Doctor Who: Series 1-4 & Specials Blu-ray Collection review

Available now from BBC Studios!

Look, you know the drill by now. Russell T Davies‘ thrilling and inventive revival of Doctor Who has rightly taken its place in the pantheon of television success stories, and for good reason. From that first shriek of the iconic theme tune, the show was back and better then ever, retooled for a whole new generation to fall in love in with it. And fall in love with it they did!

Looking back some 18 years later, it’s amazing how many iconic episodes there were in the show’s first five years back on the Saturday Night schedules. Less iconic however has been the show’s HD home media releases, which have been flawed to say the least. Luckily though, just in time for RTD’s return to the series and the advent of a whole new era, BBC Studios have set out to put together the definitive presentation of the show’s initial run of 60 episodes out into stores, newly remastered and repackaged in an exciting collector’s set.

So is it worth a purchase? Luckily, we here at Critical Popcorn have managed to secure a copy in order to give you the full rundown!

So read on for our resident Whovians Matt Dennis and Pete Messum‘s lowdown on what to expect from this new set, including the new remaster itself.

Is the boxset worth your hard earned credits? Let’s get stuck in and find out…

The Packaging

Series 1-4 and the Specials are packaged in separate Amaray cases and collected in a slipcase, allowing fans to display together or individually as they wish. Disappointingly, the artwork throughout is incredibly bland for a Doctor Who release; nowhere near the high standard as seen in the Doctor Who: The Collection Blu-ray range, the Limited Edition Steelbooks or even the original DVD releases. A minimalist approach isn’t necessarily a bad way to go, but it all feels rushed. Every photo of David Tennant‘s Tenth Doctor has the original background clearly visible around his hair, as if the artist didn’t have the time to cut it out properly, which is much more noticeable in person than online.

The colour-coding is a nice visual, and the idea of the symbols representing each Doctor is neat, but (nit-pick time) the the Tennant seasons feature the ‘Classic’ Seal of Rassilon which was never seen in his run (in fact, when Rassilon appeared in The End of Time, he sported a whole new emblem). Another oddity can be found on the reverse cover for the Specials, which exclusively features imagery from The Next Doctor, which is curious for a collection of five episodes. The discs for each series feature the same artwork as their respective front covers, although each episode is listed, making it easy to find which disc you want to put on. Given how many talented digital artists Doctor Who has inspired over the years, it’s incredibly disappointing to see the packaging look so uninspired.

Packaging Score

Video and Audio

Get ready folks, this is gonna get technical. From Rose through to The Next Doctor, Doctor Who was shot and mastered in standard definition, with Planet of the Dead, The Waters of Mars and The End of Time Parts One and Two being the only episodes in true HD. Therefore, a majority of the episodes on this new Blu-ray release are upscaled from their original masters and presented in full HD. It’s not the first time these episodes have been released on Blu-ray either, with a huge box set released in 2013, standalone releases in 2015, steelbook releases over 2017-2019 and finally this new 2023 release, which features brand-new remasters on brand-new discs. This isn’t simply a re-release, even if the contents are near-identical.

On the original Blu-ray releases of Series 1, 2, 3 and 4 from 2013, each episode was presented in 1080/24p with DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, an improvement over the box set DVD’s 576/25i with Dolby Digital 5.1 presentation – although not without issues. While both the video and audio are slightly better, every single episode was slowed down to 24fps, with the pitch of the audio adjusted to sound natural. It’s not hugely noticeable (the most obvious difference is with the theme music), and it’s only slightly slower, but it’s not technically correct – and Doctor Who fans noticed. There are also some text errors on the earlier Blu-ray, including typos and a slightly adjusted font, as a result of replacing all text with HD versions.

The Complete Specials was initially released on Blu-ray in 2010 alongside its original DVD release and features one upscaled episode (The Next Doctor) alongside the other true HD episodes, with DTS-HD audio (slightly different between the upscaled and HD episodes) and a 1080/30i video presentation. However, in 2019 the Specials were released in Steelbook form, and in this release were all slowed-down to 1080/24p like with Series 1-4 (as a side note, the exclusive bonus disc on that Steelbook doesn’t have the same issue). It’s not clear why this was done when the previous 2010 Blu-ray release was fine, especially given that The Next Doctor has a completely different upscaled presentation to its 2010 counterpart.

Now we come to this new 2023 release, which presents every episode in 1080/25i, with the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 sound mix, resulting in the first time every episode has been available in high definition with the correct frame rate, making this release – from a purely technical perspective – the best these episodes of Doctor Who have ever looked. It appears that all of the text errors have been corrected (and the font is much more accurate to the original DVD releases), there’s no obvious noise reduction in the picture and there’s no visible slowdown, although episodes run a couple of seconds longer. As an example, Series 1’s Dalek on its original 2005 DVD runs at 45:22, while on the 2013 Blu-ray runs at a longer 47:36, and on this 2023 Blu-ray runs at 45:25. Each episode we played sounds better – the theme just sounds right on this release, compared to the earlier Blu-rays, which is great to hear.

