BBC Studios continues to offer Doctor Who fans the opportunity to build their own home archive on Blu-ray. Following the sell-out success of Tom Baker’s debut season, his seventh and final series will be released on 25th February as Doctor Who - The Collection: Season 18.

Tom Baker’s final year saw the programme undergo radical changes in front of the cameras and behind the scenes. Producer John Nathan-Turner revamped the series with new writers, new directors, a new title sequence and theme arrangement, glossy production standards and – throughout the course of the season – a brand new regular cast. Over seven classic adventures the Doctor and his companions encountered the Foamasi, Meglos, the Marshmen, vampires and Tharils, building to a final deadly showdown between the Doctor and his arch nemesis the Master. As a special bonus this set also includes the 1981 K9 & Company Christmas pilot episode, plus hours of brand new material.

Starring alongside Tom Baker are Lalla Ward as Romana, Matthew Waterhouse as Adric, Sarah Sutton as Nyssa, Janet Fielding as Tegan, Anthony Ainley as the Master, Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah-Jane Smith and John Leeson as K9.

Special Features exclusive to this set include: a new Making-Of documentary and updated special effects for Logopolis, revealing new 2019 commentaries moderated by Matthew Sweet (Tom Baker on The Leisure Hive, Lalla Ward & Rachel Davies on State Of Decay), surround sound mix for Warriors’ Gate, rare behind-the-scenes footage from The Leisure Hive, Full Circle and Logopolis, eight more editions of Behind The Sofa, brand new documentaries The Writers Room and Weekend With Waterhouse, a new interview with K9 & Company’s Ian Sears, another dip into the Panopticon convention archives with Tom Baker, HD photo galleries plus scripts, production files and rare documentation provided as PDFs. The eight-disc box set also includes hours of extensive special features previously released on DVD.

All material has been remastered for Blu-ray by Peter Crocker and Mark Ayres. Lee Binding has provided stunning packaging and new series writer/content consultant Pete McTighe has written another extensive booklet. Russell Minton is Executive Producer.

Blu-ray trivia: when filming took place for Logopolis (1980), Tom Baker’s last adventure, the intention was to shoot at the University of Manchester’s Jodrell Bank Observatory. Instead, production took place at Crowsley Park with the team using model shots. For the brand new Blu-ray, almost 40 years later, BBC Studios received permission to film at Jodrell Bank with a drone. Offered as an alternative viewing option, fans will now be able to experience the finished product just as it was originally intended. 

The set will be released on 25th February 2019, priced £56.16, although we expect the date could be pushed back if there are any technical issues.

+ PREORDER this title from Amazon.co.uk! 

[Source: BBC Studios]

Our friends at Super Loot have been in touch with us to tell us about their revamped Geek and Gaming Mystery Box - along with a unique offer for Doctor Who Online readers!

Each month Super Loot delivers a hand-picked box of 5-7 mystery collectible items from geek and gaming, tv and film straight to their subscribers' door. Each box typically has an RRP of £45+ and guarantees at least one collectible figurine and a limited edition t-shirt amongst the items. 

Not only are they an awesome treat for yourself each month but they also make for great gifts - either as a one off, or as the 'gift that keeps on giving' with a 3,6 or 12 month option.

All new subscribers from DWO get 20% off the regular first box price with code DWONLINE, making it only £15.99 for your first box, as well as being entered into a draw to win a special Doctor Who Funko Pop.

Check out Super Loot here: https://www.superloot.co.uk/product/mystery-monthly-box-subscription/ 

Use code: DWONLINE at checkout to get your extra 20% off the your first box. 

[Source: Super Loot]

Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Written By: Steve Lyons

RRP: £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download)

Release Date: November 2018

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online

"It’s time the truth was told. About UNIT. About the Cybermen invasion. About the so-called ‘Doctor’. About what happened all those years ago, at Warlock’s Cross. About the man they keep locked up in a cage, in a secret prison…

It’s time. Because UNIT scientific adviser Elizabeth Klein is going to help ensure the truth is brought to light.

Today’s the day… that UNIT falls."

The Seventh Doctor’s five-release-run in the Main Range from Big Finish continues here with Warlock’s Cross by Steve Lyons; the final play in the ‘New UNIT’ trilogy.

