Doctor Who: Remembrance of the Daleks (Special Edition) (Story 152)

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Average Customer Rating:	4.0
Release Date:	2010-03-02
Publisher:	BBC Warner
Actors:	Sylvester McCoy; Sophie Aldred
Aspect ratio:	1.33:1
Audience rating:	NR (Not Rated)
Format:	Closed-captioned; Color; Subtitled; DVD; Full Screen; Special Edition; NTSC
Language:	Unknown: English; Subtitled: English; Original Language: English; Dubbed: Spanish;
Weight:	1 pounds

Product Categories

General; Sci-Fi & Fantasy; General; General AAS; General; General AAS; General; Doctor Who; All BBC Titles; McCoy, Sylvester; All BBC Titles; Doctor Who; Special Editions; All Titles; Drama; Sci-Fi & Fantasy; Television; Science Fiction & Fantasy - Television - General; Movies & TV on DVD and Blu-ray Disc Trade-In; DVD; Full Screen; Unrated; US & CA DVDs: Region 1; Decade (feature_three_browse-bin); English; Closed Caption; Special Edition; Collector's & Special Edition; Grade Level (feature_five_browse-bin); Audio Type (feature_six_browse-bin); Doctor Who; DVD

Product description

The TARDIS arrives in London in November 1963, where the Doctor and Ace discover that two rival factions of Daleks - one loyal to the Dalek Emperor and one to the Dalek Supreme - are seeking the Hand of Omega, a powerful Time Lord device that the first Doctor hid there during an earlier sojourn on Earth. The Daleks are focusing their search around Coal Hill School - the school that the Doctor's grand-daughter Susan attended - while a military unit led by Group Captain Gilmore is attempting to resist their incursions. The Doctor tries to keep Gilmore and his team out of harm's way while the two Dalek factions battle each other for control of the Hand. The imperial Daleks eventually overpower those led by the Dalek Supreme and capture the device. The Dalek Emperor is revealed to be Davros, now with only the last vestiges of his humanoid form remaining. The Doctor begs him not to use the Hand, but is ignored. However, this is just the final ruse in a complex trap laid by the Time Lord to defeat his old adversaries. The Hand vaporises the creatures' home planet, Skaro, by turning its sun into a supernova, and then returns to destroy their forces orbiting Earth. The Doctor confronts the Dalek Supreme and causes it to self-destruct by convincing it that it is the sole surviving member of its race.

DVD Features:
Audio Commentary
DVD ROM Features
Deleted Scenes
Outtakes
Photo gallery
Production Notes

"Remembrance of the Daleks," the final Doctor Who story to feature the titular mutant cyborgs, is a particularly notable adventure for the way it ties the plot into the very first story, "An Unearthly Child," made 25 years before. It is 1963, and the seventh Doctor, Sylvester McCoy, arrives in London with new companion Ace (Sophie Aldred), where two Dalek factions are engaged in a deadly search for the Hand of Omega. Ace quickly proves herself adept with high explosives, and while there are references to the history of the show, including some nice in-jokes, the drama is played much straighter than in McCoy's first season as the time traveler. This is Doctor Who with a decent budget; the period setting is surprisingly lavish and there are some fairly intense action sequences. The Daleks remain as menacing as ever, the plotting has an intriguing air of mystery, and McCoy injects some steel into his characterization. Aldred serves an ace as a heroine with attitude (very much post-Sarah Connor from The Terminator), and if this really does prove to be the Daleks' swan song, at least they go out with a bang. --Gary S. Dalkin

Customer reviews

« A FAQ: Why have they re-released Remembrance of the Daleks like this? »

The answer is a bit complicated.

In 2007, 2entertain in the UK decided to release a Davros Box Set in their market. It would contain all five of the classic series stories that featured Davros. Four of them had been released before, however, with only Destiny of the Daleks being new to the DVD market. With that in mind, they decided to try and soup up the box set a bit.

They had been unhappy with the original UK edition of Remembrance of the Daleks. It had faults in the restoration that meant some special effects had gone missing, and one of the featurettes didn't work as intended. (Both of these problems had been repaired for the later North American edition that's been on our market since 2002.)
They decided one way to improve the Davros Box Set would be to make a Special Edition, with those faults fixed and some new special features added.

