Doctor Who fans rejoice! The great fansite Outpost Gallifrey, via their DoctorWhoNews.com page, has given us
this amazing update about the future of Region 1 releases for the good Doctor.
Certain to be the highlight of this report is word of
Doctor Who - The Beginning box set, containing
An Unearthly Child (Story # 001, aka "100,000 BC"),
The Daleks (Story # 002, aka "The Mutants", "The Dead Planet") and
The Edge of Destruction (Story # 003, aka "Inside The Spaceship", "Beyond The Sun"), all starring William Hartnell.
Here is the actual update from Gallifrey One:
North America DVD Update
An update for our North American readers on the latest DVD releases. Following this March's release of the already-announced The Seeds of Death (Patrick Troughton) and The Three Doctors (Jon Pertwee, Patrick Troughton and William Hartnell), Outpost Gallifrey has learned that the next two DVD releases here will be The Curse of Fenric (Sylvester McCoy) and The Two Doctors (Colin Baker with Patrick Troughton). At press time we are uncertain as to the exact date of release, either the first week of June or July, but later this week we will likely have further details as well as cover art for both.
Meanwhile, we have also been informed of developments later in the year: on the boards for the second half of the year or early in 2005, according to the BBCAmerica Shop, are The Visitation (Peter Davison), Pyramids of Mars (Tom Baker) and The Green Death (Jon Pertwee) as well as The Beginning, which includes the stories An Unearthly Child, The Daleks and The Edge of Destruction. While we have been told that no further boxed sets were in the planning, the fact that the BBC's official American retail outlet notes the title of the set indicates that may have changed. This is also important to fans outside of North America because it confirms from a BBC source (albeit their retailers) that those discs are indeed being planned for later in 2004 or early 2005 in the UK (since BBC America will be following the UK releases instead of creating their own releases, a la "Key to Time".) Surprisingly, no word as yet on the status of Earthshock, the Peter Davison story that was released late last year in the UK. (Thanks to BBC America Shop, Rob Hunter, Jason Prilby)
Our thanks to Rich Kirkpatrick for being the first to alert us about this, and to all the other TVShowsOnDVD readers who have sent us notes about this all morning.
Stay tuned, because we'll have more for you about this as it becomes available. In the meantime, we have the upcoming March 9th releases of
The Seeds of Death and
The Three Doctors to keep us busy.
Lots to be excited about if you're a
Doctor Who fan! Those two serials, and then 8 more already planned for the 12 months to follow. And, farther down the road, we can also look forward to
The Daleks' Master Plan, previously thought to be un-releasable. The second chapter of that serial, "Day of Armageddon", was thought to be lost forever. However, earlier this month the BBC
reported a 16mm reel containing the story had been saved from the garbage can by a sharp-eyed individual, and passed to the Restoration Team. We hope that everyone else is keeping an eye out, because it seems you never know where these will show up!
