Practically the first thing Sylvester McCoy says is that "President Kennedy was killed the first time Doctor Who was shown"- well, it beats writing a letter to Points of View. Otherwise, McCoy and Sophie Aldred (the first Doctor and companion pairing on commentary duty) have plenty to say, and while it isn’t particularly informative or insightful, at the time of recording they’d been talking about ‘Remembrance’ on and off at conventions for over ten years at the time of recording. It’s the spontaneity which gives it a little extra relish as they both set each other’s recollections off, particularly Aldred talking about her inexperience and being overawed by the cast, Simon Williams in particular, or Sylvester McCoy pointing out the scenes where you can see the script poking out of his pocket. Then again, I could listen to Sophie all day long...

I Didn’t Know That Until I Read The Information Text:

The use of the Duke of Edinburgh’s voice in the pre-titles sequence had to be approved by Buckingham Palace, permission for the Queen’s voice to be used having been declined.

Extras:

For anybody who finds Murray Gold’s scores understated, there’s the option to watch with Keff McCulloch’s incidental music as an isolated track. Otherwise there are some Extended and Deleted Scenes (most notably a couple- including the Headmaster’s death scene- which give away more about Mike’s character at an early stage), a compilation of out-takes (including a double howler for the shot where the Doctor and Ace dash out of the workmen’s hut, except that Sylvester McCoy still has his specs on and Sophie Aldred goes flying over a barrier) and a couple of trailers. Equally interesting are the couple of shots in the Photo Gallery section showing firemen in attendance after the Dalek battle explosions set off half the alarms in London; the alarms can also be heard on the disc’s most innovative feature, which gives the opportunity to view two scenes (Ace’s battle with the Dalek in the school laboratory and the Imperial Daleks bursting into Ratcliffe’s yard) from two different camera angles and compare the footage with the finished product.

As a fourth release in the series, ‘Remembrance of the Daleks’ is in many ways a sensible choice, being a Dalek story and certainly a good introduction to Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor, as well as the point where Doctor Who started to turn the corner out of its mid-1980s doldrums into more complex storytelling which bears repeated viewings. It’s also aided by the availability of one of the more popular Doctor and companion pairings for the commentary- you can tell that conventions and so on have kept McCoy and Aldred in frequent contact since 1989 as they’re clearly very much at ease in each other’s company- and also the amount of interesting material which was kept from the original recording, for which I imagine we have to thank John Nathan-Turner. It’s a definite step forward for the range, and one which points the way for further improvements- ex-Doctors being ex-Doctors, it was probably always going to be the case that once one became involved in the DVD range the others would follow, but later releases would be more ambitious with deleted scenes and other material. Compared to the previous releases, overall it’s the most ambitious release up to that point and experiments with the potential of the DVD format to do things you could never do with VHS, but at the same time it would always be better placed in terms of surviving additional material. But it’s very definitely progress.