The first two BBC Doctor Who VHS releases of 1991 were The Krotons and The Curse of Fenric, both were released in late February and both were quickly acquired with birthday money, and I’ve already written on both serials in different contexts on here (and there are un-paywalled links to the pieces in the titles above). Now, the version of The Curse of Fenric on that cassette was a different beast from the one that had been transmitted only slightly more than a year before. It ‘Contains New Material Not Originally Broadcast’ according to a flash across one corner of Alistair Pearson’s attractive cover art; and while none of these terms were applied to it officially in 1991 it’s become known over time as the Special Edition and / or the Extended VHS Edit.

Fenric had overrun so dramatically when being edited for transmission that there seems to have been serious, if brief, consideration to offering BBC One a five part version, before it was decided that a) it would disrupt the structure of the serial too much and b) the additional payments needed to all cast and much crew would be a logistical nightmare.

In August 1990, just before the twentieth century BBC Doctor Who production office closed for the last time, Fenric’s producer John Nathan-Turner and director Nicholas Mallet edited six to seven minutes of material back into the story, even finding space in the budget to commission new music to cover it from the story’s composer Mark Ayres. It was more or less JNT’s last act as a BBC staff producer. All three men would have preferred to present the Fenric VHS as a feature length compilation, rather than as four episodes of unequal lengths, but BBC Video had only recently accepted that Doctor Who fans did not like Doctor Who compilations. Because of this they were reluctant to issue any more because they felt they would get obnoxious letters about it if they did.