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Doctor Who: The Complete Sixth Series starring Matt Smith as the Doctor, Karen Gillan
as Amy Pond, Arthur Darvill
as Rory Williams, and guest starring Alex Kingston as River Song.
6 Discs. Available either in standard-definition yet
widescreen DVD or high-definition
(1080i) Blu-Ray. The
disc contents are otherwise identical between the sets.
It has an
outer cover, containing a “booklet” style box within with each disc
on its own “page”
of the booklet. The
booklet also has some pages detailing the contents, and a comic-book
style page of artwork that depicts key moments from the
story arc.
On all of the discs:
- DTS HD 5.1 sound.
-
Graphical menus, scene selection features, and subtitles for the hearing
impaired.
On Disc 1:
The 2010 Christmas Special, A Christmas Carol. 62 minutes.
Amy and Rory are trapped on a passenger spaceship carrying 4,000 people that cannot land
safely without the help of Kazran Sardick, a miser who must be shown the true meaning of
Christmas by the Doctor tampering with his past to change his present and the future.
Written by Steven Moffat and directed by Toby Haynes.
Originally
transmitted on
Extras:
- A Christmas Carol Confidential. Full 56-minute length making-of-the-show documentary.
- Comic Relief Sketches: Space (4 minutes) and Time (3 minutes). These are mini-episodes
made for the annual Comic Relief charity
telethon featuring the main stars, and the problems
that arise when the TARDIS materializes inside
itself.
On Disc 2:
Episodes 1
and 2:
The Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon (2-part
opener), where the Doctor, Amy,
Rory, and River discover an alien incursion in 1960s
the space program, and a mysterious little girl. If only they could remember the aliens…
Guest stars
Alex Kingston as River Song.
Written by
Steven Moffat and directed by Toby Haynes.
Originally transmitted on BBC1 and BBCHD on 23 and
Episode 3:
The Curse of the Black Spot, where our
heroes visit a pirate ship in 1696 that is stranded
at sea and cursed by a siren…
Written by
Steve Thompson and directed by Jeremy Webb.
Originally transmitted on BBC1 and BBCHD on
Extras:
- Commentary track for The Impossible Astronaut featuring
Arthur Darvill, Producer Marcus
Wilson, and Line
Producer (US) David Mason.
- Monster File – The Silence. An 11-minute featurette spotlighting the Silence monsters.
- Prequels. These appeared on the BBC website in advance
of the broadcast of Episodes 1
and 3 and run 1-2 minutes long. The first features President Nixon receiving
a mysterious
phone call in the Oval Office. The other is a diary entry by Captain Avery
about the
circumstances that have befallen his pirate ship.
On Disc 3:
Episode 4:
The Doctor’s Wife, where a
distress call from a Time Lord leads the crew to take the
TARDIS
outside the universe, where the Doctor meets an old friend with a new
face…
Written by
Neil Gaiman and directed by Richard Clark.
Originally transmitted on BBC1 and BBCHD on
The Monster
Files: the Silence. An 11-minute
behind-the-scenes featurette about the making
of the monsters from the opening two-parter.
Episodes 5
and 6::
The Rebel Flesh / The Almost People (2-part
story), where our heroes visit the future and
find a technology that copies people perfectly… too
perfectly…
Written by
Matthew Graham and directed by Julian Simpson.
Originally transmitted on BBC1 and BBCHD on 21 and
Extras:
- Commentary track for The Doctor’s Wife featuring writer
Neil Gaiman.
- Commentary track for The Rebel Flesh featuring actors Marshall
Lancaster (Buzzer),
Mark Bonnar (Jimmy), and Director
Julian Simpson.
- Monster File – The Gangers. A 13-minute featurette spotlighting the Gangers.
- “Night and the Doctor” These are a
set of 4 mini-episodes exclusive to this set, never before
seen on television. They are:
- “Bad Night” (4
minutes) where Amy catches the Doctor off having adventures on his
own
while she and Rory sleep at “night” in the TARDIS.
- “Good Night” (5 minutes)
where Amy and the Doctor have a heart-to-heart about the
conflicting
memories she has about the two different timelines she’s lived in.
- “First Night” (2 minutes)
where we see the first time the Doctor broke River Song out
of Stormcage Prison for a night out on the universe.
- “Last Night” (4 minutes)
where the Doctor takes River out three times over, and
discovers the tragedy of one of those times.
On Disc 4:
Episodes 7
and 8:
A Good Man Goes to War/ Let’s Kill Hitler, where the Doctor calls in old debts to take on the
forces against him, and where he at last finds out who River
Song is…
And then in Part 2, longtime friend of Amy and Rory’s, Mels, hijacks the TARDIS for an encounter
with the greatest war criminal in history… and Hitler.
