Does anyone know where to find/buy Doctor Who the original series (1962-1984) in "complete" series sets?

Question

I recently started watching Doctor Who (2005-on) and after some wiki research learned it's one of the longest running shows ever. But unfortunately, I can't find that many dvd's or vhs's of the original show. What I have found is only a handful and most are best of "insert actor" and contain at most 5 episodes. Do Complete series releases even exist? Help!

Answer 1

Sorry but nope - you can't actually buy the entire collection in one big boxset. It would be great if you could but there are just far too many episodes - it would be an almighty sized box set if it existed.



Most of the classic series DVD releases are of single stories - which generally means four 25 minute episodes forming one complete stories. Some of the older ones from the 1960's and 1970's had stories with up to 10 or 12 episodes in them.



There have been a few DVD box sets released with 2 or 3 stories in them - for example, there is one box set called 'New Beginning's and it features the Fourth Doctor's last two stories and the Fifth Doctor's first story. There is also a box set of three stories featuring the classic monsters the Sea Devils and the Silurians which consists of two stories from the Third Doctor's reign and one story from the Fifth Doctor.



There are so many stories from the 1963 - 1989 era of Doctor Who that really only a handful have actually been released on DVD and quite a few of the black and white episodes from the 1960's have been completely lost or destroyed.



I'm pretty most of the classic series was released on VHS - I still have some pretty old VHS cassettes of the classic series myself - but again they were mostly released on an individual basis - although there was a cute TARDIS tin containing all of the 'Trial of a Timelord' season released on VHS - that was a whole season - but that is due to be released on DVD as well very soon.



Amazon has a pretty good selection of classic series Doctor Who DVD's and VHS releases - I got most of my really old VHS tapes there so you could try looking there.

Answer 2

One thing about the BBC releasing one story per DVD of classic Who is that nearly all of the are packed with extras. If you would box each season to include all the extra material, each set would have around 5 discs worth of extras, some of which would be episode specific. Also, by selling discs seperately, it allows the BBC to include newly found things that may have not been available when the story in question was first released (such as the "Galaxy 4" material" included on "The Aztecs" special edition).



My only complaint is the wild difference in price from disc to disc. It seems almost random. While I could understand "reconstructed" stories or footage which needed a lot of care in remastering (Hartnell & Troughton) costing a bit more, I cannot fathom why the price differs so much with Docs 3-7. These stories were/are all readily available. Most are single or double discs. So why the cost difference? It doesn't even seem dependant on the popularity of the serial. For example - I got the very popular "Genesis of the Daleks" and "Caves of Androzani" for under $20 each, but stories like "The Time Meddler", "Earthshock" or "Curse of Fenric" (while not terrible) I can't find for under $50.

Answer 3

Only two complete season boxsets exist these are The Key To Time (series 16) and Trial Of A Time Lord (series 23). The BBC might consider releasing full series boxsets in the future but at the moment they are concentrating on individual releases. Their defense is that with single story DVDs you can add lots of extras and features.