September 15th, 2023
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Doctor Who The Collection Season 20 Limited Edition Packaging
Available to order from www.amazon.co.uk, www.zavvi.com and various retailers on www.ebay.co.uk
BBC Studios continues to offer Doctor Who fans the opportunity to build their own home archive on Blu-ray with a limited edition NINE DISC box set of the 20th Season from 1983, starring Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor. This set is the most jam-packed release yet, with hours and hours of new and exclusive material.
- Arc Of Infinity
- Snakedance
- Mawdryn Undead
- Terminus
- Enlightenment
- The King’s Demons
- The Five Doctors (20th Anniversary Special)
Celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the programme, these stories feature the return of old friends, enemies and even past Doctors! Over seven exciting stories, the Fifth Doctor, Nyssa (Sarah Sutton), Tegan (Janet Fielding) and Turlough (Mark Strickson) face off against the Black Guardian, Omega, the Mara, the Master, Cybermen and the Time Lords themselves!
All episodes have been newly remastered from the best available sources including original film elements for The Five Doctors – these classic adventures have never looked or sounded so good on home media.
The Collection: Season 20 Blu-ray box set also includes extensive Special Features including:
THE FIVE DOCTORS – 40TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION
- A brand new version of the 90-minute anniversary special, with updated special effects,
- Dolby Atmos & surround sound, plus an exclusive new commentary with Peter Davison, Janet Fielding and Mark Strickson.
UPDATED 2023 SPECIAL EFFECTS
- Exclusive to Blu-ray, on Snakedance and Enlightenment.
BEHIND THE SOFA
- Seven new episodes with Peter Davison, Colin Baker (The Doctor), Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor),
- Sarah Sutton, Janet Fielding, Mark Strickson, Katy Maning (Jo) and Sophie Aldred (Ace).
BLU-RAY TRAILER
- A brand new episode of classic Doctor Who.
IN CONVERSATION
- Interviewer Matthew Sweet chats to Janet Fielding and Sarah Sutton.
LET’S GO DUTCH!
- The TARDIS crew travel to Amsterdam to revisit locations and reminisce about Season 20 and their time on the programme.
LOOK WHO’S DRIVING
- Join Peter Davison, Janet Fielding and Sarah Sutton on an hilarious European Road Trip.
WHEN JANET MET MARTIN
- Janet Fielding chats to Martin Clunes, 40 years on from his appearance in Snakedance.
MAKING THE KING’S DEMONS
- The regular cast return to the castle location and reminisce.
MAKING THE SEASON 20 TRAILER
- A look behind the scenes
LONGLEAT CELEBRATION FOOTAGE
- A previously-unreleased look at the iconic 1983 convention, plus panels featuring Peter Davison, Tom Baker, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee and many more.
STUDIO FOOTAGE
- Hours of material going behind-the-scenes on production of Arc Of Infinity, Snakedance and The Five Doctors.
LOCATION FILM RUSHES
- From The Five Doctors.
RARE CONVENTION FOOTAGE
- Including Australian interviews with Peter Davison and Janet Fielding shot during production of this season.
ONCE UPON A TIME LORD
- A rare US documentary from the 1980s.
NEW 5.1 SURROUND SOUND MIXES
- On Snakedance and The Five Doctors. Plus Dolby Atmos mixes on The Five Doctors.
ARCHIVE TREATS
- Hours of rare and previously unreleased material from the BBC Archives.
HD PHOTO GALLERIES
- Including many previously unseen images.
INFO TEXT
- Behind-the-scenes information and trivia on every episode.
PDF ARCHIVE
- Including scripts, exclusive unseen BBC production files, the Radio Times 20th Anniversary Special and other rarities.
PLUS LOTS MORE!
This nine-disc box set also includes hours of special features previously released on DVD including Documentaries, Featurettes, Audio Commentaries, The Five Doctors Special Edition and more.
