Doctor Who: The Three Doctors

Back in 1973, I was one year old. "Doctor Who" was ten. For its anniversary, the powers that be decided that a multi-Doctor story was a great idea, and so "The Three Doctors" was born.

The story focuses on Gallifrey being attacked by some unknown force. The Time Lords, having exiled the Doctor to Earth a few years before, decide to get him involved, but come to the conclusion that just one of him won't be enough. So they send the Second Doctor to Earth to help the Third, while the First gets stuck in a negative space wedgie (this was caused by Hartnell not being in good health at the time), and has to help from a television screen inside the TARDIS. Soon the TARDIS, the Doctor(s), UNIT, Jo Grant and a game warden all find themselves in an alternate dimension where they find someone familiar to all Time Lords...

This is, without a doubt, the best of the multi-Doctor stories. It's not as bloated as "The Five Doctors" and not as weird and overly-long as "The Two Doctors". Plus Pertwee and Troughton are both at the height of their game and do a wonderful job bouncing off each other.

In addition to all the special features from the original release of this disc, you will also get, as reported by a reviewer on Amazon's UK site:

* 'Making-of' documentary
* When Doctor Who Was Uncool documentary
* Episode encoding/authoring errors on original release fixed

So not a tremendous amount of stuff, but still good.

This is a great story, and a great recommendation for any fans of the series.

This 4 part episode arc was made in honor of the tenth anniversary of the series in 1973 during the 3rd Doctor's appearance. A mysterious black hole appears in the universe draining power from the Time Lords who are alerted by the 3rd Doctor played by Jon Pertwee after U.N.I.T. headquarters is attacked by a mysterious anomally trying to track the Time Lord for the long thought as dead Time Lord Omega. The Time Lords, realizing that they need some serious help decide to break their law concerning crossing time lines and enlist the help of the Doctor's previous selves played by an ailing William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton. The story line is fast and easy to follow as Pertwee and Troughton are taken to a place in the black hole that is ruled and controlled by the very thoughts of Omega plans to take his place in the universe by destroying the Time Lords and ruling supreme. The Doctors are joined by Jo Grant, the "Brig" Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and U.N.I.T. Excellent story and one of the best adventures featuring the Doctors, the foot soldier monsters are a little kooky as they look like a mount of bubbled jelly but that doesn't even take away from the action.
I bought this dvd to introduce myself to the previous Doctors having started watching Doctor Who near the end of the Tom Baker years up to Sylvester McCoy and then starting again with Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant and now Matt Smith. A lot of people have their favorite Doctor but seeing these first 3 Doctors before Baker is a real treat. I love Hartnell's seriousness and grumpiness, Troughton's clownish demeanor and Pertwee's sophisticated interpretation of the Time Lord. I love how each of them don't think to highly of their other selves as their arrogant personas try to outdo the other but the 1st Doctor puts the other two in their places as he refers to the them as the "Dandy(Pertwee) and the clown(Troughton). This 2 disc edition is loaded with extras like a making of documentary about the 3 Doctors story, the girls of Who talking about sexism in the series, trailers for the special from back in the day, a photo gallery, production notes and audio commentary by Katy Manning(Jo Grant), Nicholas Courtney(the "Brig") and producer Barry Letts. I actually can't wait to buy more dvd's by the first three Doctors and meet the Daleks, Cybermen, Yetis and especially the Master for the first time. Highly recommended and something you can enjoy time and again.

Well here's another mixed bag of nuts for you to consume, and hopefully you won't have an allergic reaction from ingesting this. I'm not going to summarize these stories since any fan already knows them, and there is already enough redundant information available for those unfamiliar with this release.

I received this as a box set, Revisitation 3, and so I am posting this general review for all three singular releases since all the information is more or less the same for all three. Tomb of the Cybermen and The Robots of Death are the other two in this release.

To be fair, when it comes to picture and sound restoration, these have been significantly improved, and for many people, this alone makes these worth the purchase. But when it comes down to the specials, I'm a tough nut to crack. While yes, there has been some new bonus features added, some of the bonus features from the previous releases were omitted. So if you're getting this new set, and want to have all the bonus material that has been released, DON'T SELL YOUR OLDER RELEASES. Many of the recent DVD releases have been far short of impressive for bonus features, so not including everything from prior releases with new material is just sad. Also, if anyone is a geek about the text commentary like I am, these are usually up-dated in the Revisitation sets, but the originals are also omitted. Personally, I want it all. Just because the information on these previously released text commentaries are old, it doesn't make them any less interesting. After all, both new and old audio commentaries are available on the new releases when applicable, so why leave out an older text commentary? Can we say "marketing ploy?"

Something else that bothers me is that while it's fantastic to see these restored with better picture and sound, why doesn't 2|entertain first focus on releasing all the other previously unreleased stories, before re-releasing these stories? I would think that you should crawl, then walk, then fly. But these releases are more like crawling, then walking, then going back to crawling, but at a faster pace.

And finally, can we PLEASE get rid of Toby Hadoke? There has to be someone, ANYONE, who was directly part of these stories that can be utilized for commentaries and special features. I would give my walnuts to never hear or see him on future releases.

My bottom line is, that while the stories get five stars, the few additional extras, and lack of including some previous extras, make brings it down to 2 to 3 three stars, so that's why I'm giving this overall package a 4 star rating. Perhaps the Re-re-release will have all this, current and previously released material, with some more new bonus material.

Please let me know if this review is helpful to you, and please tell me your opinions on my review so that I can hopefully improve upon my reviews for future reviews. Thank you for taking the time to read this and consider my opinion.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 3 reviews  4.7 out of 5 stars