Commentary Highlights:

Katy Manning’s improved voice for the Gell Guards, all the better because it’s usually heard in conjunction with Barry Letts’s repeated expressions of despair at said monsters.

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

‘The Three Doctors’ was originally scheduled to be recorded at the end of the ninth season in the slot filled by ‘Carnival of Monsters’, but the two productions were swapped to accommodate Patrick Troughton’s availability.

-Pebble Mill at One interviews with Patrick Troughton and visual effects boffin Bernard Wilkie; the Troughton interview is one of those where you realise at the end of it that the interviewee has been interesting without actually revealing very much, and it’s not difficult to see the visual effects demonstration involving prop knives and breakable bottles going horribly wrong thanks to a disgruntled floor manager who’s just had their P45. Some good shots of Pertwee-era monsters outside the studio, though.

-Panopticon 1993; one of the highlights of the package, a very precious half-hour convention panel featuring Jon Pertwee, Katy Manning and Nicholas Courtney

-Blue Peter; a tenth anniversary feature in which Peter Purves (no doubt thinking "will I never shake off this bloody programme?") presents a potted history of the first ten years, including a clip of some Masterplan Daleks (presumably taken from ‘The Traitors’, as is Katarina’s death scene) which I’m not entirely sure I’ve seen before. Shep is unimpressed.

-BSB Highlights from the thirtieth anniversary celebration weekend, with contributions from Terrance Dicks, Nicholas Courtney, a purple-haired woman interviewing Jon Pertwee and John Nathan-Turner introducing ‘The Three Doctors’ by talking to Bob Baker and Dave Martin about K9 and describing Captain Yates as being firmly entrenched in the line-up.

-BBC1 Trailer; simple but effective, marrying up a slightly rough audio copy of a trailer (which oddly enough doesn’t play up the Three Doctors aspect) with the matching pictures

-Five Faces of Doctor Who trailer as seen on ‘Carnival of Monsters’

-40th Anniversary Celebration, a carefully-compiled pop video-style effort using clips from all eras of the programme (but an awful lot from ‘The Caves of Androzani’ and ‘Revelation of the Daleks’).

-Photo Gallery with added variations from the Radio Times cover shoot and even a soupcon of Frank Bellamy artwork

In several ways the fortieth anniversary of Doctor Who resembled nothing more than the thirtieth anniversary of the tenth anniversary- there was the reprint of the Radio Times special (and only this morning I came across my "keeping" copy of said special still in the unopened envelope) and then there was ‘The Three Doctors’ (released in 2002, yes, but surely as a launch for the anniversary year’s output). In, it has to be said, a cardboard box with a Corgi model of Bessie (sadly mine was inadequately packed by Amazon at the time and so Bessie has a slight nick out of one of her running boards) and an attempt at a bit of a diorama. Not only that, but even if it isn’t the strongest of tales, by virtue of being the only story able to offer the first three Doctors together in colour, it recommends itself as a high-profile release.

The truth is, however, that the four episodes of ‘The Three Doctors’ are almost a pretext for bringing together a substantial and well-chosen selection of additional material on subjects anniversarial. I may be making this up, but I believe that for some years, Patrick Troughton’s Pebble Mill appearance was believed lost and was certainly sought-after, while the chance to see Jon Pertwee and Katy Manning playing off each other in the Panopticon panel is equally special. The Blue Peter feature is a curious potted history of Doctor Who as it appeared from a 1973 perspective, while the BSB interviews are another judicious use of bought-in footage. Between them all, by virtue of offering lots of footage of Doctors who are no longer with us, they’re equal to anything which could have been produced in 2002-3; while the commentary is hugely enjoyable, Nicholas Courtney is a bit of a spare wheel as it tends to be dominated by Katy Manning’s spontaneity and enthusiasm, supported by Barry Letts’s level-headed honesty. Perhaps better than most releases, the extras package on ‘The Three Doctors’ does a particularly good job of placing the story in its context and gives a fleeting impression of how the tenth anniversary must have felt to the fans of 1973. It’s slightly unfortunate, then, that it should follow so closely on the heels of several releases which had rather more surviving contemporary material to fill out the extras, but equally this release does extremely well with what it has and feels as if it follows naturally from ‘The Two Doctors’ and ‘The Curse of Fenric’.