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Tom Williams
September 14th, 2024 - 12:52pmVery upsetting brought this brand new from hmv as my last set from Amazon I got rid off had a nasty line on it now this copy had a really bad damage tear too the bottom 🙁 Royal Mail are uncaring now days I don’t wanna return it though as buying new copy’s is expensive now days looks like I just lump it and keep it 🙁
Tom Williams
September 27th, 2024 - 7:22amAnd now I had too again open it and was exactly the same as my previous copy off season 2 the tray was lose so had too glue it back on and the booklet hold has damage too it 🙁 never order from hmv eBay ever again
The Time Lord 1944
June 20th, 2024 - 10:37pmWatching Pyramids of Mars omnibus on BBC4 and noticed that this new master has all the picture issues and judder issues as my season 20 set. Did anyone else notice this?
Gordon
June 20th, 2024 - 10:47pmLooks fine to me
OllieOz
June 20th, 2024 - 11:59pmYes actually! Was wondering if anyone else would post about it so I didn’t feel like I was going mad.
Location film stuff looked fine but a lot of the videotape studio scenes definitely weren’t playing natively. Like S20, I think those scenes have been de-interlaced by mistake.
The Time Lord 1944
June 21st, 2024 - 12:09amSo it must be my TV set up/ model rather than my Blu-ray player that’s causing me to pick up the issues with Season 20. It looks exactly the same fault. When people move they judder and move in fast motion.
Rex F
June 21st, 2024 - 9:21amThe new Pyramids version has been deliberately filmised, so in movement terms it should act the same as any other current drama that isn’t EastEnders/Corrie/Emmerdale. Season 20 is still interlaced, but some setups are converting it to a film-look at certain moments, when certain frames trip up an algorithm somewhere along the line. (I will have another look at some point.)
Time Lord 1944: Does any other film-look programme have the same problem? I suppose the obvious one to try would be New Who tomorrow, but I think you could just be sensitive to the effect of deinterlacing old interlaced VT – the edges/motion blur do look slightly off, giving the effect of a fast shutter speed (think of some battle shots in Gladiator, which is the example that comes to mind first).
OllieOz
June 21st, 2024 - 11:52amIt’s not the setups causing the issues, otherwise other stories on this boxset and seasons would exhibit the same issues, it’s an issue in the restoration’s encode. They’ve literally spent months addressing it so it didn’t interfere with their main frame rate conversion for the US release.
daz
June 21st, 2024 - 6:15pmDo you get the issue on iPlayer too or was this watching live on bbc four or a recording of bbc four?
No issues for me but I never had any with the Blu-ray’s.
OllieOz
June 21st, 2024 - 8:53pmI was watching on iPlayer last night and the studio sequences didn’t seem to play natively, to my eye at least, and I’ve never really noticed this kind of issue with other content I’ve watched on there before.
The Time Lord 1944
June 21st, 2024 - 10:52pmOllieOz yes that makes sense. They must have corrected it because I have had no issues with releases since. Those effected were Season 20, Underwater Menace and Pyramids of Mars. All must have been restored before the issue had been identified. So those not seeing it is it their TV set ups and player set ups that are masking it because the issue is obviously there?
Rex F
June 21st, 2024 - 11:25pmOllieOz: Have you got any links to where it’s been talked about by those involved please, beyond the one tweet by an old RT member about watching on an Oppo? There’s something about the disc encoding or masters (except Five Docs apparently) that causes the problems, but some players/TVs are still able to display the material correctly. On my own setup it’s just certain frames that trip it up, because if I start playback in the middle of a problem shot I get correct 50i playback. It’ll be fields that look too similar, either from filtering/scaling or the compression throwing the second field away to be “helpful” (as happens from time to time on low bitrate TV channels). I really need to look at it again, but it’s finding the motivation…
Rex F
June 21st, 2024 - 11:34pmThe new Pyramids has had the VT sequences deliberately filmised. There’s no fault there, not technically at least.
OllieOz
June 22nd, 2024 - 1:57amThat was pretty much the last thing we heard from them regarding this to be fair, but they did acknowledge there was an issue beyond the player settings they were looking into.
