November 7th will see the release of
Doctor Who - Story #087: The Hand of Fear and
Doctor Who - Story #140: The Mark of the Rani. Each item should be a single-disc release going for $24.98 SRP. Here are some basics:
Doctor Who - Story #087: The Hand of Fear stars Tom Baker as the 4th Doctor. This is a 4-part storyline from 1976. A freak accident traps the Doctor's companion Sarah Jane under tons of rock. After a miraculous survival, she is found frantically clinging to a large stone hand, and the Doctor senses a sinister power at work. Is this the end of the ride for Sarah Jane? Look for extras to include a commentary track by cast and crew (including Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen), a vintage interview on
Swap Shop with Baker and Sladen, a featurette about Sarah Jane called "Changing Time", a Photo Gallery, Production Text Commentary, and lots more!
Doctor Who - Story #140: The Mark of the Rani stars Colin Baker as the 6th Doctor. This is a 2-part story from 1985. The Master has somehow returned, and is trying to re-write Earth history once more. But the Doctor must also face The Rani, an evil Time Lady who is also up to no good during the period of Earth's industrial revolution! Look for commentary tracks (Colin Baker participates, among others), a "Lords and Luddites" featurette, Deleted & Extended Scenes, a
Blue Peter excerpt featuring
Doctor Who material, a Photo Gallery, a Production Text Commentary, DVD-ROM material, and an Isolated Music Score, and a short interview with the composer of the final music track that was used for this storyline. What's more, the first episode has an alternate music track available as well. It was created by John Lewis, who was better known popularly as the singer "M" from the hit song from the '80s, "Pop Muzik". Lewis passed away during the production of this episode and couldn't finish the score, so Jonathan Gibbs started all over. But the full score from episode one is available here to listen to for the first time ever!
As if the two November releases aren't enough, word has come out
from the BBC a couple of weeks ago that
Doctor Who - Story #046: The Invasion IS in the works for DVD. That's surprising because this 8-episode storyline is suffering from two of the episodes being missing! According to the BBC story linked just above, and confirmed by the
press release from Cosgrove Hall (yes, the
Danger Mouse folks!), the two missing episodes will be re-constructed via animation! Yes, Patrick Troughton as the 2nd Doctor will be animated in loving detail, as Cosgrove Hall uses the original shooting script to re-create the visuals, and syncs it to the original audio soundtrack. That soundtrack had been restored by Mark Ayres of the Restoration Team for use with a BBC Audiobooks release of the remaining recordings, and that's the only connection that the RT has with the animation project. They did, of course, do restoration work on the six original live-action episodes of
The Invasion, and they are also doing their usual DVD extras for this release as well. But the animation is all in Cosgrove Hall's hands, and it wasn't originally meant for DVD release. James Goss at BBC Online had commissioned the animated episodes for what the RT's Steve Roberts calls "an online project that never happened". So they were re-purposed for this DVD release, which is planned for release in the UK first (naturally) and then for later in North America. Stay tuned and we'll have a release date for that, plus artwork, as soon as they become available!
