"Who will buy?"
"So I could see at my leisure, whenever things go wrong. And I would keep it as a treasure, to last my whole life long."
The appearance of (almost) all of extant Doctor Who on the BBC iPlayer, the corporation’s under appreciated catch-up service, is a kind of miracle. Something unimaginable to fans of earlier generations, for whom the slow acquisition and viewing of episodes of the show from before our first engagement with it could often be a decades long quest.
That’s not an exaggeration. The Long Way Round section of this newsletter is concerned with the order in which I saw 20th century Doctor Who, and it took me fifteen years. This is despite me being of an age where by the time I was in my mid teens, BBC Video released VHSes of old Doctor Who on the regular, UK Gold was up and running, and me being the kind of person who dived into archive television fandom early in the hope of acquiring "pirate" VHSes of stories not yet available via more orthodox means.
If 20th century Doctor Who continues to live as rent free on iPlayer as it does in all our heads, will this mean the end of physical media releases of the series? Perhaps not. But it will be the end of them being the only way to engage with the series' past in any sort of sustained way, and this is something that prompts, at least to me, a question.
Which Doctor Who episodes have you bought the most often? Not including things like novelisations and talking books. I mean, the actual episodes of the tv series. Of course, most people have never bought any Doctor Who at all. But this is a post on a Doctor Who newsletter. We’re among friends here. Or at worst amongst fellow travellers in the great journey of life.
I have a working assumption that a fan of 45 or more is, like me, probably going to have bought (or been bought) a majority of surviving 20th century episodes twice (once on VHS, then again on DVD) and be at roughly the midway point of getting them all on Blu-ray. They’ll also have bought most 21st century episodes at least once, on DVD until 2009 and then on Blu-ray after that. Many will have upgraded the SD Eccleston and Tennant episodes to Blu-ray when that became the preferred purchase format for later series. I know I did. Some will have shelled out for the 4K upscale of Twice Upon A Time.
Right? Right.
I know that I have bought every Jodie Whittaker episode once, across three Blu-ray steelbooks and the non-steelbook single release of Revolution of the Daleks. I also know I’d buy The Power of the Doctor again if the deleted scenes Chris Chibnall promised on the commentary on the current Blu-ray and then didn't actually include on the disc were allowed to escape the Cardiff vaults. I also have the US single disc of Dark Water / Death In Heaven because it was a 3D conversion, and the UK single disc of Deep Breath, because it was £1.00 in a sale and has an exclusive Strax-based comedy minisode.
Now, it’s possible, even likely, that in the age of streaming and that, younger fans won't feel the need to purchase old Doctor Who, because they won't need to purchase it to see it, after all. I’d worry that any young people reading this would be aghast by nostalgia for consumerist profligacy. But I don’t think there are any young people reading this. Write in it you are.
So, anyway, those are our baselines. Three times for most of the 20th century stuff. Twice for less recent new century stuff. Once for the more recent new century stuff. This is, of course, mad. Not all that long ago, or so it seems to me, the idea of accessing, seeing, owning any of the Doctor Who transmitted before you were born was roughly as plausible as getting lost while looking for your big coat and being made King of Narnia. From that to it all being on the internet in a click in a generation.
Revenge of the Cybermen was the first VHS (1983) and the first VHS to be re-issued (1984) with a new (and better) cover. It was reissued again in 1985, 1986, 1991 and again and for the last time in 1999. That final release was uncut. All the previous issues had all been of the same compilation edit, and the changes between them had largely consisted of shifts in price points and BBC Video catalogue number. Revenge was on the first season Blu-ray in 2018, but had been a late DVD. It was also, like (almost?) all Doctor Who included in the hugely successful DVD Files magazine series. If you'd bought all of those, you'd have nine copies of Revenge of the Cybermen. That's a lot.
Now, I'm assuming that anyone who did buy all of those editions did so for completism's sake. But a combination of one of the edited VHSes, the unedited VHS, one DVD and the Blu-ray is probably quite common for UK fans. Besides, that completist fan is going to have more than nine. They might have bought the second Season 12 Blu-ray (which simply has a note on it saying that it's a re-issue). Not only that, but Revenge's first release was during the first home video format war and it was issued not just on VHS, but also on Betamax and even Video 2000. Do they count separately? Do anyone other than a wealthy completist get all three? Was anyone unfortunate enough to switch sides in a three belligerent format war twice? Abandoning Video 2000 for Betamax only to see VHS triumph?