They also decided to make special arrangements with Big Finish Productions, the licensed makers of audio dramas of Doctor Who and its related characters that have been producing new stories regularly since 1999.
These arrangements were to include all of the titles they had made to that point that featured Davros on a DVD/Audio Disc, plus one new story with Davros exclusive to this box set. And to tie the audios and the TV stories together, they made a further featurette, Davros Connections, and gave it its own disc.

BBC Worldwide Americas soon announced plans to release this set in North America as well, however they soon had to retract these plans and were only able to release a single title, Destiny of the Daleks, the one we hadn't had in our market yet. The retraction occurred because the price point they wanted to sell it at, $100 for the whole set, would have undercut the UK's price point by about 50%. 2entertain were concerned that this would cause UK consumers to simply import the North American edition and not buy the UK one, and told them they had to increase the North American price to match theirs if they wanted to release it. BBC WA felt they couldn't sell it at that price and chose not to try. The UK price was inflated on this occasion due to the inclusion of the Big Finish audios, which at the time sold from Big Finish for $25 per title. It was a big discount to a consumer to buy all 8 of them as this DVD-Audio, but was still a back breaker price wise for the North American market.

BBC WA did try (and in fact did announce this) to release the Remembrance of the Daleks: Special Edition on its own at that time, but 2entertain prohibited that as well as it wasn't yet available on its own in the UK market. In the summer of 2009, however, it was finally released on its own there packaged along with the Davros Connections
featurette disc, and this March 2010 North American release is effectively the North American mirror of that UK summer 2009 release.

If you buy this title and become interested in the audio drams you hear clips of in the Davros Connections disc, where you can buy them in either CD form or as a direct mp3 download (for about half the price). The stories are the four part "I, Davros" miniseries (which do not feature the Doctor), and the three Doctor Who audio drama
stories: "Davros" starring Colin Baker, "The Juggernauts" starring Colin Baker and Bonnie Langford, and "Terror Firma" starring Paul McGann, India Fisher, and Conrad Westmaas. They all also star Terry Molloy as Davros (who also played him in the three 1980s TV stories). (The story that was exclusive to the UK Davros Box Set was called "The Davros Mission", and it is not available from Big Finish, as again, it was exclusive to the UK Davros Box Set.)

Rating: (5 out of 5) @ 2010-02-23

« Two Stars ONLY because it is a great story »

As I stated in a comment on an earlier review, since I do not pick cash off a tree in my back yard, I cannot buy sets over and over again because 'mistakes' have been corrected. If the BBC wants to refund the purchase price of the 'flawed' sets or exchange the new sets for them, that would be great. Why should fans have to 'double-dip' in our own pockets for production mistakes?

If you do NOT already own this release, by all means, but the 'corrected' version, because the story is excellent. I cannot condone RE=PURCHASE, however. If the BBC were really smart, they would purposely 'flaw' every set and then make double their profits by 'correcting' them every 3-4 years and re-selling them!

Rating: (2 out of 5) @ 2010-02-09

« Isn't this Story 152 »

I thought this was story 152 not 148. 148 is time and the rani.Doctor Who: Time and The Rani [VHS]

Rating: (4 out of 5) @ 2009-11-19

« A worthy upgrade »

Okay, folks. Before you go writing a one star review about how "BBC Video has double-dipped again and they don't even have half the series out yet!", let me provide some backstory on the trials and tribulations that led to this release. I'm not going to discuss the actual episode (aside from the music), as I haven't seen it yet, and many others have said more interesting things about it anyway.

When Remembrance of the Daleks was first released on DVD in the UK, a number of mistakes were made in the restoration process that led to some video effects being eliminated (eg. a Dalek ray gun was removed from a scene where a soldier gets exterminated, although his skeleton still shows through). Corrections were made for the subsequent North American and Australian releases, but UK viewers had to put up with it for a while. In 2007, the Restoration Team decided to go back and remaster the episode from scratch, with a new set of bonus features and the missing effects reinstated. It was included in a boxset release of the five Davros serials there. As you may recall, there were originally plans to release the Davros set and a standalone version of Remembrance in North America in March 2008, but thanks to complications over the inclusion of Big Finish audio dramas in the boxset, both releases got canned. In July 2009, the Special Edition was released in the UK in a standalone version, which is now coming to North America, eight months later.

