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Serial 7H. Episode Nos. 676, 677, 678, and 679. Title: Remembrance of the Daleks – Special Edition
The Doctor returns to
As he has expected, his old enemies the Daleks are in the area searching for
something he left behind on his first visit. To his
surprise, however, there are two factions of Daleks, and his plans for the
device could be ruined by their civil war, to say
nothing of
starring Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor and Sophie Aldred as Ace. Written by Ben Aaronovitch, Produced by
John Nathan-Turner, Directed by Andrew Morgan.
Originally
transmitted from
DVD Features:
This story has been previously
released on DVD. Special features that
are new to this edition are in italics.
2-disc set. On Disc 1:
-
All four episodes of the story with full restoration
treatment. The restoration treatment was redone
from scratch using technology that was five
years further along than the original edition.
-
Graphical menus, episode and scene selection features,
and subtitles for the hearing impaired
-
Original stereo sound (as the default) or a new 5.1 surround mix.
-
Isolated music option.
Plays the story with only the music on the sound.
- Optional commentary track by actors
Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred. (same as the original edition)
-
Information Text subtitles option. Displays pop-up production trivia throughout
the story.
-
“Back to
School” A 33-minute
behind-the-scenes-of-the-production featurette
featuring interviews
with actors Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred, Simon Williams (Gilmore), Karen Gledhill (Allison),
script editor Andrew Cartmel,
writer Ben Aaronovitch, director Andrew Morgan, and
Moray
Laing from the Doctor Who Adventures comic book.
-
“Remembrances” A 15-minute featurette
about the numerous continuity references in this story and
what their original sources are earlier in the
series. Featuring Andrew Cartmel, Ben Aaronovitch,
Sylvester McCoy,
Sophie Aldred, Karen Gledhill, Moray Laing, and Paul Lang (also from Doctor
Who Adventures).
-
Extended and Deleted Scenes. A 12-minute package of 14 different scenes
that were trimmed or
deleted altogether before
broadcast. These are presented with new introductions from Sylvester
McCoy
and Sophie Aldred.
-
Outtakes. A
4-minute package of 11 different blooper outtakes from the story.
-
Multi-Angle Sequences.
Two elaborate sequences from the story are presented with the
“angle” option
on your remote control
available to you to be able to switch from one camera angle to another at
your leisure. The first sequence is of the scene where Ace
is shot at by a Dalek in the chemistry lab
of the school. The second is of the gate at Ratcliffe’s yard being blown away by the Special
Weapons
Dalek.
-
Trails and Continuity.
A 5-minute package of the trailers and introduction sequences used on
the BBC
for the story’s 1988
broadcast. A few of these were not included in the original edition.
-
Photo
Gallery. A 9-minute package of
production stills taken during the production.
A much smaller
photo gallery was in the original edition.
-
PDF Materials.
Viewable by placing this disc in your computer’s optical drive,
you can see PDF files
containing the Radio Times listings for these episodes
from 1988, and an accompanying article that
ran in the first relevant
issue.
-
1 Easter Egg. Highlight the blank area below to see the
hidden text and what it is and how to find it.
Go into the Special Features
menu, then highlight the selection for “Remembrances.” Now press
The left
arrow.
A Doctor Who logo will
appear. Click on this and you will see
an outtake from
Sophie Aldred’s introductions to the deleted scenes package.
On Disc 2:
-
Davros Connections A
43-minute featurette that seeks to tie together the
story of Davros from his early
days as a child as depicted in the Big Finish
audio series I, Davros through to his five classic
series
TV appearances,
along with his other appearances in Big Finish Doctor Who
audio dramas.
Features
interviews with actors Terry Molloy (Davros in the
1980s), David Gooderson (Davros
in
1979), Michael
Wisher (audio-only, the original Davros), Peter Miles
(Nyder in Genesis of the Daleks),
writers Gary Hopkins, Eric Saward,
Ben Aaronovitch, and Joseph Lidster,
director Ken Grieve,
and Big Finish producer-director Gary Russell.
The original broadcast version of
this story (and the 1993 VHS) featured Beatles music on a jukebox in
Harry’s Café.
This has had to be replaced with
other music tracks for this edition (and the previous DVD edition) as the
rights to
use those
tracks are not available for North American republication.
A FAQ. Why have they re-released Remembrance of the Daleks
like this?
The answer is a bit
complicated.
In 2007, 2entertain in the
series
stories that featured Davros. Four of them had been released before,
however, with only Destiny of the Daleks
being new
to the DVD market. With that in mind,
they decided to try and soup up the box set a bit.
They had been unhappy with the
original
that meant
some special effects had gone missing, and one of the featurettes
didn’t work as intended. (Both of
these
problems
had been repaired for the later North American edition that’s been on our
market since 2002.)
They decided one way to improve the
Davros Box Set would be to make a Special
Edition, with those faults fixed and
some new
special features added.
They also decided to make special
arrangements with Big Finish Productions (www.bigfinish.com), the licensed makers of
audio
dramas of Doctor Who and its related
characters that have been producing new stories regularly since 1999.
These arrangements were to include
all of the titles they had made to that point that featured Davros
on a DVD-Audio
Disc, plus one
new story with Davros exclusive to this box set. And to tie the audios and the TV stories
together, they
made a
further featurette, Davros Connections, and gave it its own disc.
BBC Worldwide Americas soon
announced plans to release this set in
retract
these plans and were only able to release a single title, Destiny of the Daleks, the one we
hadn’t had in our market
yet. The retraction occurred because the price
point they wanted to sell it at, $100 for the whole set, would have undercut
the
North American edition and not buy
the
theirs if
they wanted to release it.
The
Big Finish for $25
per title. It was a big discount
to a consumer to buy all 8 of them as this DVD-Audio, but was still a
back-breaker
price-wise for the North American market.
at that
time, but 2entertain prohibited that as well as it wasn’t yet available
on its own in the
In the summer of 2009, however, it
was finally released on its own there packaged along with the Davros Connections
featurette disc, and this March 2010 North American
release is effectively the North American mirror of that
2009 release.
If you buy this title and become
interested in the audio drams you hear clips of in the Davros Connections disc, please visit
www.bigfinish.com where you can buy them in
either CD form or as a direct mp3 download (for about half the price).
The stories are the four-part I, Davros miniseries (which do not
feature the Doctor), and the three Doctor
Who audio drama
stories: Davros starring Colin Baker, The Juggernauts starring Colin Baker and
Bonnie Langford, and Terror Firma
starring
Paul McGann, India Fisher, and Conrad Westmaas. They all
also star Terry Molloy as Davros (who also played
him in the
three 1980s TV stories). (The story
that was exclusive to the
