovely Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) and the decidedly less lovely Sontaran warrior (the late Kevin Lindsay). Other DVDs had already used Sarah’s character as a theme (Hand Of Fear, her final appearance as a regular on the show) and Sontarans too (The Sontaran Experiment, which we already reviewed here), so aside of the particulars of this story’s production, the winding down of Jon Pertwee’s stint as the Doctor is a natural theme.
This is most evident in the commentary, provided by Barry Letts, Terrance Dicks and Elisabeth Sladen, and in the main featurette, “Beginning The End”. Despite the lack of a Sarah-centric theme, however, the most interesting stuff in the bonus features tends to be Sladen’s reflections on the beginnings of her most famous character. She and the show’s producer and script editor seem keenly aware, in hindsight, that while the time was right for a more emancipated, less “screamy” female sidekick in the TARDIS, quite a bit of her dialogue in this first adventure is a bit stilted - mission statements for feminism as written by men. But in one of the more understated moments where Sarah stands up for herself, Sladen says “Thank you, Robert” under her breath (as in the late Robert Holmes, writer of The Time Warrior), which points up, however clumsy elements of her introduction were, what a different companion character Sarah was for Doctor Who.
The Time Warrior also includes a CGI option; as with other enhanced-effects Doctor Who DVDs, the default option is to watch the original story as broadcast, with the CGI-replaced visuals being an option that the viewer needs to activate. The optional CGI effects for The Time Warrior may be one of the best uses for that option yet - the story is helped along a lot by the subtle new effects, which include a brilliant opening shot of the Sontaran ship plummeting toward Earth, enhancements to the Sontaran’s weapon effects, and a really nifty scene early in the story where the Doctor uses some kind of detector to reveal the Sontaran’s presence on Earth. The real money shot, however, is at the end of part four, whose lame stock-footage explosion for the castle is replaced by a huge digital explosion. Now, these effects aren’t going to put the Mill (the FX house that handles the new series of Doctor Who) out of business anytime soon, but if they sell the story a little more coherently, I’m all for them. And the original is still available, so why not?
That’s really it for this relatively “feature-light” release, as far as bonus features go. The obligatory informative trivia subtitle track, Radio Times listings and Doctor Who Annuals in PDF form, and photo gallery are all present, along with a specially edited “coming soon” trailer advertising the next release (at least in the UK), a new edition of the Key To Time box set. But The Time Warrior is a pivotal piece of Doctor Who history, and the extras that are there don’t disappoint.