For a subjective comparison, we checked out a few episodes across each release. Series 1 and 2 had a very particular visual style, which softens the videotape look somewhat, but Dalek exhibits some minor improvements between DVD and Blu-ray. It’s noticeably an upscale, and the colour grading might be ever so slightly different (we’ve not been able to do a proper side-by-side comparison), yet it’s still the best the episode has looked. As Series 3 and 4 have a slightly different photographic look to them, we checked out Series 4’s Planet of the Ood across each release. Again, it’s obviously an upscale but without the softer ‘glow’ effect on these later series, the picture is slightly cleaner, although the differences between the DVD and Blu-ray are similarly minor, but much more noticeable on a bigger screen.

Comparing the Specials across the 2010, 2019 and 2023 Blu-ray releases, The Next Doctor has the aforementioned technical improvements but virtually no difference in the picture upscale, while The Waters of Mars (the second episode of Who to be shot and mastered in HD) looks excellent – and naturally much better than the SD upscales. The only difference between each Blu-ray release of Waters is the frame rate, which has been fixed on the 2023 release. If you only own the Specials on DVD though, we’d suggest buying this release just to see The Complete Specials in HD as they really do look fantastic.

It’s also worth mentioning that, as these are brand-new discs, the menus are now completely different, with no 3D TARDIS animations and no episode selection (you’ll have to select the relevant episode in scene selection). Instead, we’re treated to the time vortex from this era of the show with the 2005-07 theme music (yes, even on Series 4 and the Specials annoyingly). Curiously, the 2018-22 Doctor Who ident plays when the disc is loading, meaning that between the packaging, disc intro and the main menu three completely different logos are used. It’s surprising that neither the current ‘diamond’ logo animation or Whoniverse ident are used instead.

Video and Audio Score

Extras

In contrast to the comprehensive Classic Doctor Who Collection boxsets of recent years, this boxset is rather a let-down in terms of the bonus material. Aside from a short interview feature, there’s little else here that will tempt previous buyers to double dip (or in this case, quadruple). The new feature itself, Doctor Who Recollections with Russell and David (17 mins), appears to have been filmed alongside production on the 60th Anniversary Specials, with the acclaimed writer and star discussing their memories of the 2005-10 era as well as teasing the new incarnation of Doctor Who with the involvement of Bad Wolf and Disney+. There’s very little new information here, but Russell T Davies and David Tennant are as entertaining and charming as ever, making it a perfectly watchable addition to the set.

Credit where credit is due, there are at least some ‘new to disc’ commentaries included for The Next Doctor, Planet of the Dead and The Waters of Mars, which plugs the remaining gaps so that all 60 episodes have a commentary. But these are merely repurposed podcast tracks from the BBC website, which have been widely available to download and listen to elsewhere since 2009. The sync on these three tracks is also not the best it could have been.

As for the existing content, everything is here (more or less). A couple of episodes of Doctor Who Confidential have been trimmed for compliance reasons, the Confidential episode on Planet of the Dead is presented in SD (while previous releases were in HD), whilst the cast commentary for Series 3’s Last of the Time Lords has been substituted for the producer’s podcast chat-track, but otherwise every other featurette, video diary and mini-episode is here in full (including the proper version of the 2005 Children in Need mini-episode for the first time on Blu-ray). However, that’s hardly enough reason for extra feature enthusiasts to splash out yet again.

Ultimately, it’s a boxset of missed opportunities when it comes to the extras. New retrospective documentaries and features cost money, that makes sense, but there’s enough never-before-released material available in the archives to put together a pretty definitive package without going to the trouble of making new extras from scratch. Conspicuous by their absence here are animated specials The Infinite Quest and Dreamland (previously released with the Specials steelbook), the Series 2 Tardisodes, 41 additional online podcast commentaries, the uncut episodes of Confidential (now on iPlayer), the Attack of the Graske interactive game, and countless BBC News and Blue Peter features from 2005-09. Had any of these been included, the case could have been made for fans to buy this set on release day. As it stands, there’s little reason to rush out and buy this set if it’s fresh new bonus material you’re after.

Extras Score

Conclusively…

Overall, is the Doctor Who: Series 1-4 & Specials Blu-ray Collection worth it? If you want to watch the episodes in the best available quality, it’s well worth purchasing. A majority of the special features from earlier releases remain intact, but if you’re a completist, it might be worth holding onto the original DVD box sets and The Complete Specials Steelbook release simply for the (few) additional extras. If you already own the Steelbooks for each series, we’d even be tempted to swap out the discs in those sets with these newly-remastered ones – particularly as the 2023 packaging is so lacklustre. This release definitely isn’t up to the standard of the Doctor Who: The Collection ‘Classic’ series releases, and it’s frustrating to see so few new extras (especially given what’s now available as part of the Whoniverse on iPlayer), but the improved picture and sound on the episodes does make it a worthwhile purchase for fans.