Having dwelt at some length in my previous column on such subjects as the Star Wars trilogy, rewriting the past, and the DVD market (and indeed bosoms) I'd like to slightly expand on a similar theme this time around. Last time I suggested that perhaps the reason George Lucas has reworked (again!) his first three Star Wars films for DVD was to give the purchaser value for money, by ensuring that we were spending money on something we hadn't already seen before. I also suggested that if this is the case then he's probably missed the whole motivating appeal of the DVD (and previously the VHS) market.

So given that rather vague claim, what do I actually think the appeal is? Well I think, quite simply, that it's the chance to own something we like, with, obviously, the benefit of being able to watch it when we like, and as many times as we like. If you liked the picture of the Mona Lisa, you might go and buy a print of it from a poster shop (on the grounds that the original might be a bit pricey and hard to come by) so that you could have it on your wall at home to admire whenever you wished; you probably wouldn't be too thrilled if you got it home only to find that it had been updated, to now show the enigmatic one sporting ear-rings or a modern haircut (or indeed eyebrows). And it's the same with DVD releases - yes, extended/deleted scenes are all very well as extras, and they might work as an incentive to buy something you already have on VHS (of course if, like me, you're a 'picture quality' snob then you don't need any more incentive than the fact that it is on DVD rather than VHS) but ultimately you want it because of the main feature, the film or TV show itself.

Doctor Who is, fortunately, a perfect illustration of this, and indeed was so even back in its original VHS days. The first few releases were of stories that had been edited together into 'feature length space-adventures' - which of course meant that all but one set of opening & closing credits had been removed, as well as the trademark reprises of the previous episode's cliffhanger. Once the initial excitement of actually being able to buy an old Doctor Who story on tape had faded (and to be fair there was some considerable excitement to it, let's not forget that, which is clearly demonstrated by the otherwise inexplicable fondness that so many people, myself included, have for the objectively pretty dire "Revenge of the Cybermen" - this was the first ever DW VHS release, although it's perhaps telling that there has yet to be any serious campaigning for it to be released on DVD) -- Once that initial novelty and excitement had faded, fandom (or at least that portion of it that owned VCRs at the time) quickly expressed its dissatisfaction with these hacked together movie-length offerings, and clamoured for the glory of episodic releases.

We of course got them - the first such release was the original Dalek story (definitively labelled within fandom as either "The Daleks" or "The Dead Planet". Or "The Mutants"). This ancient flickery black & white recording heralded from 1963/1964, seven individual episodes over two tapes. As an aside, I got this two-tape set for my eighteenth birthday, and still have it, and it's a thing of wonder - the inevitable DVD may one day join it on the shelf, but that particular VHS release will never quite be replaced. That was in June 1989 (which neatly allows anybody with a calculator, and an interest in such things, to work out my age) and by January 1990 all new releases were in the episodic format.

So of course we Doctor Who fans were now well and truly satisfied weren't we. We-ell, almost, yes. Although this may be rather dull to those fans who already know, let me just explain that in the earliest days of Doctor Who each episode would end with a caption reading "Next Episode", and the title of that episode. This applied to all episodes, even (and this is the crucial point) the last episode of a story, which would thus trail the first episode of the next story. For some reason (one rather suspects some poor YTS employee over-reacted to reading the Trade Descriptions Act and feared they might be advertising something they weren't supplying) this final caption from each black & white video release was snipped out - so the last episode of "The Daleks" had a few seconds detailing "Next Episode - The Edge of Destruction" chopped off.

And so of course there was furore. Uproar! Letters to MPs and Questions in the House and... Well, not quite, but there was correspondence on the subject in the leading Doctor Who magazines - looked at from today's standpoint it all reads like the hysterical ravings of a lunatic fringe, but I have to confess that at the time I too felt a sense of acute moral outrage, as if I'd suffered some civil or social injustice simply because two and a half seconds was chopped off a few episodes of some William Hartnell videos, or that the wrong end credits appeared on "The Web Planet" or even, most bizarrely of all, a few frames of an entirely blank screen was excised from the first episode of the Dalek story.

My point, other than a probably rather tedious review of BBC Video's Doctor Who track-record, is to indicate the lengths to which we went (or at least the moaning we did on the subject) to ensure we got absolutely complete and unedited episodes of Doctor Who available to watch at home. This obsession continues to the DVD releases, where a missing laser beam in "Remembrance of the Daleks" or a reduced picture wobble in "The Three Doctors" is the cause for some seriously heated internet debate. But the question remains, why?