But we do know since then, the US Peter Davison Season 2 release was delayed for an abnormality long time and finally released just a few weeks ago. So far there haven’t been reports of issues but also not many posts directly addressing this anyway. So a big guess on my part, is that they spent this time to address the interlacing issues as they would have been exacerbated by the frame-rate conversion.
Part of me would love to put my theory to the test by importing a copy but at the same time it’s a fair amount of money and effort for the chance of an ultimately minor bit of vindication.
The Time Lord 1944
May 29th, 2024 - 12:19pmI have recently discovered that similar picture issues are present on Networks release of Morecambe and Wise at Thames dvd. They investigated and discovered that the episodes were presented in progressive deinterlaced format instead of interlaced. A limited number of replacement discs were offered but the sets were never recalled so they are still out there being sold in the deinterlaced faulty format. Network went bust before the sets were corrected and reissued in the correct format. Looking at the episodes there is the same judder effect as
season 20. I think this is where the problems with this set lies. With this sort of interlacing issue. I believe certain high end players do mask these sort of issues which would explain why some people didnt see the problem. My guess is it will be corrected for the standard release.
Rex F
May 29th, 2024 - 12:49pmIt’s not the quite the same problem. The S20 discs are correctly interlaced on the disc, with 50 discrete fields per second, but some set-ups are converting them to progressive/deinterlaced at certain moments.
The Time Lord 1944
May 29th, 2024 - 1:06pmRex F thank you for the information
Rex F
May 29th, 2024 - 2:28pmI’ll try to have another play with the discs later if I I can. There isn’t a lot of discrete 50i Blu-ray material outside of archive Who, which makes things more difficult to study. One thing I noticed before is that if you play back a problem shot from the middle of the problem sequence, it’s fine and smooth – so something at the beginning is tripping things up. I’m sure the filtering was making the two fields look too similar, which causes the tech to “help” by weaving them into progressive. (This is where it’d be handy if I had a ROM drive.)
And ta for the tip about M&W – that’s not one that gets spoken about much (it was new to me) so I’ll keep an eye out for v2 on the bottom of the discs when I purchase.
The Time Lord 1944
May 29th, 2024 - 5:55pmI understand that regarding M and W the replacement discs were sent out by network only if requested but the faulty sets continued to be on sale and are still on sale. People have purchased them from various sellers and only get the version 1 discs. Very frustrating.
The Time Lord 1944
May 29th, 2024 - 6:17pmRex F. I mainly got my info regarding M and W from the Roobarb Forum. There are no tips on how to get hold of the V2 discs. Do you have any other sources that might help? All my sources indicate they were only available on the replacement disc programme. I think Network was struggling at the time so weree probably only going to incorporate the V2 discs on future pressings, which never happened as they went bust.
Lee B
February 26th, 2024 - 4:15pmNot sure if this has been mentioned before, there’s a lot to scroll though. But has anyone noticed during the first Raston Warrior Robot section when the Robot “warps” the new effects haven’t been added on the last warp. It just disappears and reappears the same as the TV version without the new effect.
daz
February 26th, 2024 - 6:13pmYes. A surprising error considering it is the 40th Anniversary version.
It’ll probably be fixed for the standard edition.
Lee B
March 1st, 2024 - 10:18pmExactly what I thought. Not sure how they missed that when the rest of that section has the new effects. It makes the last warp seem so out of place.
AfricanQueen
January 26th, 2024 - 4:35pmI’m just wondering if anyone has had or heard about a positive outcome to season 20 picture issues? I’ve tried numerous things to resolve the matter, none of the other boxsets this issue – just hoping the recently announced season 15 doesn’t suffer a similar fate
The Time Lord 1944
January 27th, 2024 - 8:02pmThe people who had picture issues with Season 20 had the same picture issues with The Underwater Menace Blu-ray so I imagine Season 15 may have the same issues as there is no indication that have identified or resolved the issue.
D84
February 1st, 2024 - 11:47amI have seen this issue outside of Who Blu Ray sets
On Christmas Day we had The Wizard of Oz playing via CH5 HD (Freeview)
Played through my BT TV Box Pro, with the same picture settings as it had always had
And that had significant judder issues within some scenes