Guest stars
Alex Kingston as River Song.
Episode 7 written by Steven Moffat and directed by Peter Hoar.
Originally transmitted on BBC1 and BBCHD on
Episode 8 written by Steven Moffat and directed by Richard Senior.
Originally transmitted on BBC1 and BBCHD on
Episode 9:
Night Terrors, where the Doctor makes a
house call on a young boy who’s frightened
of the monsters in his closet… with good
reason….
Written by
Mark Gatiss and directed by Richard Clark.
Originally transmitted on BBC1 and BBCHD on
Episode 10:
The Girl Who Waited. Amy becomes separated from the Doctor
and Rory in a time
compressed hospital facilty,
causing her to lose touch with them for over 30 of her own years…
Written by Tom MacRae. Directed by Nick Hurran
Originally transmitted on BBC1 and BBCHD on
Extras:
- Commentary track for A Good Man Goes to War featuring actors
Arthur Darvill, Neve
McIntosh (Madame Vastra), and visual FX supervisor Tim Barter.
- Monster File – The Anti-Bodies. A 9-minute featurette
spotlighting the antibody robots from
Let’s Kill Hitler.
- Prequels. More from the BBC website. Again 1-2 minutes long, and there are two
here, one
for A
Good Man Goes to War where the Headless Monks make a purchase from Dorium, and
one for Let’s
Kill Hitler where Amy leaves a message for the Doctor on the TARDIS asking
if he’s found her daughter yet.
On Disc 5:
Episode 11:
The God Complex The
Doctor, Amy, Rory, and a small party of people are trapped in a
setting that looks like a 1980s hotel behind the doors of
which lie everyone’s greatest fears.
Written by
Toby Whithouse and directed by Nick Hurran
Originally transmitted on BBC1 and BBCHD on
Episode 12:
Closing Time The Doctor pays a return visit to his lodger
friend Craig, just to say hello
and goodbye, but a cybernetic rat does too…
Guest stars
Alex Kingston as River Song. Also
features the Cybermen.
Written by
Gareth Roberts and directed by Steve Hughes
Originally transmitted on BBC1 and BBCHD on
Episode 13
The Wedding of River Song The
Doctor must die. It’s a fixed
point time, and must always
happen, and when it does not… all of history breaks…
Guest stars
Alex Kingston as River Song.
Extras:
- Commentary track for The Wedding of River Song featuring
Writer and Executive Producer
Steven Moffat, actress Francis Barber (Madame Kovarian), and Director Jeremy Webb.
- Monster File – the Cybermats. A
10-minute featurette spotlighting the Cybermats seen in
Closing Time.
- Prequel. A 1-minute prequel from the BBC website for The Wedding of River Song where
the ominous children’s rhyme plays over
scenes from the episode.
- “Night and
the Doctor – Up All Night.”
One more 2-minute scene from this series, although
this one looks more like an unused website
prequel. It goes with Closing Time
and features
Craig, Daisy, and baby Alfie in their kitchen
just before Daisy leaves for the weekend.
- Trailers (2). The 1-minute long each trailers that previewed
the two halves of the season on
the BBC.
On Disc 6:
- Doctor Who Confidential
Cut-Down. These are abbreviated versions
of the Doctor Who
Confidential documentary
series that accompanied each episode on BBC3 straight after
BBC1 transmission. (The series has just been cancelled as well,
so this is the last set we’ll
see these on.)
- The episodes are: 1) “Coming to
3) “Ship Ahoy!” (12 min), 4) “Bigger on the Inside”
(12 min), 5) “Double Trouble” (14 min),
6) “Take Two” (12 min), 7) “The Born Identity (9 min),
8) “River Runs Wild” (13 min),
9) “About a Boy” (14 min), 10) “What Dreams May Come”
(11 min), 11) “Heartbreak
Hotel” (9 min), 12) “Open All Hours (13 min), 13) “When
Time Froze” (9 min), and
14) “The Night’s Tale” (15 minutes).
- That last one, “The Night’s
Tale,” is exclusive to this set and has never been broadcast on
television.
It spotlights, with Director Richard Senior, the making of the
mini-specials that
appear elsewhere on this set.
Frequently Asked Question: What are the differences between the “vanilla”
versions of the
sixth
series episodes that were released earlier and what’s on this set?
Answer: Everything that was on the vanilla releases
is also present on this set, with one
exception. The standalone release of A Christmas Carol contained the
57-minute Doctor Who
at the Proms special of concert Doctor
Who music from the Royal Albert Hall in the summer
of 2010. That is not present on this set.
If one counts this series as a continuation of the original series, then these are eleven stories,
numbers 217-228, and episode numbers 781 through 795.