Funny, I thought this would probably be the firstDoctor Who story released to DVD,
what with being a Tom Baker-era show and featuring Louise Jameson
as Xena...erm, sorry, Leela. As it turns out, the 1976
four-parter The
Robots Of Death was BBC Video's second choice for a UK
DVD release.
With so many oddities of the period to contend with - video-to-film
and film-to-video transitions, aging videotape masters, and the
occasional dodgy video effect (chromakey-colored eye masks were
used to give the robots that creepy "static eyes" effect)
- The Robots Of Death probably posed quite a challenge from a
restoration standpoint, but the effort is well worth it. The transfer
of both film and video segments is as clean as we're ever likely to see,
and the sound quality is actually a fantastic improvement over The Five Doctors, which suffered some kind
of odd audio imbalance due to the isolated music soundtrack feature.
An audio commentary with writer Chris Boucher (also of Blake's 7 and Star Cops fame) and
producer Philip Hinchcliffe provides some insight into the making of
the show, but some of it is rather dry, while other bits are actually
quite funny, and either way their affection and admiration for the show and the
people behind it is sincere. There are also some other bonus features, like a
typical BBC caption slide for Doctor Who (in case you have a karaoke DVD player
and want to do your own announcement of what's next on BBC 1) and some
unused B&W model footage.
For American viewers, however, there's an additional bonus - an entire
section devoted to the voice-over intros read for this story by actor Howard
Da Silva. Though the original material doesn't still exist, the audio was
recorded by a fan who preserved the audio well enough to be matched up with
its accompanying video from the episode masters themselves. For those of us
who grew up watching Doctor Who on KTVT in Dallas, back when it was an
independent station, or any other commercial stations which carried the
Da Silva-introduced versions of the show in the mid 1970s, this will bring
back some vivid childhood memories. There's very little that is unique to
the American experience of watching Doctor Who - I mean really, what do we
have? Conventions? PBS pledge breaks? I'm glad that someone thought to
hang on to the Da Silva intros so they could be included here.
Not the best Tom Baker story by a long shot, The Robots Of Death
is still a canny choice for the first DVD from Baker's era.
Reviewed by Earl
Green theLogBook.com editor/webmaster
- The Robots Of Death probably posed quite a challenge from a
restoration standpoint, but the effort is well worth it. The transfer
of both film and video segments is as clean as we're ever likely to see,
and the sound quality is actually a fantastic improvement over 
