The Doctor Who: The Collection – Season 25 Blu-Ray, featuring Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor and Sophie Aldred as companion, Ace, has been announced for release in October 2024 and artist Lee Binding has shared his cover art over on X.
“This is one of my all time favourite seasons,” he enthused.”Hope you’re loving the cover as much as I did working on it!”
This Blu-ray set includes special editions of all four stories from Season 25 – Remembrance of the Daleks, The Happiness Patrol, Silver Nemesis and The Greatest Show in the Galaxy – which have been edited and produced with significant effort and care.
The release includes brand new extended Special Editions of all four adventures, exclusive to this Blu-ray set, three of the edited and produced by Peter McTighe. “They’re glorious,” he promises, “full of surprise treats.”
“The Happiness Patrol really is the standout of these SEs,” he’s also teased. “No, really. With almost an entire episode’s worth of deleted material, beautiful world-building SFX, immersive 5.1 and a restructured narrative, it’s a lovely alternative version.”
Plus, as ever, you can expect a whole host of exclusive content to enjoy, too, including behind the scenes interviews with cast and crew, the inclusion of “The Making of Doctor Who“, a rare vintage documentary from 1988, previously only available on VHS, and much more.
“Our big new documentary on Season 25 is ‘Looking for Dursley‘, presented by Toby Hadoke”, says Chris Chapman, “a 55 minute tribute to this beautiful, talented man, lost far too young, Dursley McLinden.”
Dursley James McLinden (29th May 1965 – 7th August 1995) was a Manx actor whose career was mostly focused on the London stage in musicals such as The Phantom of the Opera, and appeared in the title role in the 1988 film Just Ask for Diamond. His television roles included a 1988 appearance in Doctor Who as Sgt Mike Smith in the story Remembrance of the Daleks.
Also in the mix is a 15 minute “dessert for your viewing pleasure”, a Q&A, “When Sophie Met Lesley“, in which Sophie Aldred catches up with old Happiness Patrol pal, Lesley Dunlop.
Richard Bignell has revealed the PDF Archive this time round features a total of 4987 pages of scripts, production documents, design drawings etc. It brings the grand total to 63,839 pages across the 16 releases.
“An awful lot of love and hard work going into this release,” enthuses musician Mark Ayres, whose first credits on Doctor Who are in this season. “It’s going to be fab. Enjoy.”
Inspirational!
Needless to say, here at downthetubes, we have a lot of love for this period of Doctor Who. I was editing Doctor Who Magazine back then and stories like Remembrance of the Daleks were a breath of fresh air for the show, and hopefully my enthusiasm rubbed off in the comic strips of the time such as “The Good Soldier” and “Evening’s Empire“, collected by Panini, and my more recent continuation of events in Remembrance, the totally unofficial, not-for-profit “Terror from the Deep“. (That strip by me, Danny Cushion and Paul Cooke resumes here soon!)
• Doctor Who – Terror from the Deep – Background | Read Doctor Who – Terror from the Deep from the start
The founder of downthetubes, which he established in 1998. John works as a comics and magazine editor, writer, and on promotional work for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He is currently editor of Star Trek Explorer, published by Titan – his third tour of duty on the title originally titled Star Trek Magazine.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine, Babylon 5 Magazine, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics. He has also edited several comic collections, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”.
He’s the writer of “Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies” for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs” with Dave Hailwood.
Categories: British Comics, British Comics - Newspaper Strips, Comics, Doctor Who, downthetubes Comics News, Other Worlds, Science Fiction, Television
Coming Soon: Doctor Who – Terror from the Deep
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