Doctor Who in 5.1 (The Original Series)

QuadraphonicQuad

Help Support QuadraphonicQuad:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Ranasakawa

1K Club - QQ Shooting Star
Joined
May 19, 2012
Messages
1,251
Location
Australia
I am a fan of the original series of Doctor Who 1963-1981 up until Tom Baker.

I have noticed a few DVDs now contain 5.1 sound. The latest one on DVD from 1975 - Terror Of The Zygons is in 5.1 and it sounds fantastic. The title music sounds brilliant.

There is also a DVD of the original Doctor Who theme from 1963 in 5.1 on a DVD that I need to remember the title of.

It's great to hear these great shows in surround sound at last.
 
Yeah, the guy who does all the mixes, Mark Ayres, is a real genius. He's very dedicated to his work!

If you look at the Restoration Team website, you can see a little of how he works on various episodes to mix the surround - often it involves him locating the original footage, music and sound effects etc and he manually and digitally resynchronizes it all to the original broadcast episodes.

I was at a screening in Riverside Studios in London in 2011, and he theorised that he might even be able to produce surround tracks for even the MONO episodes (1960s and 1970s) should he be able to locate the appropriate music and sound effects
 
I see that these are being released on blu ray, with new 5.1 soundtracks. I get the impression that the 5.1 mixes are not simply carried over from DVD releases, so hopefully will benefit from improved technology. Has anybody got any of these? It looks like there are only one or two 5.1 stories per set. (Maybe one day they will release a special set with just the 5.1 mixes...)

E.g. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Collection-Season-Blu-ray/dp/B08YSJMBFT/
 
The two most recent sets include stories with Atmos mixes.
One of these, ‘the Sea-Devils’ is a crazy electronic music score done by the bbc radio phonic workshop

Thanks!

Looks like one set has an Atmos mix of 1 story (Sea Devils), which is available as episodes or an omibus.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Collection-Blu-Ray-Packaging/dp/B0BSNRGSP9/

The other set has 2 stories in surround, but 5.1 not Atmos. [Edit: see post #7 below]
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Collection-Season-Limited-Packaging/dp/B0CBN3G7JS/

Both are currently only the limited packaging. They should be re-issued in standard packaging in a few months for around £32.

I only have 5.1, so 5.1 is fine for me, but it's still quite expensive to get only one or two stories in surround that I will probably only watch once. So I may try to find a used copy at some later date. (The boxes do have a lot of content, just not enough for a surroundophile.)
 
Last edited:
Thanks!

Looks like one set has an Atmos mix of 1 story (Sea Devils), which is available as episodes or an omibus.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Collection-Blu-Ray-Packaging/dp/B0BSNRGSP9/

The other set has 2 stories in surround, but 5.1 not Atmos.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Collection-Season-Limited-Packaging/dp/B0CBN3G7JS/

Both are currently only the limited packaging. They should be re-issued in standard packaging in a few months for around £32.

I only have 5.1, so 5.1 is fine for me, but it's still quite expensive to get only one or two stories in surround that I will probably only watch once. So I may try to find a used copy at some later date. (The boxes do have a lot of content, just not enough for a surroundophile.)
I don’t have the season 20 set but my understanding is that ‘the five doctors’ 40th Anniversary version does have an atmos mix https://www.doctorwho.tv/news-and-f...vison-next-instalment-collection-bluray-range

I only have 5.1 too but the sea devils still sounds great. Surround mixes are Nice bonuses if you already have the sets
 
Just wondering if any more episodes of the original series have been found. I in particular remember "The Abominable Snowman" from the sixties. Incredible that it is mostly missing. It was very short sighted of the BBC to insist that copies be destroyed after airing!
 
Just wondering if any more episodes of the original series have been found. I in particular remember "The Abominable Snowman" from the sixties. Incredible that it is mostly missing. It was very short sighted of the BBC to insist that copies be destroyed after airing!
I remember hiding behind the settee with that series :LOL:, I was 10, I have a memory (maybe!) of them being controlled(?) by a large-ish silver ball somehow, is that right?
 
