"Knickers!" (Richard Franklin commenting on the moment when Katy Manning’s charms are at their most obvious in the escaping-from-Axos scene)

I Never Knew That Until I Read the Information Text:

The bit about Peter "Chinn" Bathurst retiring from acting to run a coffee bar was a new one on me.

-Deleted and Extended Scenes: A 25-minute selection of studio material from one of the recording sessions which miraculously survived.

-Now and Then: Katy Manning narrates a ten-minute tour around the locations used in the story

-Reverse Standards Conversion: Jack Pizzey fronts a short feature looking at the need for RSC and an insight into how it works

-Directing Who: Fifteen minutes or so with Michael Ferguson as he recalls his experiences of directing the story

-Photo Gallery : A wealth of photos from the making of the story

A little while back, I reviewed the DVD release of ‘Ghost Light’ and went into quiet raptures over the survival of studio footage of the last ever recording session of the original run of Doctor Who. Watching the extras on ‘The Claws of Axos’, I’m about to do the same again over the existence of a studio session from 1971- all the more remarkable bearing in mind that some fairly raw material should be hiding in a corner of the archives when half of the story didn’t survive in its original format. And that more or less sums up what’s important about this release; an unexpectedly generous helping of extras for a story well into its fourth decade and the debut of the second technological innovation to define the progress of the range. Just as we were getting used to VidFIRE...along comes RSC.

While a performance of the Doctor Who canon by the Reduced Shakespeare Company might be an entertaining prospect (if a little taxing on the posterior) and the series can boast a number of associations with their Stratfordian near-namesakes, one of the highlights of this release is in the next step in the ongoing restoration of the series’ older episodes. Whereas VidFIRE restored film recordings of the first two Doctors’ episodes to something approximating to their original videotaped appearance, RSC compensates for the conversion process undertaken on recordings for the North American market in the 1970s, requiring fewer lines but an additional 20% more fields per second. And while the end result isn’t crystal clarity, it’s still a marked improvement on the VHS releases derived more directly from the 525-line prints which are often the only surviving colour versions. The feature with Jack Pizzey is pitched about right, which is to say slightly higher than the average interested viewer- but that’s only reasonable when dealing with a very technical subject which goes right into the arcana of how television signals are actually recorded and broadcast.

On a more purely enjoyable level, Katy Manning’s mini-tour of the Dungeness locations mainly illustrates how little the area has changed in thirty-odd years; slightly unsurprising personally, because on finding myself at Hythe some thirteen years ago, the outline of the power station in the distance was very recognisable. Interesting, though, to see the shingle that the BBC dumped in the vicinity of the Axos location still in situ with weeds and shrubs starting to grow out of it- there are probably dozens of rules and regulations against doing anything similar today. By contrast, Michael Ferguson’s interview is quieter and more technical in nature and perhaps demonstrates why he wouldn’t necessarily have worked quite so well on the commentary with another three participants. The wealth of photos is slightly surprising- although many are familiar, I’d guess that with the combination of a big location shoot and lots of colourful new monsters, it was bound to attract a lot of attention from the BBC publicists. A lot of attention is paid to the Axon children, which is strange to an extent, but then they look weirder than the adults (and let’s face it, there’s only so many ways you can shoot Bernard Holley in a body stocking). But the value of the studio material is inestimable, if only for the glimpse it gives us of some of the personalities behind the characters; not only do we have as much of Roger Delgado out of character as we’re ever likely to get, but various cast members dry, stumble over their lines, forget props, complain about crew members in their eyeline and so on. There are also extended scenes- so many of the accounts of making Doctor Who in the 1970s emphasise the lack of post-production and the extent to which effects were done live in the studio that it’s slightly surprising to see that lines were lifted out of the middle of scenes during the editing process- and of course the moment where Nick Hobbs starts to corpse while doing his "riding along in an Army truck" routine which involves him bobbing gently up and down in his chair to simulate motion. That it should have survived when 625-line recordings of the second and third episodes didn’t is a minor miracle, and that it’s made into such an interesting insight into the Doctor Who studio circa 1971 just goes to show how much love and care go into making each release as good as it can be, with the occasional treat thrown in.