It’s a bit of an odd play for various reasons, but we’ll get to that in a bit. Things kick off with some set up and well-executed exposition (sometimes a rarity in audio). The Doctor himself is sidelined fairly early into proceedings with a nice gag on how he wasn’t really much of a player in the 1990s, and it’s not long before all the main players are established, including the return of Blake Harrison as Daniel Hopkins and Tracey Childs as Klein. They are joined by others along the way, but it’s Colonel McKenna who takes central stage. He is the man in charge now and proves to be as waspish as he predecessors; the moment he name-checks Lewis Price as the best of the best is a nice shorthand for everything you need to know about his character.

By the end of the first episode, we’ve a mystery to solve, a jailbreak, betrayal and uncertainty over some characters’ motivations. It’s a lot to work with, so it’s a surprise then that the episode itself is a bit of a damp squib. Much happens, but not an awful lot of it is all that interesting. The same goes for Part Two, which had me concerned. The previous two entries in this trilogy have failed to land for me and I was very concerned this one was heading the same way.

Thankfully, we have here a Doctor Who story which bucks the trend by actually improving as it goes along and Part Three in particular is enjoyable with some fun concepts. Part Four is perhaps more pedestrian, but Lyons throws us some nice bones here and there with interesting character development for Klein and weighty discussion on what the Doctor did to her by interfering with her past. It helps justify her inclusion in the play, which otherwise would be hard to do, regardless of how good Childs is in the role (and she is: she’s very, very good).

A lot of the issues at the start of the story really boil down to the performances of some of the cast, but a lot of that is down presumably to directorial decision and tics in the script itself.  It’s very similar to the problem with Ashildr back with Series 10 on television. If you write a character as having a tough exterior and being emotionless, the performances given are going to lack warmth and subtlety and so it is here, too. The actors in this cast are very good actors but I would be lying if I said I felt they gave us incredible performances. I don’t feel that’s really something they can be entirely blamed for though, especially when it comes to the character of Hopkins. It’s a decision taken at a higher level, to make him the way he is, and it’s made for a very bland character that you wish had been flagged up as a misstep somewhere down the scripting or script editing road.

Compare Blake Harrison’s performance here to that in The Helliax Rift. I didn’t enjoy that play, but it’s fair to say Harrison had a lot more to go with and his performance is accordingly better for it. Harrison is a good actor, but saddled as he is here with scripts and character development that are lacking, it’s a wonder he does as well as he does.

In the end, the decision to go down the route they did with Hopkins weighs down the New UNIT trilogy, a trilogy which has felt ill-conceived and poorly executed from the start. I can see where they were aiming with it all (UNIT in Battlefield, for example, feels very different to how UNIT was in the Pertwee era or indeed Tennant’s, Smith’s or Capaldi’s) but it lacked the believability to really make it sing, populated by characters who should know better when dealing with the Doctor and stories that feel largely tired.

The 1990s were not the kindest of times to Doctor Who in many ways and perhaps ending the trilogy in this era rubbed off. Warlock’s Cross is by far the best of the three in the loose arc, but I don’t think it’s a play I’ll be returning to any time soon.

+ Warlock's Cross is OUT NOW, priced £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download).

+ ORDER this title on Amazon!

BBC Audio have sent DWO the cover and details for an exclusive audiobook edition of Doctor Who: Warriors’ Gate by Stephen Gallagher, based on the author’s original, never-before-seen version.

Warriors' Gate, first broadcast on BBC1 in 1981, was a four-part TV serial in Tom Baker’s final season as the Fourth Doctor. Notable at the time for its high-concept story and its cinematic visual style, it has subsequently become highly regarded as a unique slice of Doctor Who. 

Writer Stephen Gallagher novelised his scripts for the Target Books range, under the pen name John Lydecker. Before publication, however, the book was substantially reworked and reduced in length. Ever since, Doctor Who fans have speculated about what the original manuscript might have contained. 

Now, for the first time, Stephen Gallagher has reassembled that original manuscript from his original paperwork, enabling listeners to experience the novelisation as he originally intended it, substantially longer and with significant structural changes. This version also now better reflects the author’s original vision for the TV episodes.

Stephen Gallagher says:

“I couldn’t be more delighted with the way it’s all worked out. Performed by Jon Culshaw, with John Leeson reprising the voice of K9, it’s feeling more like a resurrection than a reconstruction.”

