After two volumes of “The
Doctors Revisited,” featuring classic stories with classic Doctors, we reach the
third and presumably final volume of this series, which features the three
modern Doctors who’ve so dominated the landscape of Doctor Who since the show
was resuscitated back in 2005. This is also the toughest of the three to
recommend, simply because most people either have these on DVD or Blu-ray, or have access to these
stories already via Netflix, Hulu Plus, or Amazon Prime. Further, these episodes
frequently play on BBC America. So it would be very easy to view this set as
redundant to your collection, and yet it had to be released.
If I know Doctor Who
fans, those who picked up the first two volumes will look down at them and feel
something’s missing if they don’t buy the third. After all, there are three
half-hour talking head documentaries on here, covering the eras of Eccleston,
Tennant, and Smith, which are part of the tapestry of “The Doctors Revisited”
series. And there are also the fridge magnets – we mustn’t forget the fridge
magnets! Indeed, the other eight magnets are going to look mighty incomplete
without the final four - the last of which is a collage of all eleven Doctors
(see pics below).
The storylines featured in
this set are: “Bad Wolf” / “The Parting of the Ways” which closed out Season
One; “The Stolen Earth” / “Journey’s End” which closed out Season Four; and
“The Impossible Astronaut” / “Day of the Moon” which kicked off Season Six –
all presented here in movie length edits as well as in their original two-part
versions.
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| Fridge Magnets, 9-11 |
Also, it’s worth mentioning,
even though it seems obvious to me, that all of the aspect ratio and quality
issues I had with portions of the previous two collections do not apply to this
set. In fact, these might look even better than some of the older DVDs (in particular
the Eccleston two-parter – though admittedly I didn’t do any comparisons.) And the feature length movie versions have
seamlessly married the two episodes together, which I was sort of skeptical about
them being able to pull off, so basically you get what feels very much like three Doctor
Who movies.
There’s not too much to
complain about here, except that since this set is comprised of three discs
rather than four, the retail price point really shouldn’t be the same as the
previous collections, though it is. Surely $34.95 or even $29.95 would have
been a better move? Especially given that with this set, people are likely
being asked to double dip. Well, we’ll leave that to you and your wallet or purse to
figure out.
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| The entire collection of "The Doctors Revisited" fridge magnets on my hideous yellow filing cabinet |
