The Tomb of the Cybermen (2002)

Commentary Highlights:

Having seen them together at a convention some twenty years ago, I knew that Frazer Hines and Deborah Watling would be good value for money, and they don’t disappoint here- both, for instance, spotting Hines tripping as he walks down the steps from the tomb entrance. It seems slightly odd, though, that neither of them knew until recording the commentary that most episodes of Doctor Who had a reprise from the previous episode at the beginning. But the two of them have an inexhaustible capacity to set each other off laughing at the slightest provocation so there’s rarely a dull moment.

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

At the time the story was recorded, the production team didn’t know whether ‘The Abominable Snowmen’ or ‘The Ice Warriors’ would be the next story, so captions were prepared for both. Sadly the print recovered from Hong Kong doesn’t have its ‘Next Week-The Abominable Snowmen’ caption, although of course these days they’d just remake one.

Extras:

There’s a real sense of stepping up a gear with the extras on this release, not least because there’s over half an hour of colour material on here. From the Troughton era itself, there are title sequence test foorage, model shots and studio footage from ‘The Evil of the Daleks’ and a colour ‘Late Night Line-Up’ feature with Jack Kine trying to chat up Joan Bakewell, which has various bits of Season 5 interest- Cybermen, Yeti spheres and so on- as well as bits and pieces of weirdness from other programmes. Then there’s Morris Barry’s introduction from the 1992 VHS release and nearly 30 minutes’ worth of footage from the panels at the Tombwatch event which took place at BAFTA when the Hong Kong print was returned to the BBC and rushed onto video. There’s more Hines and Watling banter, while it’s rather sweet that even though they were no longer married in 1992, Peter Bryant and Shirley Cooklin sit next to each other on both of their panels.

There’s a real sense of the DVD range taking a step up with this release- which was, incidentally, the first one I bought myself and the one with which I christened my first DVD player, causing much hilarity when trying to connect said player up to my new television and my dad couldn’t understand why the only channel he could find was showing Patrick Troughton’s Doctor. Something which seems (so far at least) to be common to the Troughton era releases is that they tend to become something of a catch-all for miscellaneous items from the period, understandable when you only have a handful of complete stories and all the more interesting when you have things like the Joan Bakewell interview with Jack Kine which somebody evidently went to the trouble of finding and cleaning up. The bit of ‘The Evil of the Daleks’ is nice to see, but the most interesting extra is the Tombwatch footage, comprising as it does nearly half an hour’s worth of the panels which evidently happened before, during and after the episodes were screened at BAFTA- it’s reminiscent of a really good convention panel with a good balance of recollections of what it was like to be making ‘Tomb’ in the studio but also funny stories and witty exchanges and a range of perspectives on the same story, including Peter Bryant and Morris Barry who have since passed on without being able to contribute to the DVD range. If nothing else, it’s certainly very acceptable as a substitute for being able to record original interviews. And so it was that I spent a very entertaining couple of hours on my first night with a new television and DVD player, although not quite as entertaining as just how inconceivable it would have been twenty years ago that you’d be able to walk into a shop and buy ‘Tomb’ on a format the same size as a compact disc. A special package for the Second Doctor’s debut in the range, and one which showed that if anything, any future monochrome releases would receive more rather than less attention.