Carnival of Monsters (2002)

Commentary Highlights:

A nice little two-handed commentary features Katy Manning in conversation with producer/director Barry Letts. It’s a good balance, as although they both clearly enjoy being in the commentary booth together, Manning clearly still has much of the wide-eyed enthusiasm she brought to the role of Jo, while Letts is a very earnest critic of his work (Peter Halliday’s bald cap still frustrates him thirty years on). Understandably, both also have some very fond memories of working with Jon Pertwee.

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

Not so much an "I didn’t know", but Leslie Dwyer’s career credits take up about two minutes’ worth of text.

Extras:

In no particular order, we have:

-Extended and Deleted Scenes (from the extended version of Part 2 and running to nearly five minutes)

-Behind the Scenes Footage showing the Inter Minor sets, Barry Letts directing from the gallery and a glimpse of some of the model shots with Kalik in the mouth of a Drashig which were dropped from the finished programme

-Visual Effects test footage (several minutes of the Drashig puppets and also the model shot of the spaceship landing on Inter Minor- who’d have thought that it was actually filmed upside down?

-A Barry Letts-fronted CSO demonstration film showing Margot standing in front of a model house, Margot standing in front of a blue screen and shortly afterwards no doubt, Margot handing in her notice.

-Delaware theme music titles from part 2

-Five Faces of Doctor Who trailer

-Barry Letts’s preferred edit of the ending to Part 4

-Photo Gallery (including shots from the commentary recording and Frank Bellamy’s Radio Times drawings)

-TARDISCam 2, in which the Ship flees from a space battle to find itself hurtling down a vortex and emerging near a planet which is being orbited by a space station.

No doubt the wealth of available material pushed ‘Carnival of Monsters’ up the queue to become the second release from the Third Doctor’s era- and what a lot of it there is. Quite apart from having the fortune to survive in the archives in a suitable format, there’s an extended second episode with alternative theme music plus model footage plus a small amount of footage from a documentary showing the story in studio. The fact that there are essentially three different versions of the story- the transmitted version from 1973, the version exported to Australia with Delaware theme music and additional scenes and the 1981 repeat- means that the DVD format can be shown off to its best advantage, taking the 1973 version as the basic story and offering the additional material, Delaware titles and director’s edit of the final episode as extras in their own right. The quality of the commentary ensures that the presence of the likes of Jon Pertwee, Robert Holmes and Ian Marter aren’t too badly missed, and indeed allows Barry Letts in particular to talk in enough detail for the layman about some of the aspects of directing the story. But then again, since its repeat in 1981, ‘Carnival’ is one of those stories which has been slightly over-exposed even if it is one of the most accomplished Pertwee stories in many areas, so it’s good for the DVD release if nothing else that just so much added value exists, particularly when the VHS release used the extended second episode.

It’s a series of very fortunate survivals, then, which ensure that for its age, ‘Carnival of Monsters’ is accompanied by some very interesting extras indeed, making the most of the different versions of the story which exist together with some rare and unusual bits and pieces. Given that it has however been somewhat unfortunate in the number of cast and crew members who didn’t live to see the DVD release, it’s difficult to tell where any additional original material might have fitted in and as with some of the releases immediately preceding, it doesn’t particularly feel as if anything is wanting- in fact, it’s quite the opposite.