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The War Games was a ten part epic, a massive story with a complex plot, huge cast of characters, multiple sets, and some amazing revelations for the first time viewer. They learnt for the first time that The Doctor was a Time Lord, and that he was on the run from his planet. The last episode, with The Doctor on trial on his still unnamed home world, was a fantastic story in itself that advanced the mythology of Doctor Who ten-fold. 10/10
Commentary The commentary is by a huge collection of people – Frazer Hines (Jamie), Wendy Padbury (Zoe) Philip Maddoc (The War Lord) Jane Sherwin (Lady Jennifer), Graham Weston (Russell) as well as writer Terrance Dicks and producer Derrick Sherwin. This is obviously far too many people for one commentary. On the other hand, ten episodes is far too many for a few people to commentate on. The mammoth task is done as a relay with two or three or four of the panel taking it in turns on each episode. It works really well. I would go so far as to say that listening to ten commentaries in a row is less wearisome than watching the ten episodes themselves. 10/10
Extras War Zone is the making of documentary. It is thirty-six minutes long, which is just enough time to get deeply into an epic like this. It includes interviews with most of the people who were on the commentary plus archive interviews with the late David Maloney. There is a lot of discussion of how the ten parter came into being, the feeling of it being an end of an era, with The Doctor and companions all leaving as well as the change to colour in the next season. Frazer and Wendy and Derek and Jane Sherwin (yes, they’re married) speak very well about their time on War Games. The least interesting contributor is Tom Spilsbury from Doctor Who Magazine, who is a bit too fanboy. On the other hand, Paul Cornell, James Moran and Joseph Lidster who are part of the New Who writing team and are also total fanboys, manage to be enthusiastic and interesting. 10/10
10/10
8/10
9/10 Sylvia James – In Conversation is the make up lady sitting on her sofa talking for euight minutes about the old days! This could be incredibly dull. Actually, it’s not bad as she speaks very nicely and manages to be interesting about her specialist subject. She worked through most of the Troughton era, so was the expert on alien and monster make up in the black and white era. 10/10
10/10 Time Zones is a fifteen minute documentary about the wars that are featured in the War Games. Fifteen minutes is barely enough to talk about even ONE of those periods of Human history, let alone World War One, the American Civil War, Roman era, Mexican war, and so on. It doesn’t begun to cover it all. It’s just about a taster for somebody who might try to find out more. 9/10
7/10 On Target – Malcolm Hulke features the former script editor’s work turning Doctor Who scripts into Doctor Who novels for Target Books. Malcolm was a very nice man. I wrote to him several times when I was a precocious child fan of Doctor Who and always had a reply. This was a nice tribute to him by people who knew him and worked with him and people who have appreciated his work, since. 10/10
8/10 Easter Eggs. There are two of these little hidden extras. On Disc One, highlight the Doctor Who logo at the top of the main menu screen for a nineteen minute long unedited location sound recording. Just don’t ask me why you would want to! 4/10
10/10 PDF material for CD-Rom – It’s those Radio Times listings, AGAIN, and original designs for the Sidrat. Why wasn’t that just put into the photo gallery? 1/10 Photo gallery is a mixture of colour and black and white stills from the episodes and promotional material plus some design concepts. Pretty run of the mill stuff. Very little I haven’t seen before. 4/10 Coming soon prefaces the Black Guardian Trilogy boxset with short clips that explain nothing about the episodes, even if you’ve seen them before! 5/10 Overall, some really good extras on top of the epic serial make the third disc in the box worth the effort. 10 out of 10
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Shades
of Grey is a twenty minute long documentary celebrating black and
white television. Colour television has now been around nearly as
long as black and white and generations have grown up taking it for
granted, but black and white ‘classics’ are still popular
and Doctor Who’s monochrome era episodes sell on DVD. This documentary
is about the history of BBC television’s early era as much as
anything, going into how the ownership of television sets spread post-war
until the 1960s when it was almost taken for granted. It also goes
into the technical aspects of making programmes in the black and white
era. Some of this, such as the technique of rehearsing a whole episode
then recording it live from start to finish are less about black and
white TV as to do with the fact that actors and producers mostly came
from live theatre and made TV the same way they made theatre. Nowadays
TV is rehearse record, rehearse record in blocks and the whole thing
finished in post-production. TV has its own way of working now. Issues
like design, costume, make up for black and white TV as opposed to
colour are interesting to anyone interested in design, costume or
make up, or TV programming history generally. Since it only deals
with Doctor Who towards the end of the documentary, whether it interests
those only concerned with Doctor Who is a moot point. I think most
classic Doctor Who fans WOULD be interested in the general television
history, and this is a DVD for die hard classic fans, after all.
Now
and Then is sometimes an interesting idea. When the principle set
is a castle or some part of London that has seen regeneration, it’s
fascinating. But the main location of War Games was Sheepcote rubbish
dump in Brighton! Lovely. It’s not a rubbish dump any more,
but it doesn’t look very much better as a grassed over parkland.
The only remarkable thing really is that a rubbish dump full of rats
and rotting refuse was considered a suitable filming location in pre-HSE
days. The rather more attractive Cuckmere river valley was glossed
over too quickly. The farm that stood for a French chateau in the
World War One scenes among other things looks as if it was being renovated
when the Now and Then crew dropped by, but bits of it are recognisable.
The
Doctor’s Composer is a seventeen minute feature on Dudley Simpson,
the composer of much of the incidental music of Doctor Who between
1964 and 1980. Dudley himself is not an especially interesting man
to listen to. He comes across a bit like an old uncle who goes on
and on about the war while everyone tunes out. The technical detail
of how he put the incidental music to the episodes is mildly interesting.
He is the Murray Gold of the classic series and his contributions
cannot be dismissed lightly. The problem seems to be that Simpson
isn’t a natural commentator on his own work. Having his sections
broken up by another commentator talking about him might have made
for a more interesting documentary.
Talking
About Regeneration is a twenty-four minute documentary presented by
Peter Davison (fifth Doctor) and Kate O’Mara (Rani) about the
Regenerations. It also features New Who writers Rob Sherman, Joseph
Lidster and Gareth Roberts along with Clayton Hickman of Doctor Who
Magazine who knows his stuff and can talk about it. They go through
all the regenerations in quite a lot of detail. It’s nothing
that a Doctor Who fan doesn’t know already, but it doesn’t
do any harm to look back on it all. And if there are any fans out
there who bought a classic like War Games and didn’t already
know about the regenerations this is the documentary for them. 
Stripped
for Action is all about the comic strips of Doctor Who in various
magazines over the years. This particular episode of it features Patrick
Troughton as The Doctor. Unless you really, really like comics, especially
historical ones, this is dull stuff. It does have a very compelling
version of the Doctor Who theme, which is its redeeming feature. I
really don’t know how they manage to get thirteen minutes out
of the subject.
Devious
is an amateur video by Ashley Neal Fuller and David Clarke which tells
what happened between the end of War Games and the start of Spearhead
from Space. It’s media studies undergraduate stuff, that you
can take one of two ways – you can laugh at the pretentious
arrogance and the utterly naff effects or admire the effort and imagination.
It might even be possible to strike a balance between the two. There
probably aren’t many Doctor Who fans who wouldn’t like
to take the resources they had at their disposal and having a go themselves
– especially an actual appearance by Jon Pertwee in his last
outing as The Doctor before his death. It also includes a commentary
by the two writers which explains a lot about the video.
On
Disc Two the egg is even more deviously hidden. You have to go to
the Subtitles menu and click down to highlight a link to a version
of The Doctor's trial performed by the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppets.
It is mercifully short compared to the other Egg and a lot more fun.
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