For most
Doctor Who fans, no enemy is greater than the Daleks. These rolling cyborgs were first introduced in the second serial story back in 1963,
"The Daleks", and soon returned in the tenth serial story,
"The Dalek Invasion of Earth". Both were so popular that they inspired
a pair of big screen remakes starring Peter Cushing. And, of course, more Dalek-oriented storylines in the BBC television series. Roughly eight more, I think, through the 3rd Doctor's story (serial #72), "Death to the Daleks".
When Tom Baker came on board as the 4th Doctor, it didn't take long (serial #78; Baker's fourth) for the Daleks to make a reappearance.
"The Genesis of the Daleks" was not just another story, however. It went back and ambitiously told the story of their origins, by a scientist named Davros. The character of Davros would appear in four more serials before the cancellation of the original BBC series: "The Destiny of the Daleks",
"The Resurrection of the Daleks",
"The Revelation of the Daleks" and
"The Remembrance of the Daleks". Of the five serials, only "Destiny" has not yet made it to DVD up until now.
The BBC and distributor Warner Home Video are rectifying that, with a
March 4th release of
Doctor Who - Story #104: Destiny of the Daleks. Briefly the studio describes the story in this manner: "
The newly regenerated Romana and the Doctor land on an unidentified planet to investigate evidence of drilling deep underground." Yeah, that's a tease. This single-disc release's extras include Commentary Track with actors Lalla Ward and David Gooderson, and director Ken Grieve; a featurette about writer Terry Nation and another one called "Directing
Who"; the option to view the original special effects or new CGI effects; BBC trailers and continuity segments; Australian commercials for computers starring The Doctor and Romana; photo gallery; production notes; CD-ROM material. Cost will be $24.98 SRP.
On the same day, the BBC and Warner are also re-releasing an existing story on DVD.
Doctor Who - Story #152: Remembrance of the Daleks: Special Edition is coming out with the support of the Doctor Who Restoration Team, who saw the previous release as, quote, "a bit of an albatross around the Restoration Team's collective neck, owing to an error we made during the remastering of the story which meant that a small number of video effects were missing from the first two episodes." That *mainly* pertains to the Region 2 release, but Region 1 is affected because for this Special Edition they went back and remastered the episode from scratch! Also, the extras package on the previous release was quite a bit lighter than on other
Doctor Who DVDs. So now they are releasing a new Special Edition that includes all the old extras (commentary tracks, production notes, CD-ROM, etc.), plus two new featurettes called "Remembrances" and "Back to School". There are enhance- ments to the Extended and Deleted Scenes, to the Multi-Angle Sequences, and to the Photo Gallery as well. Plus there is a brand new 5.1 Audio Mix on this re-release, including an Isolated Music track. Unfortunately the music from The Beatles that was on the original broadcast will not be present on this disc in the Region 1 area; it could not be licensed for areas outside of Region 2. Our thanks to Steve Manfred of DoctorWhoDVDFaq.com for his help clarifying some of these details. Cost is $24.98 SRP.
But then the BBC and Warner will "put it all together", with all 5 Davros stories released into one box set:
Doctor Who - The Complete Davros Collection also arrives on
March 4, an 8-DVD set with all five separate packages (including the "SE" version of
Remembrance) slid into one nice slipcover with Serials 78, 104, 134, 143 and 152. The cost for the
Davros box set will be $99.98 SRP. That's not a lot of money for all that evil!
