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Disc One Battlefield is one of my favourite McCoy stories for several reasons. It is visually impressive, it has the Brigadier and U.N.I.T. in it. It has a new Brigadier who is a woman, bringing U.N.I.T. into the twenty-first Century. The lack of attention to the ‘true’ Arthurian legend has been criticised, but actually, there is no true legend. It’s a legend. And besides, the BBC have finished off the legend altogether with ‘Merling’ in 2008. So this is as good a variation on the theme as any. Jean Marsh is great as Morgaine. The idea that The Doctor might be Merlin in a future life is a gift to fan fiction writers! 10/10
Commentary Commentary is by Sophie Aldred, Nicholas Courtney, Angela Bruce (Brigadier Bambera) Ben Aaronovitch (writer) and Andrew Cartmell (Script Editor). This is slightly too many people in a commentary. The three actors, being more used to speaking, get a lot of airtime, and they tend to be enjoying a nice reunion and chat about their favourite bits of filming and tell little anecdotes and funny stories. The writer and editor get very technical and precise about the way the script translated to TV. Generally when the actors are chatting the other two are quiet and vice versa. In a way there are two commentaries mixed together. The overall result isn’t too bad but it might have been nice to have two separate audio layers, with the actors commentary and writers commentary separate. 9/10
Extras Storm over Avalion was going to be the title of the story before it evolved into Battlefield. This thirty minute making of documentary includes inserts from director, Michael Kerrigan, Sophie Aldred, Nicholas Courtney, and others. The cast generally talk about what fun they had. Ben and Andrew are a bit more serious, going into the shortcomings of the episode much more. 9/10 Past and Future King is a twelve minute documentary featuring Ben Aaronovitch and Andrew Cartmell about how they wrote and edited the script that eventually became Battlefield. Ben admits to knowing nothing about the Arthurian legend before writing it. Some may criticise him. But where would we all be without Wikipedia? He was not, in any case, supposed to be writing an Arthurian story, simply taking the theme and writing a Doctor Who story around it. The story of Ben wanting to kill the brigadier and then not doing it is interesting, although Ben’s effusive delivery is a bit annoying. It ends on an odd note, with Ben saying that he was disappointed with the resulting episode. 9/10 Watertank focuses on the incident during the filming of Battlefield in which there was almost a fatal accident involving Sophie Aldred, a water tank and a studio full of electrical equipment. Doctor Who fans will have heard the story many times before. But it would be remiss not to feature it on the DVD. 10/10 Studio Recording is one of those snippets – twelve minutes worth – of studio time which are fascinating to anyone who hopes for a career in TV, showing how exciting and at the same time tedious it is making television. 10/10 From Kingdom to Queen is a featurette about Jean Marsh’s four
decade association with Doctor Who, having appeared in The Crusades
and Dalek Master plan in 1965 before being cast as Morgaine in Battlefield.
For a quite elderly woman, now, she speaks quite well about her Doctor
Who career. 10/10 Trails and continuities tells us not very much except that Doctor Who preceded Bergerac on Saturday evening and that the late 1980s were bright and a bit tacky and loud. 5/10 Photo gallery has really annoying music and includes far too many posed shots of The Doctor and other characters and not enough stills from the episode. 7/10
Disc Two Disc contains an extended feature film version of Battlefield as an alternative to the four part TV version. It includes a few extra scenes that add to the understanding of the narrative considerably. There are also a few remastered CGI effects on this version. 10/10 Season 26 Trailers is a series of snippets of the episodes of this last season of Classic Doctor Who. It shows the stories in no particular order and is very enticing. I don’t remember seeing it at the time. But I would have been watching, anyway. 8/10 Coming Soon introduces the E-Space trilogy, which may well be my next DVD purchase. 9/10 The extended version on its own is an extra well worth buying this DVD. A nice package all round, apart from Ben Aaronovitch's moaning. 10 out of 10
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