In hindsight, Anthony Ainley’s contribution- you don’t learn much about the man, but it’s still interesting to hear him out of character.

I have to say that I didn’t know about Geoffrey Beevers’s play-writing career.

-Being Nice To Each Other, half an hour on the making of the story

-The Return of the Master, being about ten or twelve minutes of Beevers, Bidmead and Black on bringing the Master back to Doctor Who.

-Swap Shop, in which Noel Edmonds interviews Sarah Sutton on the morning of her first appearance as Nyssa

-Trailers and Continuity

Clearly 2006’s triple release ‘The Beginning’ must have shifted enough units, because for the beginning of 2007 a trio of stories from a momentous stage in the series’ history covering the return of the Master as a semi-regular villain, the arrival of the Season 19 line-up and not forgetting Tom Baker’s regeneration into Peter Davison. That said, however, the availability of contemporary material and a reasonable number of surviving participants means that the extras package for ‘Keeper’ is well above average. The commentary, however, features a non-surviving participant in the form of Anthony Ainley, having been recorded several years previously, as well as fellow debutante Sarah Sutton, but with Matthew Waterhouse as the other participant there’s a certain lack of common ground between the actors. We don’t really find out much about Anthony Ainley or how he felt about taking on the role of the Master, but it’s unfortunately as much as we’re likely to hear from him out of his own mouth. There’s a certain amount on the ‘Return of the Master’ and ‘Being Nice to Each Other’ items about his passion for cricket, but in the main the abiding impression is of somebody whose financial security allowed him to pick and choose his acting roles but didn’t consider acting to be his life. The range of participants for the documentary items is particularly good- Sarah Sutton, Geoffrey Beevers and Sheila Ruskin from in front of the camera and Johnny Byrne, John Black and Christopher Hamilton Bidmead from behind it, although the complicated genesis and production of the story is generally left to the production subtitles to tell. Rounding things off nicely is Sarah Sutton’s Swap Shop appearance, a selection of continuity material and trailers which is as fascinating for its glimpse of BBC midweek schedules from 1981, the 1982 between-Doctors annual and a PD of the BBC Enterprises sales literature for Season 18, providing a very atmospheric feel to the collection.

Disc 2 - Logopolis

Commentary Highlights:

Well, Tom Baker is never less than entertaining, particularly in wistful mode, but overall I’d go for Janet Fielding’s response to Christopher Hamilton Bidmead rhapsodising over counting in base 16.

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

The Jovanka part of Tegan’s name was derived from Marshal Tito’s widow.

-A New Body at Last, the biggie documentary covering the transition from one Doctor to another

-Nationwide interviews with Tom Baker and Peter Davison

-Pebble Mill at One interview with Peter Davison

-BBC News Reports

-Music only option

Fittingly, ‘Logopolis’ sits in the middle of the stories in this particular set, containing as it does the crucial events which justify the ‘New Beginnings’ tag. It’s perhaps a disadvantage of forming part of the set, then, that the story and associated extras only cover a single disc when other releases covering stories of a similar importance to the ongoing story have been allowed to go to two discs and more extras, as it has to be said that the emphasis feels very much on the transition to Peter Davison’s Doctor than on the end of Tom Baker’s era. The commentary is entertaining and informative, particularly when Christopher H. Bidmead gets too technical and Janet Fielding brings him back down to earth (with a sigh of relief from most viewers, one suspects), but it may well be symbolic of the way Tom Baker’s era ended that Baker himself seems slightly out of place here and not totally at ease. This contrasts dramatically with his wisdom and frankness in ‘A New Body At Last’, where the distance of nearly thirty years allows him to be wryly self-critical with a couple of diplomatic comments on his marriage to Lalla Ward, but there’s also a great deal of contextual comment from some of the other contributors to the set. In particular, it’s interesting to see some of the raw footage of the regeneration at the end of ‘Logopolis’, never having thought for a second that such a complex and important effects sequence -in particular the Watcher merging with the prone Fourth Doctor-would have been done as-live in the studio. Peter Davison being interviewed by Donny MacLeod (and subsequently a question and answer session with a bunch of exactly the kind of precocious children and intense students you really don’t want representing Doctor Who fans in public) on the Pebble Mill show brings back memories of being home at lunchtime in the 1970s, although I was slightly confounded by a clip from Sink or Swim because it had completely slipped my mind that Davison had adopted a generic northern accent for the sitcom. In the meantime, the Nationwide interviews with Baker and Davison and the continuity and trailers are a nice little insight into some of the ordinary things about the way television was made circa 1980 which aren’t necessarily the same- Christine Bleakley wouldn’t be seen dead in some of the casual knitwear sported by Sue Lawley in some of these items, while a lot of the presentation comes across as very Look Around You in these enlightened times, but it’s all really quite nostalgic and cosy to see.