+  Warriors' Gate is released on 4th April 2019, priced £20.00 (CD) / £7.00 (Download).
+  PREORDER this title on Amazon.co.uk! 

[Source: BBC Audio]

The BBC have confirmed recent rumours that the traditional Christmas Special slot has moved from Christmas Day to New Year's Day. Below is the BBC press release in full:

With 2018 marking a brand new era for Doctor Who it is only right that 2019 kicks off in spectacular style. 

So to mark the occasion, in this year’s festive episode the TARDIS will travel through the time vortex from its traditional timeslot on Christmas Day and will land in style on New Year’s Day.

Charlotte Moore, Director of Content, says:

“We’re delighted the Doctor and her companions will be welcoming BBC One audiences into 2019 with this exciting new episode. The Doctor's fans are in for a special treat on the first day of the new year.”

Showrunner, Chris Chibnall says:

“We’re thrilled to be starting the New Year with a bang on BBC One, as Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor and friends face a terrifying alien threat in an action-packed, hour-long special adventure for all the family.”

As the New Year begins, a terrifying evil is stirring from across the centuries of Earth’s history. As the Doctor, Ryan, Graham and Yaz return home, will they be able to overcome the threat to planet Earth?

[Source: BBC Studios]

Our friends over at TBT Props have just taken delivery of some of the new MFX Doctor Who mask replicas, and you can get your hands (or rather, heads) on them now!

The masks are all made from the original moulds and are hand-painted by the highly skilled artists at Millennium FX.

Other masks currently available, include:

-  Davros
-  Clockwork Droid (Male)
-  Clockwork Droid (Female) 
-  Weeping Angel (Serene)
-  Scarecrow 

+  Check out the range now at: http://tbtprops.com/product-category/mfx-masks/

[Source: TBT Props]

Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Written By: Guy Adams

RRP: £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download)

Release Date: October 2018

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online

"The Doctor and Ace are locked up. The TARDIS is gone. Things just couldn’t get worse, could they?

Of course they could. Things can always get worse — the new President of the Solar System, Josiah W Dogbolter, didn’t get where he is in life without learning that. That’s why he has a Quantum Possibility Engine. It’s a wonderful machine, creating a wonderful Solar System. And with this wonderful device, he can bring happiness and peace to all.

Possibly.

Either that or tear the universe to shreds, it’s hard to be sure which."

Right now as I write this, Doctor Who on screen is going out of its way to be accessible to new audiences. If you dived in to The Woman Who Fell To Earth having never seen the show before, you’d find your feet soon enough and not feel you’re missing out on anything - fleeting reference to a white-haired Scotsman aside.

On the other side of the fence, Big Finish seem to be increasingly catering for a niche audience; one which is familiar and comfortable with several dozen strings of continuity. Take the Main Range right now; the latest trilogy ends with this play here, The Quantum Possibility Engine by Guy Adams, but that’s not it for the Seventh Doctor. The next release is Warlock’s Cross, a solo outing for this incarnation at a later point in his lifetime and a sequel to the ‘Modern UNIT’ trilogy that’s been running across the year which also sees the return of Klein. Straight after that we dip back in his timeline and also Ace’s (in relation to this month’s play) with Muse of Fire. It’s a tangled web of time and placement at odds with everything else right now.

Even this month’s play is not immune. We have Narvin in it; a popular character from the spin-off series Gallifrey, but a younger Narvin than the one in much of that series, and the main antagonist is Dogbolter from the Doctor Who Magazine comic strips. In fairness, both elements are explained away in the script, so no prior knowledge is necessary but it shows a far more insular and fan-focussed approach to the show.

Perhaps appropriately then, this play often feels like a bit of a greatest hits collection at times. The main bulk of Part Two and Part Three for Ace, the Doctor and Narvin will be very familiar to anyone who has read the comic strip The Glorious Dead, watched Forest Of The Dead and to a lesser extent Human Nature, or listened to Big Finish’s own The Crowmarsh Experiment. That’s nothing compared to the ending though, where a great portion of it isn’t so much similar to The Girl Who Died as a direct rip-off. It’s hard to not have a sense of slight fatigue at times thanks to this, all of which makes it surprising that I enjoyed the play as much as I did. In fact, I’d say it’s one of Adams’s best outings so far.

