Doctor Who: Tom Baker - The Complete First Season (1974-1975)

[biglou114]

Doctor Who: Tom Baker - The Complete First Season Blu-ray

This entry showed up a bit earlier on Best Buy’s website. It could be the start of something exciting.


Info about this season:

Tom Baker's first season was the 12th overall, and was broadcast in 1974 and 1975. During this season he is accompanied by Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) and Harry Sullivan (Ian Marter).

This season of the show includes the following 5 serials:
Robot (4 Episodes)
The Ark in Space (4 Episodes)
The Sotaran Experiment (2 Episodes)
Genesis of the Daleks (6 Episodes)
Revenge of the Cybermen (4 Episodes)

These episodes were mainly recorded on SD video tape with occasional scenes shot on film (AFIK: none of the original elements survive to scan into HD). Also, some of the serials experimented with outdoor video cameras. So, the best we can hope for is upconversions of the materials.

[Smegma]

I've been waiting for this

[drush9999]

The finest season of Who

[Scarface32]

I thought a few episodes were lost due to BBC not knowing the value of older material and throwing out some to make room for new stuff in the warehouse? So how can it be "complete"

[NLScavenger]

It's about time they're doing season sets.

Originally Posted by Scarface32

I thought a few episodes were lost due to BBC not knowing the value of older material and throwing out some to make room for new stuff in the warehouse? So how can it be "complete"

Tom Baker era episodes are not affected. Only the first two Doctors have missing episodes.

[Jezza]

Originally Posted by Scarface32

I thought a few episodes were lost due to BBC not knowing the value of older material and throwing out some to make room for new stuff in the warehouse? So how can it be "complete"

It wasn't so much they were junked because they didn't know the value of old material, but that they wiped the videotape the episodes were shot on so it could be reused for further episodes and other shows. Although it's true they didn't know the value of it, but there was never any thought that episodes would be rerun at a later stage, so they weren't preserved.
Many early episodes only now exist because they were sold to other countries and were rediscovered many years later.

To break it down, 97 episodes from the 1960s are missing, which only covers the first two Doctors (William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton). From the 1970s onwards all episodes of Doctor Who exist.
This set covers the first season to star Tom Baker (the Fourth Doctor) who took on the part in 1974. It is not the very first season of Doctor Who, it is in fact Season 12.

For the record, some of the missing episodes have since been recreated using animation and the original off-air soundtrack

[Scarface32]

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

Tom Baker era episodes are not affected. Only the first two Doctors have missing episodes.

I got confused by “First Season” being in the title. I was thinking of William Hartnell.

[biglou114]

I'm just about to edit the OP to make clear about the season, and what might be done for this set.

EDIT: Done.

[Desslok]

Given that these episodes were shot on a combination of 16mm film (exteriors) and standard def video (interiors), I'm curious how much room for improvement might there actually be?

[StephenFS]

Originally Posted by Desslok

Given that these episodes were shot on a combination of 16mm film (exteriors) and standard def video (interiors), I'm curious how much room for improvement might there actually be?

I wonder that too, but it'll be a shelf space saver, if nothing else.

[TravelNurseRN]

Id buy this just for the scratch proof coating since we cant expect HD

[willbfree]

Thats great especially if these are sourced from the PAL masters. So even though it isn't HD it will be better than we have ever seen in the US.

[inkermoy]

Originally Posted by Desslok

Given that these episodes were shot on a combination of 16mm film (exteriors) and standard def video (interiors), I'm curious how much room for improvement might there actually be?

Yeah, seems kind of a bizarre choice to me. It would just be upscaling then? Maybe with some refinements?

[StarkRomanoff]

The BB link says "item no longer available" and doesn't have any information on the product except the name.

[Nailwraps]

On the topic of season sets, it'd be great if Warner/BBC started doing seasons sets of the classic series starting with Jon Pertwee even if it was just DVD only (and provided the special edition counterparts of selected stories are included in lieu of the original releases) because one of the reasons is that a number of them are OOP.

[El_Fez]

Even if the visual improvement is negligible, I'll still buy this just so I can save some goddamned shelf space!

[Jezza]

Originally Posted by hariseldon

If the PAL SD masters are in good shape then it's a bit better than upscaling the old DVD.
Some 16mm film transfers to HD pretty nicely, but it's certainly going to be dependent on the quality of camera/film stock adn condition of the originals that are left.

Since the original DVD are pretty old transfers anyway, just updating those would help. The higher quality of PAL vs NTSC SD does leave some extra headroom already

The 16mm film won't look any better for this season though as it was all telecined onto 2" videotape. There are a handful of episodes later in the series for which the original camera negatives do still exist though, so they could easily be presented in HD.

A release such as this will be all dependent on how well it's handled. The Restoration Team spent years restoring all the episodes and by and large were presented perfectly on DVD. Handing all that over to someone who never participated in the restorations is concerning because the slightest error will easily be picked (such as how the discs are authored or if any special features are left off).

I recently compared the new Shada BD with the original DVD for te studio videotape footage and other than slightly better contrast on the BD, the upgrade isn't noticeable. So, considering the upgrade will be minimal it will have to be a stellar release, one that surpasses the DVDs to make it worthwhile.

[iaragorn1]

If this does materialize on Blu-ray, I would say that this is a good way to start Tom Baker's stories, but I need to admit he is my favorite.

The stories are all good, "Genesis of the Daleks" and "Arc in Space" are classics, and in my humble opinion Robot, the first story is the weakest; I also quite like the Sontaran Experiment and it's also one of the shortest stories ever for classic Who.

Not the best season of Tom's reign, imho, but very good at the very least and the only time Tom's character sees the Cybermen.

And it should be noted that after "Robot", all of the stories are kind of connected which is a good reason to put them together.

[Gorgon]

Tom Baker's run was actually my first intro to Dr Who, so it holds a place in my heart for that.
But also, by happenstance, his was the intro to Dr Who for my Daughter as well, as it was shown on YTV each week-day (after school) as she was growing up!
Whatever I had going on, I'd always sit down and watch it with her.
Great times....

Same with "Reboot" and some others. YTV had great stuff on in the late '80's and early 90's.

[BNex99]

My main concern is that the US version (at least) will be slowed down to 23.976 like almost everything else BBC releases these days.