So now that that's out of the way, is this worth buying if you have the original? Well, considering how the UK release of the Key to Time season blew the original North American set out of the water, it can be easily assumed that the BBC has given us a worthy double-dip for this release.

Aside from the brand new remastering job, the special edition boasts these special features:

Dolby Digital 5.1 re-mix by Mark Ayres.

The original commentary with actors Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred from 2000 is re-used.

Steve Broster has produced two new documentaries for this version:

Back to School (dur. 32' 38") - cast and crew talk about the making of the story accompanied by rare behind-the-scenes material. With actors Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred, Simon Williams and Karen Gledhill, writer Ben Aaronovitch, script editor Andrew Cartmel, director Andrew Morgan and journalists Moray Laing and Paul Lang.

Remembrances (dur. 15' 14") - cast and crew talk about the influences and references to other Doctor Who adventures that are spread throughout the story.

The original Extended and Deleted Scenes package (dur. 12' 24") has been supplemented by brand-new introductions to each scene from Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred.

Outtakes (dur. 4' 12") - bloopers and gaffs from the recording of the story.

Multi-Angle Sequences (dur. 1' 03" and 0' 47") - allows the viewer to watch Ace's escape from the Chemistry lab and the Daleks blowing up the large gates from one of two camera angles. Via a menu, the viewer should be allowed to choose which angle of each scene to start on, but should be free to use the 'Angle' button on their remote to change the view at will during play. This is a feature that was never implemented as intended on the 2000 release.

Trails and Continuity (dur. 4' 58") - BBC1 trails and continuity announcements from the story's transmission, in this extended package.

Photo Gallery (dur. 8' 36") - production, design and publicity photos from the story, heavily expanded and packaged into our now standard video sequence format.

Isolated Music - gives the viewer the option to watch the story with the clean music track.

Radio Times Listings in Adobe PDF format for viewing on PC or Mac. Programme subtitles. Subtitle Production Notes.

Also included is the documentary Davros Connections (dur. 43' 15"), which was originally exclusive to the Davros Boxset, but is now being included in this re-release. This is an in-depth look at the history of the Daleks' creator, Davros, as portrayed in both the TV stories from the BBC and in audio adventures from official licensee Big Finish. With actors Terry Molloy, David Gooderson and Peter Miles, producer / director Gary Russell, director Ken Grieve, writers Eric Saward, Ben Aaronovitch, Gary Hopkins and Joseph Lidster. Narrated by Terry Molloy.

Oh, and one final note: parts one and three each originally featured a song by The Beatles in scenes set in the cafe. While the UK version of this DVD includes the songs (thanks to blanket licensing agreements), they are obviously impossible to clear outside of the UK, so some replacement music has been used. It shouldn't really affect the viewing, as no actual footage has been cut.

For those of you still on the fence because of the double dip, consider this: the only reason Remembrance is getting re-released is because the Restoration Team screwed up the remastering process the first time around, and wanted the opportunity to go back and fix it. And whatever DVDs come out in the UK first, usually make it to North America next. Since this new DVD has improved picture and sound quality, and much more bonus features, I would definitely recommend getting this even if you have the original, on the basis of the new special features and the 5.1 sound.

Rating: (5 out of 5) @ 2009-11-17

« Surprise! »

"Remembrance of the Daleks" is not only one of the best Dalek episodes in the entire Doctor Who series - it may well be the very best of them all. Which is particularly surprising given the rather weak stories of the Sylvester McCoy years - not to mention that McCoy's Doctor Who is generally considered to be the least effective of the entire series. Not only was this a great Dalek episode, Sylvester McCoy's Doctor in this particular episode was one of the best portrayals in the series. The only other McCoy story I've seen so far that I really liked was "Survival" - but I didn't care for McCoy's Doctor in that one. The one thing I didn't like about "Remembrance of the Daleks" was the Doctor's companion, Ace. In every other episode I've seen her in, she was fantastic - and a great help to the Doctor. But in this one, she came across as a total buffoon who nearly ruins everything the Doctor's trying to accomplish. Apart from that, everything flows like clockwork - even if the viewer, like the characters in the story, doesn't realize until near the end just how intricately the Doctor has set up his plan to save the day. All in all, this is a fantastic Dalek episode, incorporating an unexpected aspect of the Daleks - which makes the story all the more appealing.

Rating: (5 out of 5) @ 2009-09-08

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