|
Four To Doomsday is a very interestingly designed studio based story that looks very good even if the plot goes astray sometimes. It includes some memorable scenes including the ethnic dancing and the much criticised cricket ball in space. 8/10
Commentary The commentary is a very busy affair, with The Doctor and all three companions – Peter Davison, Matthew Waterhouse, Janet Fielding and Sarah Sutton, as well as John Black, the director. It’s possibly too many people. Matthew and Sarah don’t often get a word in. Peter and Janet are both very confident speakers and tend to dominate. There are some interesting points made by them. Janet repeats a story that she has told before about the problem of getting the right Aboriginal dialect in her conversation with the native Australian. She also talks about the way the companions in these episodes were ciphers rather than rounded characters and compare their experience with the new series, referring to Billie Piper in the 2005 series. Peter makes the point that the modern series is what the show evolved into from the earlier episodes that they made. 10/10
Extras Studio recordings is series of takes of The Doctor and companions emerging from the TARDIS for the first time. When I watched it for the first time my one abiding thought was that the whole cast and crew looked as if they hadn’t a clue what they were doing. It seemed very amateur, with elementary errors like boom mikes in shot occurring with tedious regularity. 7/10
7/10 Theme Music Remix is a new version of the 1980s Peter Howell arrangement, apparently. There comes a time when every version of the Doctor Who theme starts to sound the same and I reached it a long time ago. 6/10 7/10 Coming soon features The War Machines, and is quite a nice presentation of the episode in short sequences that have an immediate impact. 8/10
Overall, the extras are not very much to write home about. There really is only the long-winded Studio Recording and the quite dull Pebble Mill interview. 7 out of 10
|
Saturday
Night at the Mill used to be a popular magazine show from Pebble Mill,
the iconic BBC studio in Birmingham. This interview with new Doctor,
Peter Davison, spends rather a lot of time talking about All Creatures
Great and Small. It takes a long time getting to the point about Doctor
Who. The chocolate milk shake sequence was total nonsense. The interviewer,
Bob Langley, is annoying, possibly because his style of presentation
is a little old fashioned. Or perhaps he was always annoying. I don’t
remember ever liking Saturday Night at the Mill. 
Photo
gallery isn’t too bad. It is a mixture of screen shots and posed
promotional pictures, including some glamour photos of Annie Lambert.
It also includes a few shots of Stratford Johns getting his make up
on and set design photos. 
 |