Now, this is all hypothetical for me personally. I never bought Revenge on Betamax, Video 2000 or even VHS. Only on DVD and Blu-ray. (My childhood next door neighbour has a copy which I frequently borrowed, and I eventually recorded it off UK Gold.) But it might be an issue for some of you. Maximising the count, including all formats and covers, we get twelve.
No, thirteen. I forgot the laserdisc. But what about non UK editions? For the VHS alone there were two US editions (both cut), two Australian editions (one uncut) and two New Zealand editions (ditto). There was also, not quite uniquely, a Japanese edition. Agh. But then I didn’t have any of those either. Did you? I mean, if you are or were a resident of one of those countries the chances are you may have. But then you're unlikely to have that many of the UK releases. Unless you're that aforementioned absolute completist.
Pyramids of Mars, released in the UK in 1985, can boast even more non UK editions, being available as Norwegian, Finnish and Swedish releases as well as in all the countries Revenge was. It also had a Betamax release, but not a Video 2000 one. It's out on DVD, was in the DVD Files, but is not yet on Blu-ray. Although what this excessive internationalisation has reminded me about is that I've not included non-UK editions of the DVDs and Blu-rays in this mental totting up. Although fortunately there do only tend to be a couple of those, due to them having regional rather than national SKUs.
Agh. We’ve already reached a number I can only describe as “umpty” and have done with it.
When I started on this train of thought, I was pretty confident that Spearhead from Space (1970) would end up being the story both that I have bought the most times, and which it's been possible to buy the most times. But it's only had two UK VHSes, and a limited number of overseas variants (Australia and the US, the latter twice). It's one of the handful of stories to be released on non-magazine mounted DVD twice, and its standalone Blu-ray editions means it will be perhaps the only to have two distinct Blu-ray releases, when it eventually rocks up as part of Season 7 The Collection. I've owned two VHSes, two DVDs and will own two Blu-rays of this story. Six seems excessive to me, and surely I have't surpassed that.
But then I remembered audios. Genesis of the Daleks has been available on vinyl, cassette and CD and more than twice for each. It's also been out on VHS, DVD (a couple of times, including editions that just alter packaging) and was also on that first Blu-ray and its reissue. You can get to 14 versions of that story even before you start contemplating international versions. Fortunately, I've only ever owned five. (The 1989 cassette, the DVD, the Blu-ray, the CD given away free with a newspaper and the vinyl reissue I bought for the cover.)
Okay, let's narrow this down. No definitive statement at which story it's been possible to buy the most times (although Revenge of the Cybermen is a good candidate for worldwide, and Genesis of The Daleks for the UK only). Let's just work out what story I've bought the most. Or rather which episode, because audios is the key thing here. I think the episodes I personally have bought most are what we apparently now must call "orphan" episodes of Doctor Who. Surviving episodes from otherwise missing serials. I've bought The Underwater Menace Episode 3 twice on CD, on The Missing Years tape released in 1998, on Lost in Time, on its own standalone DVD in 2015 and as one of the extras on its animated remake just last year. That's six, and while I will own six copies of Spearhead from Space, perhaps seven if there's a 4k release, I don't currently.
Six is also the number of times I've bought The Wheel of Fortune, the third episode of The Crusade, which was first released to the public as part of my beloved The Hartnell Years documentary tape (1991). At the time it was the only episode of the serial known to exist. A little under eight years later, thanks to the diligence and hard work of New Zealand Doctor Who fans Paul Scoones and Neil Lambess that serial's first episode, The Lion, was uncovered and almost immediately released on VHS. Obviously, The Wheel of Fortune accompanied it. Both episodes were then included on the Lost in Time DVD collection (2004) put together partially as a vehicle for the release of that year's surprise return Day of Armageddon. Shortly after that I bought both again on CD as part of the audio only "Missing Stories” range. Then five years later when that set was reissued with extra features, including camera scripts. Last year I got it on Blu-ray as part of Season 2.
But there's another once-orphan episode that can outdo even that. The Hartnell Years was accompanied by The Troughton Years, which contained The Enemy of the World Episode 3. Although it wasn't released again on VHS, it was also included on Lost in Time, released long after I'd bought it on CD. I picked up the CD reissue with scripts on it too. That's four. I also bought it on iTunes on that miraculous day in 2013, and subsequently twice on two different DVD editions. That's seven. Oof. That will almost certainly rise to eight, when there's a Season 5 Blu-ray.
It's expensive being a friend to The Enemy of the World.
