Classic Doctor Who doesn’t get much more ‘classic’ than Season 7, finally receiving the glitzy Blu-ray treatment as the latest in the ongoing Doctor Who Collection series. Declining viewing figures had sent the series sailing close to cancellation at the end of the 1960s, but in the absence of any suitable replacement format presenting itself, the BBC gave the show a final chance to reverse its ailing fortunes – and the turnabout was quite remarkable.
Now in colour, with Jon Pertwee cast as the flamboyant, charismatic Third Doctor, the show was reborn in the 1970s. This extraordinary season of 25 rugged episodes, with the Doctor now exiled to Earth by the Time Lords, is the closest the show ever came to becoming ‘adult’ science-fiction. The season was very intentionally crafted in the image of Nigel Kneale’s iconic and legendary Quatermass serials, with the Doctor, now forced to work with the militaristic UNIT (then the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce), tangling with slightly more sinister and tangible threats than some of the clanky silver-foil adversaries that bedevilled his two earlier incarnations.
Fifty-five years on, these episodes still feel urgent and contemporary and often touch upon issues that are as worryingly relevant today as they were decades ago. Internet fanboys scream about modern Who being ‘woke’ and ‘lecturing’, but the four serials here are all about paranoia, xenophobia, and the risks unchecked technology can pose to the future of the human race.
Fans will know these serials like the back of their hands – and rightly so. The glossy four-part Spearhead From Space (shot on film due to some industrial dispute or other that made the BBC Television Centre studios unavailable) drags the series into the bright lights of the 1970s. Its pace and scale of storytelling bears little real resemblance to the often-stagey stories screened just a few months earlier in black-and-white.
The return to the familiar film/studio mix in the remaining serials is slightly jarring – and a little disappointing to those who might have hoped the series was finally going to be as slick as the popular ITC filmed series of the day – but the quality of the storytelling soon makes up for any fears that the show’s production values were on the slide.
The remaining three serials each run to seven episodes. While occasionally the pace might slacken and the storytelling appear a little laboured, the show has never felt less like a harmless children’s teatime adventure show.
Doctor Who and the Silurians is a compelling and often chilling look at how humanity reacts when faced with the species that preceded them, a sophisticated reptile race that ruled the Earth long before man evolved (although the Doctor is often given to referring to them as ‘an intelligent alien species’). And, Inferno (often cited as the best ‘classic’ Who serial, and who are we to disagree?) sees man’s hubris in daring to attempt to harness the raw, primeval power of the core of the planet itself threaten to consume the world in flame.
If there’s a weak link, then it’s Ambassadors of Death. This story defeated the credited David Whittaker and required significant input from writer Malcolm Hulke (amongst others) to turn it into a slightly unfocussed adventure that’s nevertheless hugely enjoyable in its own right.
Much of Season 7 works so well because it’s the “shock of the new”, and if it’s a format that wasn’t built to last – the overlong serials led to some audience drift by the end of the run and a retooling for the following season – it remains a powerful, edgy set of stories that dispenses with much of the ephemera of the past (the TARDIS is barely referenced after Spearhead From Space) and redefines the Doctor for the 1970s.
The last three serials, as previously presented on physical media, are slightly washed out or colourised prints returned from overseas broadcasters (or with colour recovered courtesy of the remarkable ‘chroma dot’ technology). But they’ve been upgraded yet again and they’ve not looked this good since their original broadcast. There are occasional moments where the imagery is a little soft or fuzzy and, by the nature of their production, they can never look as sharp as Spearhead, but it’s hard to imagine that they can ever look better than this.
As usual, The Collection: Season 7 is blessed with an embarrassment of ‘special feature’ riches. Actor Nicholas Courtney (Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart) finally gets a long-overdue profile. Presented by comedian/Big Finish vocal stand-in Jon Culshaw, it’s occasionally a bit self-indulgent and, at one or two points, entirely misjudged, but there’s more bad than good here in a largely respectful tribute to a real Who legend.
John Levene, one of the last stars of this era of the show still with us, is often a divisive and controversial figure. Here the Sergeant Benton actor is interviewed by Matthew Sweet. While the actor wears his heart (and, in fact, most of his internal organs) on his sleeve and is clearly extremely sensitive (and legendarily outspoken), in this 65-minute interview, he’s on fine form and hugely grateful to everything that his relatively minor role in the show has given him during his long and often-troubled life.
A 50-minute piece hosted by Robin Ince at the Leicester Space Centre is surprisingly enjoyable, marrying Doctor Who’s relationship to science with real-world science, and a selection of rare and fascinating archive clips suggests that the two weren’t actually that far apart.
In Terror in the Suburbs, Matthew Sweet revisits the famous Ealing High Street locations from Spearhead From Space and explores how this particular era of the series saw the show becoming more grounded and making increasing use of real-world locations.
Best of all, though, is Toby Hadoke’s engrossing exploration into the life of writer Malcolm Hulke, who passed away in 1979. Little is known about the life and times of this most thoughtful of Who writers, and Hadoke makes contact with some of those who knew and worked with him to paint a living image of a man who is little more than a writer’s credit on a screen to so many.
There’s also another skippable Escape Room feature and another set of the increasingly tiresome Behind the Sofa spots, in which various more contemporary Who alumni watch edited versions of the stories and try to make some sense of them. This particular set is rendered especially irksome due to the over-excitable presence of Matthew Waterhouse (Adric from the early 1980s series), who loudly pretends that he doesn’t know what’s coming despite having been a hardcore fan when he was cast in the show and therefore being as familiar with these episodes as any common-or-garden fan.
Brand new 90-minute edits of Doctor Who and the Silurians and Inferno (in the style of the recent BBC4 edits of The Daleks and The War Games) are remarkably successful as both stories have plenty of (enjoyable) flab/padding whose removal turns the stories into much more direct and pacey experiences.
Features from previous DVD releases are, of course, ported over (in standard definition) to complete this ultimate collection for the ultimate classic Doctor Who season. Quite simple, brilliant, and quite simply unmissable.
DOCTOR WHO: THE COLLECTION – SEASON 7 is available now from the BBC