The points about repetition aren’t its only problem, mind. Mel falls into the tired trap of telling someone a load of exposition for no reason at all other than to have this information used against them later on, which always irks me (it’s justified when Dogbolter does similar later on), and I’m not sure I ever once bought the reason Mel didn’t tell the Doctor or Ace about her predicament: that smacks more of needing a cliffhanger ending and arc across a trilogy than anything truthful. But everything else has a real sense of fun about it, so much so that I’m happy to let these niggles pass.

I’d somehow completely missed the fact Narvin was in the play, so that came as a genuine surprise.  His inclusion here makes sense, far more so than it ever did with Dark Eyes years ago now. I must be honest that I was uncertain when he first popped up that it would be an inclusion for the sake of an inclusion as was the case there, but thankfully not. Sean Carlsen is always brilliant value regardless of script and he’s a welcome addition here, too.

The same goes for Toby Longworth, whose Dogbolter is as fun here as he was in The Maltese Penguin, many moons ago when our canonical Doctors numbered but eight. His inclusion feels perfectly suited to the overall comic-y ambience of the play and whilst I think continual cameos and kisses from the past aren’t healthy when done with regularity, I wouldn’t be against more of this type on occasion if handled with equal skill.

Big Finish may be playing hopscotch with the story placement in their release schedule, but plays such as this one leave me smiling. Perfect? By no means, and yet here I am giving it a thumbs up. A patchwork of past glories it may be, but it’s fun and a nice way to pass a couple of hours. In the end, Doctor Who should aspire to be this way, always.

+ The Quantum Possibility Engine is OUT NOW, priced £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download).

+ ORDER this title on Amazon!

Last month, it was confirmed that British jewellery designer, Alex Monroe, would be producing an officially licensed range of Doctor Who jewellery.

The collaboration between Alex Monroe and BBC Studios, offers fans the chance to buy an exact replica of the 13th Doctor's ear cuff, as well as a supporting capsule collection in celebration of the first female Doctor.

DWO caught up with Alex, for one of our '5 Questions With...' interviews.

How did the opportunity come about?

I’ve been making jewellery for the BBC for a long time. I remember the first things were for Eastenders and French and Saunders back in the early eighties! It’s lovely because Jodie has worn our jewellery since she was at drama school, so we have a long connection, and of course the amazing Ray Holman was the costume designer on Dr Who. We’ve done some wonderful projects together over the years. So it was just a really natural fit, I suppose.

Did you ever watch Doctor Who as a child, and if you did was there a particular Doctor / Story you remember? 

Oh my days yes. I was addicted. I think Dr Who was responsible for my fear of spiders. And there was just a new one with spiders in which hasn’t helped! Slightly strangely I always really liked the Brigadier. He popped up from time to time over the years. I’ve no idea why he was my fave character! All three of my daughters have loved it. Now my youngest has Sunday night Dr Who parties. All her mates over, they order pizzas, settle in for the opening credits then chatter incessantly all the way through. It drives me mad!

Your galaxy ear cuff is exquisite! It’s literally an exact replica from the one we see on screen! How much of an input did Jodie have in the final design?

Jodie was so important. We were designing for her character so she was my main inspiration. We talked and discussed and I made all sorts of sketches. Then I made a few prototypes which we discussed together, until we settled on the final design. Each element has all sorts of inspirations and meanings but I think I’ll keep all that between me and Jodie.
 

Is there a possibility we could see more great, who-themed pieces from you? 

I never rule anything out! The sketchbook is full of all sorts of great ideas.

If you could take a round trip in the TARDIS, anywhere in time and space, where would you go and why?

Do you know what… I’m really quite keen on the here and now. There’s so much going on, so many new challenges and so much to do! But I guess the nice thing about the Tardis is that I could do all sorts of stuff then re-appear as if no time had passed!

I think I’d go back and tell my younger self not to be so insecure. Especially with the girls. Once I’d sorted my younger self out I’d go and spend a week on the Bounty as it sailed into Fiji to collect the breadfruit. And a week on the Endeavour with Captain Cook and Joseph Banks. Not Cape Horn… Fiji and the discovery of Australia please. I think I would have liked Cookie and Banksie.

Watch Alex discuss the creative process behind the jewellery in this video from the BBC:

[youtube:msSdDdhA1qk] 

+  Check out Alex Monroe's Doctor Who jewellery range via their website!

[Source: DWO]