Probably John Abbott revealing that he was cast as Vince after Paddy Russell saw him playing Snoopy, although Terrance Dicks does his best to recount all the politically incorrect titles of Agatha Christie novels.

-Terrance Dicks: Fact and Fiction, in which anybody who’s anybody tells us what an all round good egg Terrance Dicks is.

-Paddy Russell: A Life in Television, an extended interview with some very interesting extracts from her work at the BBC.

-The Antique Doctor Who Show, in other words one of the five-minute fillers from the 1993 ‘Planet of the Daleks’ repeat with some of the more desirable items of 1960s and 1970s merchandise.

-Photo Gallery including extracts from Paddy Russell’s storyboard.

With ‘Horror of Fang Rock’, the DVD releases took their first cautious steps into the Graham Williams era of Doctor Who by presenting a story which had- presumably by some curious omission- been left off the VHS release schedule until as late as 1998. The wealth of additional material is, then, something of an indicator of the extent to which the change to DVD had changed both expectations and the ability to meet them; the purchaser of this particular disc has not only features on the writer and director but an insight into some of the merchandise based around the series in the mid to late 1970s. The sort of things which are added to more heavyweight releases to show that the DVD makers are taking their subject matter seriously, in other words.

The commentary is nicely balanced with Louise Jameson, John Abbott and Terrance Dicks each having things to say but no real sense of ego or of one voice trying to dominate the other two- Dicks is funny and worldly as only he can be, Jameson is warm and enthusiastic, while it’s simply interesting to hear somebody like John Abbott with no vested interest or track record with the series chipping in his occasional comments. The feature on Terrance Dicks’s career takes in everybody from Barry Letts (and it’s quite a nice touch to have them interviewed sitting at a bar nursing their pints) to Paul Cornell, with Brenda Gardner on hand to mention Dicks’s non-Who children’s books. While I suppose it’s entirely possible that somebody may have discovered Terrance Dicks’s Doctor Who work through an early enthusiasm for T.R. Bear, I don’t think enough is said about the way in which his Who adaptations did get boys in particular reading- and from his influence on people like Paul Cornell, about the occasional stylistic points which budding writers picked up from his adaptations.

Based on her arm’s length involvement in the ‘Pyramids of Mars’ release, one might have expected her contribution to this release to be similarly distant, however ‘A Life in Television’ shows her to be brisk and alert but perhaps more comfortable in her own home and discussing Rudolph Cartier. It’s amazing that there are surviving clips of her on the studio floor co-ordinating one of Cartier’s 1950s productions, but what emerges from the feature is a sense that her career in television wasn’t totally dissimilar to that of Verity Lambert- both young pioneering women who fell under the wing of two of the giants of BBC television drama. By contrast, ‘The Antique Doctor Who Show’ really illustrates what can happen when you take an interesting subject (particularly relevant to this era of Who because of the emphasis on the Denys Fisher and other contemporary figures) and place it in the hands of a presenter who just can’t communicate the value of his subject matter. Unfortunately (due to the recording being done in Birmingham?) there aren’t any major revelations in the photo gallery although the storyboards are interesting to see- there seem to have been some changes of mind and afterthoughts. But overall it’s a nicely-rounded package; one of the best qualities of ‘Horror’ is its intense focus on a few people in a desperate situation, so it’s balanced well by some more outward-looking extras which emphasise that part of the reason for the story’s success is that it was written and directed by people with top-notch television credentials.