Probably Peter Davison and Janet Fielding being rather indiscreet about Matthew Waterhouse getting somewhat hung over on location.

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

There’s a lot of technical stuff about how some of Fiona Cumming’s direction in the third episode is technically "wrong" but builds up a sense of Castrovalva being somehow spatially out of kilter.

-Being Doctor Who, Peter Davison on his approach to the role

-Directing Castrovalva, in which Fiona Cumming takes a director’s view of the story

-The Crowded TARDIS, a short feature on the crew changes over 1981-2 and how the production team handled them

-Swap Shop and Blue Peter interviews with Peter Davison

-Deleted scenes

-Theme Music Video

-Music only option

And so to Castrovalva, which rounds off the trilogy with Peter Davison’s Doctor and the Season 19 regulars firmly in place. In this case, the approach is slightly different in that there’s no specific "making of" documentary; what we have instead are extended interviews with Fiona Cumming and Peter Davison of the sort which could easily have been cut with other interviews and made into a feature, but it’s a welcome change to have people talking at length in what comes across as a more relaxed environment. Again looking forward to the logicstics of making the season which followed, ‘The Crowded TARDIS’ concentrates on the difficulty of structuring stories so as to give all four regulars things to do. The Swap Shop segment is surprisingly long, over twenty minutes, and new fans who only know Noel Edmonds from Deal or No Deal and John Craven from Countryfile might be somewhat surprised to discover that they were once lynchpins of a high-profile children’s Saturday morning programme; particular points of interest are Peter Davison talking to Peter Davison and the sheer amount of merchandise that Davison brings in as his swap, consisting of quite possibly every item of Doctor Who merchandise known to exist in 1982. In Blue Peter meanwhile, Simon "Knockers" Groom and Sarah Greene give a potted history of the series (rather suspiciously illustrated with clips from otherwise missing episodes and a stray bit of ‘The Pirate Planet’ in black and white) before interviewing Davison- I have a vague memory that I might have watched both of these segments, however it’s also frustrating that the Blue Peter item isn’t the one I think I remember with the Auton at the Seeleys’ cottage from ‘Spearhead from Space’ in black and white. The deleted scenes don’t really add much and are really just trimmed bits of location footage- the dematerialisation of the angled TARDIS may well have been cut either for timing or because Peter Davison nearly falls off as he jumps in, while there’s also an earthquake as Tegan and Nyssa are climbing the rocks. The theme music video falls neatly into the category of "nice to have" rather than anything else, particularly if (like me) you would struggle to find your vinyl single of the Peter Howell version of the theme (or, indeed, in today’s digital age, anything on which to play it). And I’ll admit that there’s nothing like the occasional burst of Howell to make me ten years old again. Which leaves the Photo Gallery (no major revelations here, but perhaps unsurprisingly plenty of photos taken to publicise an important story with strong designs, and the PDF materials- 1982 annual, some interesting BBC Enterprises sales literature for Season 19 (far more co-ordinated than the ramshackle collection of fonts and styles used for Season 18) and the Radio Times billings, together with an article for Davison’s first episode and some letters to the editor with a range of responses to the new Doctor and transmission time.

Overall, looking at the three stories together I think ‘New Beginnings’ manages both to exceed expectations and to disappoint just slightly. The set of extras assembled for ‘The Keeper of Traken’ is absolutely first class and more than does justice to a story which so often falls between the epics either side in terms of reputation, and while there’s a lot of contextual material around for all three stories, it’s difficult not to see the other two stories as being less well-served by comparison. Of course it’s crucial to have as much of Tom Baker on ‘Logopolis’ as possible, but I’m not totally convinced that the contents of the disc convey as much of a sense of the end of an era as they might. Then again, the title of the set emphasises the beginning of a new Doctor rather than the end of an old one, and the absence of John Nathan-Turner and Anthony Ainley probably accounts for part of the deficiency, but it’s difficult not to feel at times as if the two latter stories start to feel as arid and charmless as, well, a Christopher H. Bidmead script. The end result is that by the time you reach the end of ‘Castrovalva’, the package as a whole feels as if it’s running ever so slightly thin and doesn’t always emphasise the importance of the transition from Tom Baker on Saturday teatimes to Peter Davison in the evening twice weekly. But I don’t want to seem overcritical when a wealth of contemporary trails and interviews have been exhumed from the archives (and not always the official archives, judging from some of the credits). It’s clear that a great deal of research went into finding everything and a lot of time into getting off-air material to the best possible standard, but the set as a whole feels the want of charm or warmth- so perhaps it is the stories themselves after all.