The Doctors: 30 Years of Time Travel and Beyond: Difference between revisions

'''''The Doctors''''' (sometimes known by its subtitle, '''''30 Years of Time Travel and Beyond''''') was a 1995 documentary produced by [[BBV Productions]].  It was a sixty-five-minute retrospective on the entire history of ''[[Doctor Who]]'' from 1963 to 1995.  Although unofficial, it included interviews with many famous ''[[Doctor Who]]'' personalities still alive in 1995.  It was mostly compiled from previous interviews conducted by [[Bill Baggs]] and his associates.

It featured home movies of the filming of several ''[[Doctor Who]]'' [[serial]]s. It contained the first public showing of some colour footage of the filming of a few [[missing episode]]s from the 1960s.  It also contained interviews with some people who have not generally appeared on official [[BBC DVD]] documentaries or commentaries.  

''The Doctors'' interviewed people important to the first thirty-two years of the franchise's history.  It was arranged mostly in  chronological order and took its viewers through a brief overview of each Doctor's "era" on the programme.  In its concluding chapter, it discussed things that had happened to the franchise since its cancellation — such as the continuing life of ''[[Doctor Who Magazine]]'' and the [[Virgin New Adventures]] series.  It ended by discussing the early 1990s history of the franchise.   

Aside from the interviews themselves, the only moving pictures in the documentary were home movies of location filming of ''Doctor Who''.  As these were not made by the BBC, it cannot exercise any control over their dissemination.  The movies on this volume are some of the few published glimpses of the filming of ''Doctor Who'' in the 1960s and 1970s.  What is believed to be the full, unexpurgated versions of some of the movies were presented as the DVD's only special feature. These movies were also remarkable for being entirely in colour — all the more unusual since some of the filming was of the traditionally monochromatic [[First Doctor|First]] and [[Second Doctor]]s.  Serials represented by the home movies included: ''[[The Smugglers]]'', ''[[The Abominable Snowmen]]'', ''[[The Demons]]'', ''[[City of Death]]'' and ''[[Shada (TV story)|Shada]]''.  None of the [[Fourth Doctor]]'s home movies were included in the special features.     

Many of the interviewees were people who would contribute to [[BBC DVD]] releases.  However, this documentary was one of the few homes to interviews with [[John Nathan-Turner]] and [[Shaun Sutton]].  The Nathan-Turner portions came from what was likely his longest filmed interview about ''Doctor Who''.  It offered rare interviews with two members of the production team of ''[[The Dark Dimension]]'' — a 1993 project that came close to reviving ''Doctor Who'' before the [[Doctor Who (1996)|1996 tele-film]].   

The length of time between the completion of the documentary and its DVD release set up an interesting phenomenon.  Consumers would have bought a "new" DVD, purporting to be a history of "[[the Doctor]]s", lacking coverage of the [[Eighth Doctor]].  They might well have been even more confused by the DVD menu.  While the cover had images of only the first seven Doctors, the menu contained a picture of [[Paul McGann]].  His name was never even mentioned in the documentary, as all interviews were completed before he had been cast.  Nevertheless, the interview with ''[[Doctor Who Magazine]]'' staff touched briefly on the ''possibility'' of a project for [[Fox Broadcasting Company|Fox Broadcasting]] in the [[United States]].