The Three Doctors is the tenth anniversary show. It features all three Doctors, though the first, William Hartnell, is only seen briefly as he was ill. The story introduces Omega, the anti-matter creature who was once an honoured Time Lord. He was swept into the anti-matter world in an explosion and believed dead by the Time Lords of Gallifrey, but he wanted revenge and plotted it, using The Doctor as his leverage. But his plan was brought to an end by the quick-witted pair of Doctors. Noted for the first time both Benton and The Brigadier had been inside the TARDIS.

9/10

Commentary

Commentary is by Barry Letts, Katy Manning and Nicholas Courtney. It opens with Barry Leets telling how he was asked about a three Doctors story and asked Baker and Martin to write a story. Then Katy and Nicolas are introduced and it goes downhill from there. Katy giggles childishly almost constantly and Nicholas talks surprisingly dully about his experiences. Her claim to have watched the William Hartnell episodes with her thumb in her mouth is silly. She was not that young in those days. Most of the commentary was reminiscing about people who were no longer with them, including William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton. I really did find it quite tedious. Some of the older members of the Doctor Who family are growing into old farts very rapidly. Katy Manning seems to be in her second childhood and is actually very irritating.

7/10

Extras

40th Anniversary Celebration – a music video with a spiced up version of the original theme with pictures from all eight classic Doctors. It’s great, but it turns up on so many DVD extras its getting boring.

7/10

Pebble Mill at One, in 1973, talks first to Bernard Wilkie, who was one of the designers during the Third Doctor era. He doesn’t actually talk very well on screen and is flustered when presented with a Sea Devil head that he didn’t design and doesn’t know who did. A pretty stupid interview, interspersed with scenes of Doctor Who monsters walking up and down outside the studio to amuse passers by. When asked which monster he thinks is scariest he fall back on Daleks and Cybermen! There’s a shock. This is billed in the DVD notes as an interview with Patrick Troughton, but he only comes into it later. Most embarrassing is when they talk to the ten year old son of singer Paul Jones, plucked out of the green room as a representative child fan. When the interview with Patrick does come around, he is asked fairly standard questions and looks rather bored with answering them. No wonder, nearly four years after he left the programme. Pebble Mill is positively the most irritating and patronising programme after Blue Peter, and is only tolerable because it IS history now. Blue Peter goes on and on. The Troughton interview is only five minutes out of the twenty minutes of the two sections of Pebble Mill. The final five minutes is Bernard Wilkie showing how stunt glass works.

7/10

Blue Peter in November 1973, with former Doctor Who companion, Peter Purves, features the Whomobile, lovingly demonstrated by Jon Pertwee. Since Jon has the best of the conversation its much less irritating than usual Blue Peter fare. I couldn’t help thinking that it would be more interesting to have the Whomobile on Top Gear and have Jeremy Clarkson give it a whirl. The short history of the series and the three Doctors is boring and patronising, as per usual for Blue Peter.

7/10

BSB Highlights is a series of trailers for the Doctor Who weekend in 1990, plus interviews with Terrence Dicks, Nicholas Courtney and the two writers, Bob Baker and David Martin who talked to John Nathan Turner in a terrible shirt. There is also an interview with Jon Pertwee that is clearly pre-recorded with the interviewer filling in the gaps.

Despite the cheesy gloss it’s not too bad, really.

8/10

Panopticon ’93 was the huge convention that celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of the series, even though it was cancelled on TV. This is the recorded interviews with Jon Pertwee, Katy Manning and very briefly, Nicholas Courtney who claimed to have been signing autographs, but possibly in the bar! Jon’s interview is very good. Katy isn’t bad. She arrived in a very short skirt and flirted with the mainly teenage male audience. Courtney really didn’t need to turn up. Most interesting was the discussion of the then current radio version of Doctor Who starring Jon Pertwee. He also talked about Roger Delgado in fond terms.

9/10

Five Faces of Doctor Who trail is a series of continuities for a series of repeats in 1991. Rather pointless and clearly a way of getting around my personal dislike of continuities on DVD extras.

2/10

BBC1 Trail – obviously they know I hate these things and put them on to annoy me. This particular one told us nothing except that the Basil Brush Show was on before Doctor Who in 1973.

0/10

Photo Gallery – fairly run of the mill. A lot of Three Doctor publicity photos.

5/10

A dull package of extras on a run of the mill DVD release

8 out of 10