-A Matter of Time, being a documentary feature looking at Graham Williams and his producership of Doctor Who

-The Ribos File, a look at the making of the story itself

-Season 16 Trailer, the original BBC1 trailer

-Continuities

To begin with, a bit of an explanation.

Up to this point in our little meander through the BBC Doctor Who DVDs, I’ve taken box sets as units and reviewed them accordingly. It struck me a while back that this wasn’t going to work with the Key to Time releases, mainly because although the format I’d chosen wasn’t going to produce something readable for six consecutive stories- the end result would be so repetitive and boring that I could produce a radical new re-evaluation of ‘The Power of Kroll’ applying several esoteric branches of critical theory and nobody would know about it because nobody would ever read that far. Plus, as I start looking at the more recent releases, so the number and quality of extras goes up and before you know it, you have three or four hours’ viewing per story rather than two or three, so it was always going to be a long job and a gap of probably a good two months at least between additions to the series. So one story per review it is for now, and I may add some concluding remarks at the end of ‘The Armageddon Factor’ if we last that far.

The Key to Time stories had been a bit of a sore point with British fans and purchasers of the DVD range for a few years before the set was eventually issued in 2007, because a stripped-down release of the stories with basic extras had been released for the American market early in the day and before any of Graham Williams’s stories had been released in the domestic market. Some impatient souls imported the American set; I didn’t, rationalising that any eventual UK release would only have more extras, and so on the day of release I wandered into W H Smith in Leeds, took the box to the till and in a stroke of particularly good fortune the checkout lady swapped the set I’d picked up (numbered about 2700 or so) for number 244. It’s amazing the difference a cardboard box, a plastic sleeve and a sticker can make. One of these days I’m going to buy a new Doctor Who DVD, take it home and watch every scrap of material on it that night, but obviously with 26 episodes plus extras and work in the morning this was going to be a struggle.

Moving on to ‘The Ribos Operation’ itself, it makes sense to have Tom Baker and Mary Tamm renewing their acquaintance on the commentary and they’re clearly very comfortable in each other’s company- they tease and flirt as if they’ve known each other for thirty years and Tom Baker’s flights of fancy are particularly baroque as a consequence. ‘The Ribos File’ is a good account of the making of the story, with contributions from the likes of Prentis Hancock, Nigel Plaskitt and Paul Seed who seem to have spent the last thirty years aging in some quite interesting ways. Seed’s subsequent directing career gives him an interesting double perspective on George Spenton-Foster’s direction in particular- and he and Plaskitt also get to give an authoritative account of the incident with the dog, the sausage and Tom Baker’s lip. It’s visually above average with a good selection of well-researched clips, but otherwise more or less standard for this kind of feature on the DVDs. The particular treat on the disc is however ‘A Matter of Time’, which brings together an illustrious collection of regulars, production staff and writers to give an overview of the Williams era as a whole, putting it in its context and looking at some of the themes which shaped three years’ worth of Doctor Who. Again, there’s an excellent choice of contributors and illustrative clips and it’s a good account of a group of stories which tend to be looked on harshly for reasons which were often out of the production team’s control. There aren’t really any hidden gems on the Continuities, and while the Season 16 Trailer is nice to see, of necessity it’s made up of clips from ‘The Ribos Operation’ and ‘The Pirate Planet’ without any original material other than the captions; equally, the photo gallery is unsurprisingly dominated by shots of the Doctor and Romana due to the need to get some publicity photographs into circulation, although there’s also a bit of standard BBC practice in getting portraits of the main supporting characters and visually interesting sets and costumes.

As the lead story in the season, ‘The Ribos Operation’ has the advantage of everything being under control- budgets, scripts, direction, Tom Baker- and it has a polished competence which many of its contemporaries don’t share, so it’s fitting that the package of extras should also be straightforward, informative and very rewatchable. Bringing out the warmth and emphasis on storytelling in the Williams era while recognising the realities of a series beginning to experience external pressures from different directors, it gives a good account and a promising start for the set.