No mention in a few years about any recovered episodes but that one has seen an animated release with the original sountrack.
 
Just wondering if any more episodes of the original series have been found. I in particular remember "The Abominable Snowman" from the sixties. Incredible that it is mostly missing. It was very short sighted of the BBC to insist that copies be destroyed after airing!
It is a common mis-conception that the BBC were short-sighted. Then, as now, the BBC was constantly under pressure to save money. DW was a kids' show made cheaply so not seen by the average viewer as important. Videotape was re-used and film was expensive to store. They had to make some hard decisons on what to spend the money on.
 
It is a common mis-conception that the BBC were short-sighted. Then, as now, the BBC was constantly under pressure to save money. DW was a kids' show made cheaply so not seen by the average viewer as important. Videotape was re-used and film was expensive to store. They had to make some hard decisons on what to spend the money on.
Bad decisions! I had read that they (writers and actors union) wanted copies destroyed to ensure the need to keep making new programs. They wanted to prevent re-runs.

The practice of re-using videotape is also why a lot of old CBC programming does not exist. Music Hop with Chad Allen and the Guess Who comes to mind. The same tape would have been re-recorded each week!

IMHO, BBC shows like DR. Who and The Avengers were different. They aired in other countries and were supplied to them on film reels. To destroy those films after airing should have been made a crime!
 
I agree that DW and The Avengers are stand outs. (I have all the Peel/ Tara Avengers on Bluray and they look fab.) It's just that it's easy for us to say in restrospect. Not so easy to justify at the time. :(
 
I agree that DW and The Avengers are stand outs. (I have all the Peel/ Tara Avengers on Bluray and they look fab.) It's just that it's easy for us to say in restrospect. Not so easy to justify at the time. :(
Exactly, the licence fee paying public would have been up in arms if they were to have learnt that tens of thousands of pounds of their money was being spent on storing, for no apparent reason, copies of shows everyone had already seen. With only a couple of TV channels available the last thing the public wanted was repeats!
 
Last edited:
The practice of re-using videotape is also why a lot of old CBC programming does not exist. Music Hop with Chad Allen and the Guess Who comes to mind. The same tape would have been re-recorded each week!
Happened in the US as well. Dark Shadows was unique for a lot of reasons, not least of which is the fact that EVERY episode is available. That's unheard of for any other 1960s soap opera.

(Yes, I know that "available" is doing some heavy lifting here...)
 
Exactly, the licence fee paying public would have been up in arms if they were to have learnt that tens of thousands of pounds of their money was being spent on storing, for no apparent reason, copies of shows everyone had already seen. With only a couple of TV channels available the last thing the public wanted was repeats!
As a "collector" type person I have trouble understanding that mentality. If it was up to me everything that could be preserved would have been. Often you are up against people/management who figure we're done with that now so just throw it away! Throwing it away is one thing but I can imagine the command going out that the films must be destroyed! Criminal!

I can understand reusing video tape when that commodity was expensive, but when transferred to film those films should have been saved! How expensive is a bit of storage space? Worst case place them in the hands of collectors who care enough to preserve them! As I said very short sighted!
 
IIRC, several (late 1960s/early 1970s) issues of Popular Science/Popular Mechanics magazines had articles about the coming home video revolution (there were several incompatible open reel and cartridge home video tape systems & the unusual RCA Holotape system).

These articles only mentioned watching prerecorded movies at home (rented or purchased), I don't recall a single mention of making TV show episodes (or the whole TV series) available to rent or buy.

RCA possibly started the idea of selling 1 or a few episodes of TV shows with their CED videodisc system - the initial 1981-03 catalog had some Star Trek episodes (2/disc), my 1st CED videodisc purchase was "The Menagerie":
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series_(CED)
Anyway, a few years later (~1984), this idea morphed into selling individual Star Trek episodes on Beta/VHS (I bought some on Beta Hi-Fi and VHS Hi-Fi), and of course, the ultimate (starting in the summer of 1994) - Lost in Space on VHS from the Columbia House mail order service!

Seems like nobody thought that people would want to own all the episodes of TV shows.


Kirk Bayne
 
Back
Top