flansered

I picked up the Galaxy 4 blu-ray and it made me realize that I still haven't gotten around to watching my dvd copies of Evil of the Daleks or Fury from the Deep yet. But I was glad that Galaxy 4 actually got a blu-ray release in the U.S. But part of me wishes that they would of included the recreation of Mission to the Unknown, but there might be some legalities preventing that, but at least it is on the Doctor Who YouTube page.

coyoteblue

The new Doctor has been announced, Ncuti (pronounced Shooty) Gatwa. He's another Scot.

Josh-da-man

Complete Season Two (Hartnell) blu-ray has been announced.

Noteworthy that they're including reconstructions of two missing episodes of "The Crusade."

I think we can safely assume that there are no plans to animate the missing parts of that particular story. This season is the most complete of the 1960s era, missing only those two episodes.

kd5

Just purchased Doctor Who: Tom Baker: Season 3 on blu-ray from Amazon. Is it natural to have received this season in shrinkwrap instead of the cellophane from an original purchase, also with the cover (under the shrinkwrap) all wrinkly/rippled instead of nice and smooth? I'm not real happy about this purchase, my other BD seasons of Tom Baker are in really good condition. This one is not. Makes me feel like it's been rewrapped, contents removed, stored in less than desirable conditions.

Josh-da-man

There are several possibilities.

One, it could be a newer pressing of the set and they used crappy shrink-wrap to seal it.

Two, it could be an opened return that was resealed with shrinkwrap. Could have been anyone on the distribution chain, from Amazon to another retailer to a distributor. Or even a customer with access to a shrink-wrap machine.

Three, it could be a new blu-ray that got sent back to the distributor and re-wrapped. What happens is that the blu-ray could have been sitting on a shelf at a store like Barnes & Noble for a year or two, it didn't sell, and they sent it back. In the process, the wrap can get scuffed or torn, so the distributor removes the original wrap and re-shrink wraps it. In this case, the actual package was probably never even opened.

kd5

Thank you for the time you took to type all that out, I appreciate it. Now I just need to decide if this is acceptable enough to keep or return to Amazon for an exchange, hopefully in better condition than this. Keeping it kind of leaves a sour taste in my mouth. I guess I'm just anal about the videos I keep in my collection, especially one as important to me as my next installment of Tom Baker as Doctor Who. I already had Seasons 1 & 7 on BD, both in pristine condition, and with slipcovers even. Wasn't actually expecting a slipcover with this (although it would've been nice), but I wasn't expecting to get something that looks used and rewrapped either, especially with the cover so wrinkled.

coyoteblue

Have you thought about trying to remove the wrinkles? That would mean keeping the set of course, but putting the cover under a pile of books or using a steam iron (judiciously) might do the trick.

kd5

^ I'd fuck it up royally if I did that, it's just the kind of luck I have.

I stuck a stack of 5 or 6 videos cross ways on the front of the case (directly on the wrinkled surface) just for the heck of it, not really expecting it will make a difference, but it can't hurt, not enough weight to do damage.

Josh-da-man

I'm assuming that it's a plastic case and not a digipak?

The clear plastic on DVD and blu-ray cases tends to wrinkle after they've been shrinkwrapped from the heat in the process. I don't think there's much you can do about it except get a new case. (And good luck with that, there aren't a lot of places selling them anymore.)

kd5

^ Yes, plastic case. I'd (more than likely) have no luck finding a single 8-disc blu-ray case and even if I did, I (more than likely) wouldn't want to pay their price for it.

BackStJoe

Watching the Abominable Snowmen blu-ray and there appears to be a few manufacturing errors. On the color version episode 1 freezes towards the end, then on episode 5 it glitches towards the beginning, then the audio completely blows up…thankfully I had headphones on, as it probably would have destroyed my speakers.

Anyone else experience issues with this set?

Josh-da-man

Looks like we'll be getting animated reconstructions of both "The Smugglers" and "The Underwater Menace" for the big sixtieth anniversary shindig later this year. The animation project isn't as dead as we feared, apparently.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/...ought-28859152

Also, looks like they will be colorizing certain episodes/stories from the Hartnell and Troughton eras, too.




