Doctor Who news: Major Third Doctor season to be released on Blu-ray
By James Aggas
Season ten, Jon Pertwee’s fourth season as the Third Doctor, has been announced to be the next season of Doctor Who on Blu-ray, complete with brand new special features!
The next season of Doctor Who to be released on Blu-ray has finally been announced, and it’s a big one. Season Ten – Jon Pertwee’s fourth season as the Third Doctor – will be released on Monday July 8th in the UK.
I’m really excited about this. Season Ten is an incredibly ambitious season for the series, right from its very first story: The Three Doctors. Designed to celebrate a decade of Doctor Who, (even if it technically began in 1972), this was the first multi-Doctor story ever.
The story is still a lot of fun to watch, particularly for the interaction between Pertwee and Troughton’s Doctors, who do not get along at all. The Brigadier is rather strained by the whole thing, so we get some rather humorous scenes with him too.
A season with ambition
On top of that, we get some major Time Lord mythology with the introduction of Omega, and the Doctor’s exile on Earth – which was imposed on him by the Time Lords since the beginning of his Third life – finally ends in this story. Overall, The Third Doctors isn’t perfect, but it’s easily an essential watch.
That sense of ambition continues with Carnival of Monsters, which gives us memorable moments involving the Miniscope and the Drashigs. We then get two heavily linked six-part stories: Frontier in Space, which gives us a moment so brilliant, it should have been a cliffhanger, and Planet of the Daleks. The former story is arguably stronger than the latter, but they’re both certainly enjoyable to watch.
It all ends with The Green Death (i.e. the one with the giant maggots). This is also a major story for Jo Grant, as she says goodbye to the Doctor in this story. It’s also a rather emotional scene, and one of the more effective exits for a companion in the series.
So unsurprisingly, the announcement trailer for the new Blu-ray very nicely pays tribute to that classic story, as we see what Jo and her husband Clifford are getting up to these days.
Special features
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As well as featuring many special features that had been included on previous DVD releases, the Blu-ray set will include brand new ones, too.
Perhaps most fascinating of all is a brand new documentary that will look at Jon Pertwee’s era. Not only will this include archival interviews with Jon Pertwee, producer Barry Letts and script editor Terrence Dicks. But we’ll also be enjoying brand new interviews from Katy Manning (Jo Grant), former showrunner Steven Moffat, and writer Mark Gatiss. So it sounds like this will be an interesting retrospective for a much-loved era.
We can also expect updated special effects for Planet of the Daleks; new instalments of Behind the Sofa, a series featuring Doctor Who cast and crew re-watching the included serials; Keeping up with the Jones’, which sees Katy Manning and Stewart Bevan (Cliff Jones) revisiting the locations from The Green Death, and much, much more.
As someone who grew up on Nineties repeats of the Third Doctor, this is a set of stories that I’m greatly looking forward to. Considering how greatly loved Jon Pertwee’s Doctor remains to this day, as well as how strong this season is, I’m sure that’s true of many of us.
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Are you looking forward to the Third Doctor’s fourth season on Blu-ray? Which is your favorite story from the season? Do you think it’s a smart choice to release it next? Let us know in the comments below.