Well it goes back to my opening analysis of the appeal of the home release market. We might like seeing new stuff and alternative takes and multi-angle extras, but fundamentally we want EXACTLY what we saw in the first place. It's almost as if we think that by capturing precisely those same images, we can perhaps go back to being precisely the people at just that place in our lives that we were when we first saw them - like Christopher Reeve in "Somewhere in Time", a film where his character focuses so hard on an old photograph that he actually transports himself back in time, we want to use these moving pictures to take us back to the past, to relive the nostalgia rather than just reminisce over it. ("Somewhere in Time" was, incidentally, covered in an issue of Starlog or Starburst when I was at Primary School, and absolutely convinced me and my friends that it was going to be the third Superman film starring the same Mr Reeve. Mind you, we also thus concluded that the third film was going to be absolutely rubbish, so perhaps in some bizarre way our misreading of the article was vindicated.)

But why should we have such nostalgia for the past? Speaking personally Autumn 1989 wasn't the best time of my life - having finished my A-Levels the previous June I was now being driven (both metaphorically and literally) by Mum and Dad to get a job. And while looking back I'm very pleased they did encourage/cajole/force me to do so, at the time I really objected to the intrusion into my fairly indolent lifestyle. And yet, here I am in 2004 thrilled at the release of "The Curse of Fenric" and "Ghostlight" (this latter which incidentally came out on DVD the same day as Star Wars, but I fear will be clutched to far fewer bosoms). Both are, I hardly need to say do I, Doctor Who stories, and both were transmitted in Autumn 1989. What rosy nostalgia can I possibly derive from those? But it's obvious isn't it - for all and any faults the past may have had at the time, it's almost always going to seem pleasant when it is safely in the past, because by definition we survived it. The uncertainty and the struggle, whether it be social, financial, personal, whatever, that we feel on a daily basis, is eliminated when we look back because it is clear-cut and certain.

Mention of "The Curse of Fenric" brings me back from the brink of maudlin amateur psychology to the rather more superficial subject of DVDs. In 1991 this story was released in an extended format (what in today's parlance would be termed a 'Special Edition') - I didn't object to that, since I had my off-air recordings of the original safely tucked away. But even at the time I wondered what my reaction would be if it were a story that I hadn't seen before - if they had dug up the excised twenty minutes from the last two episodes of the original "Planet of Giants" from 1964, and released to tape a 'Special Edition' of that INSTEAD OF the original, would I be back to complaining about the injustice of it all? Probably so....

....which is probably why when "The Curse of Fenric" was released as a special, reworked, movie-length edition last year it was paired in a two-disc set with the original four-part story as broadcast. We like seeing new stuff, but only when it is accompanied by the original, NOT as a replacement for it. It isn't just the Doctor Who market that recognises this, either - Steven Spielberg may have revised E.T. for its 20th anniversary last year, but the DVD release contained the original as well; there are Directors Cuts of lots of films, from "The Last Emperor" to "Stargate", but they are available alongside the original cinema release, not instead of them.

The only exception is, in fact, where we started with the original three Star Wars films by George Lucas. The original versions were superseded by the 1997 Special Editions - and now I guess the 1997 versions are similarly replaced by the DVD versions. That's replaced, not accompanied you see, which is where the difference lies.

But I suppose I should put the other side, since this is only my opinion. My wife and I recently argu-- er, discussed this very issue, when she bemoaned that one of her favourite films was not available on DVD in an uncut edition. It turned out to be "The Thirteenth Warrior", a sort of Viking version of the Morlox sections from "The Time Machine" starring Antonio Banderas. But the DVD release does in fact contain the original cinematic version, uncut. In this instance my wife's definition of 'uncut', aided by Internet research on the film in question, was the version of the film as the Director intended it, which had, it's true, been cut for cinemas for whatever reason (quite possibly simply for timing reasons).

So maybe I'm wrong - maybe what I would regard as the definitive version of anything (ie, the 1977 Star Wars, the 1989 Fenric) is not considered as such by everybody. If a Directors Cut of "The Thirteenth Warrior" is the true original, then by the same token George Lucas can surely revise and update his films to whatever state he considers appropriate (although arguably he's on shaky ground with "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi" since he didn't actually direct those).

And maybe-- well, maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe as long as you enjoy watching the DVD version of "Star Wars" or "A New Hope", maybe that's all that matters. It was a film made to entertain after all, and isn't that it's primary function in whatever form it is? The story and the performances remain the same, it's only in the detail that it varies. Doctor Who's fourth episode "The Firemaker" is still enjoyable, even if two seconds telling you that the next episode is called "The Dead Planet" are missing from its end. You might not be able to fool yourself that you're in a cinema in the late 1970s, or in a sitting-room just before Christmas 1963, but does that affect the actual content of the programme itself? Of course it doesn't. Does it affect your enjoyment of the film?

That one you'll have to answer for yourselves...

And may the Force be with you!