Nice to see "The Underwater Menace" get an animated reconstruction. Not thrilled about "The Smugglers," though. It's both a historical and has telesnaps, so I'm of the mind it should be one of the lower priority stories. But maybe they're filling in the holes in season four in preparation for a complete season four blu-ray release.

With these announcements, there will only be three incomplete/missing Troughton stories: "The Highlanders" from season four, "Wheel in Space" from season five, and "The Space Pirates" from season six.

And, for Hartnell, there's only "Marco Polo" from season one and "The Crusade" from season two (which was released as part of the season two complte blu-ray as a telesnap reconstruction). Unfortunately, season three is an absolute mess of missing episodes, with five of the stories missing or mostly incomplete (with "The Daleks' Master Plan" running twelve episodes, it might as well be six), and only "Galaxy 4" currently reconstructed through animation.

milo bloom

I could have sworn Underwater Menace was already out. Was it rumored last year or something?

coyoteblue

New trailer for the 60th anniversary special has dropped. It looks really good.

Josh-da-man

They released "The Underwater Menace" as part of the regular Doctor Who DVD line seven or eight years ago, not long after a second episode was recovered. That DVD release had the two existing episodes, and the two missing episodes as (apparently underwhelming) telesnap reconstructions.

Josh-da-man

Considering what they're doing with the 60th anniversary episode, I'm sort of surprised they didn't animate "The Celestial Toymaker" instead of "The Smugglers."

Josh-da-man

I updated this old graphic to reflect the current status of missing/animated episodes.

Pretty cool that, as of this recent announcement, there are now more animated recons of missing episodes than there are missing episodes.

We're getting there!

(Even if many of them look like dodgy flash animations from the early '00s.)

milo bloom

Seasons 2 and 6 are pretty clean, weird how that all turned out.

And I really wish they'd put some of these back in print, all I need from the old releases is The War Games. I don't know how I missed it when I was buying 10-15 of these at a time from the Barnes and Noble sales.

Josh-da-man

Yeah, even without the animated recons, seasons one, two, and six are still mostly extant. Seasons three, four, and five seemed to take the brunt of the BBC purge.

I think one reason is because the first two seasons had more copies made and transported abroad than later seasons, so those tended to pop up more. Though it's ironic that "Marco Polo" had more copies made than any other story, yet not a single episode of it has surfaced.

I wouldn't hold my breath for reissues of the old DVDs. They seem to have moved on to complete season blu-rays.

Hopefully, they will animate "The Space Pirates" and we'll get a complete season six in the near future.

I've said it before, but I wouldn't mind if they didn't animate the historicals that have telesnaps like "Marco Polo," "The Smugglers," "The Highlanders," in favor the science fiction stories -- "The Daleks' Master Plan," "The Celestial Toymaker," "The Savages," "The Wheel in Space," and "The Space Pirates" -- and the historicals without telesnaps -- "The Mythmakers" and "The Massacre." Sort of like how they issued season two with the two missing episodes of "The Crusade" as telesnap recons.

I was a little bummed that they're animating "The Smugglers" instead of something like "The Celestial Toymaker," which would have made more sense for the 60th anniversary specials.

But it might mean they're readying a complete season four a blu-ray release. (But I would have been fine with both "The Smugglers" and "The Highlanders" as telesnap recons on the blu-ray if it meant we could have other, more desirable stories animated.)

Darkgod

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-r...box=1699708076

milo bloom

But there have been episodes returned like this before, why are the collectors afraid now?

Josh-da-man

I've been reading (mostly from Ian Levine's Doctor Who facebook group) that that Guardian article isn't accurate, and every time someone posts it the post gets closed. It's too much of a pain the ass to scour through the posts and responses to figure out why, though, so I haven't researched it yet.

flansered

Congratulations, it looks like the Celestial Toymaker is getting animated. It looks weird and stiff, but it's getting animated.

Jay G.

Looking at the teaser:


It seems like maybe they're going for a visual style where the characters look like toys themselves, to play with the theme of the story.

I was actually wondering about the audio quality. I understand they're working from fan audio recordings, often by holding a cassette recorder up to a TV speaker, but maybe there's some way to better isolate and enhance the audio. I was thinking about the tech recently used for releasing the "new" Beatles single, and wondering if that tool couldn't help here.

flansered

The shot of the doctor walking towards the camera that is in the preview image is the worst part, with his arm hanging oddly and not moving while he walks.