Steve Roberts: classic Who complete (sorta) on DVD in '13?

From the DW News Page:

Quote :

Roberts talked about work being done on the Mind of Evil as well as
discussing future plans for the classic range with all complete stories
due for release by November 2013, the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who.
He confirmed there are no plans for any further animated restorations
of lost episodes, nor any plans to issue any more partial stories.

Mixed feelings about this.

1. I fear that we're going to be flooded with box sets (i.e. Peladon, or worse yet, more things along the lines of the very-tenuously-connected "Mythology" box set early next year) that will push it out of some fans' budgets. My DVD collecting has really hinged on picking up 1-2 individual titles every few months.

2. I worry that the legendary bonus features will start to suffer as the trade-off of releasing every complete story within the next 4 years. The Doctor Who DVDs have the best features, and the greatest number of features, for the price point of... well... anything out there. (The closest anything else released in the UK or the US has come has been, frankly, the Red Dwarf DVDs.) I love that pretty much every story gets its own little documentary piece; by and large they're very fair, addressing common criticisms, looking at everything with a fond eye, and exploding a few myths along the way. I'm not crazy about the classic Doctor Who DVDs edging toward a "vanilla" suite of features. There are also people involved in these stories who, if they haven't been interviewed yet, may not be around to interview after 2013.

3. There are viable "partial" stories that'll be left out in the cold by this strategy; "partial" editions of stories such as The Ice Warriors and The Tenth Planet have been released on VHS (and to this day, I still love the "fix" that was concocted for the missing Ice Warriors episodes on VHS) and folks bought 'em.

I just hate to see things rushed, and good features fall by the wayside, all to make some arbitary deadline. It's not like we need to wind up the DVD releases pronto so we can start doing Blu-Ray, as the largely video-based entity that Doctor Who was before 1996 just isn't suited for that format.

One thing I have noticed with the box sets is that it is usually cheaper to get them that way. E-Space Trilogy made the dvd's cost only $12.00 each compared to the typical $22.00 average.

I like the box sets for that very reason. I can chuck the box and sort the discs into proper order if they are consecutive.

I agree, I was amazed when the New Beginings boxset turned out to be cheaper as a set than one by one.

As long as they don't pull a FOX video/ Warner Bros. and change the packaging half way through the releases, I'll be cool.

The boxed sets cost more than an individual release, which can made them tricky from a budgetary perspective, but they save the fan a good chunk of money when you look at the prices of individual DVDs. As far as the 2013 deadline, I think it's workable. I got to looking a while back, and there are 47 complete serials that haven't yet been given release dates (unless more dates have been announed since I first did this research a month or two ago). That means they'd need to release 12 in each of 2010, 2011, and 2012, and 11 in 2013. Well, in 2009, they released 17 stories to the R2 market, which is the market of first release. Granted, two of those (The Rescue and The Romans) were on one release, but still...12 a year is actually a slow-down in the release schedule! I'm not at all worried about the quality of the special features, and I like the idea of there being an "end" in sight.

I am disappointed that there won't be more animated fill-in episodes, though...it's unlikely many more lost episodes will ever be recovered, and animated substitutes are probably the best possible solution to the problem. Now even mostly-complete stories like The Ice Warriors will probably never get DVD releases.

Maybe they will do an End of the Universe DVD release like they did with the VHS odds and ends.

Just because "today" there are no plans for the partials (Reign, Tenth Planet, Ice Warriors) doesn't mean that by 2012 2|entertain won't be looking for something. I'm holding out hope that the RT is concentrating on the stuff at hand. There are higher ups who will be looking for ways to prolong the revenue stream and they may eventually work out funding for the partial stories, animation, and other goodies.

I'm just glad to hear that "Mind of Evil" is getting pushed back to near last so they have a better chance of fixing the Chroma Dots and getting "better/watchable" color for the whole thing.