During the 1980s, BBC Video released a series of Doctor Who videos, in a rather haphazard manner, and generally edited into omnibus format.
The range opened with Revenge of the Cybermen in a large plastic case, with some surprising photographic artwork featuring a season 18-era Tom, an Earthshock Cyberman and the neon logo. It was soon after reissued, with the same catalogue number, in a normal case and with more era-appropriate art, including the diamond logo, which would (mostly) remain with the range until 1996, regardless of the logo on the episodes in question.
| # | Date | BBCV | Title | Length* |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 001 | 03/10/1983 | 2003 | Revenge of the Cybermen | 01:33:55 |
| 002 | 14/05/1983 | 2003 | Revenge of the Cybermen | 01:31:43 |
| 003 | 09/07/1984 | 2012 | The Brain of Morbius | 00:59:40 |
| 004 | 04/02/1985 | 2014 | Pyramids of Mars | 01:31:51 |
| 005 | 17/07/1985 | 2019 | The Seeds of Death | 02:17:21 |
| 006 | 09/09/1985 | 2020 | The Five Doctors | 01:30:10 |
| 007 | 07/04/1986 | 2030 | The Robots of Death | 01:31:10 |
| 008 | 08/08/1986 | 2036 | The Day of the Daleks [mistitled release of ‘Day of the Daleks’] | 01:30:03 |
| 008a | 03/11/1986 | 4013 | Revenge of the Cybemen | See 002 |
| 008b | 13/04/1987 | 4055 | Pyramids of Mars | See 004 |
| 009 | 13/07/1987 | 4072 | The Seeds of Death | 02:17:17 |
| 010 | 13/07/1987 | 4073 | Death to the Daleks | 01:34:10 |
| 011 | 01/02/1988 | 4107 | Spearhead from Space | 01:32:26 |
| 011a | Unknown | 4108 | The Robots of Death | See 007 |
| 011b | Unknown | 4109 | The Day of the Daleks | See 008 |
| 012 | 07/11/1988 | 4186 | Terror of the Zygons | 01:32:55 |
| 013 | 07/11/1988 | 4187 | The Talons of Weng-Chiang | 02:15:43 |
| 014 | 05/06/1989 | 4242 | The Daleks | 01:39:05 01:14:15 |
| 015 | 05/06/1989 | 4244 | The Ark in Space | 01:34:54 |
| 016 | 05/06/1989 | 4245 | The Time Warrior | 01:31:53 |
*from start of tape to end of outro.
When editing to omnibus format, most of the releases simply cut the ‘Part One’ (or similar) caption away from the opening credits, and then used the final episode’s end titles to close the tape. The first release of The Seeds of Death used electronically generated end titles (replaced with freeze frames from the actual episode for the 1987 reissue). Terror of the Zygons, The Talons of Weng-Chiang, The Ark in Space and The Time Warrior all used new opening and closing titles made by electronically keying new text over the clean sequences.
Some additional edits were made (often unintentionally):
- The Brain of Morbius was a slightly re-edited version of the cut down December 1976 repeat.
- Pyramids of Mars featured many small edits to the location footage in the first two episodes, and an entire sequence with the puzzle wall removed in the final episode.
- The Five Doctors contained a few small edits in the first half hour.
- Spearhead from Space had music by Fleetwood Mac overdubbed by generic factory noise as BBC Video could not clear the track for home release. It also contained an alternate shot of some dolls shoes during the factory scene, previously shown on some US omnibus airings.
- The Talons of Weng-Chiang was edited to cut down use of nun-chuks in a fight at the start. It has long been rumoured that a later sequence of the Doctor picking a lock was also removed, however this does not appear to to be the case.
- The Daleks was missing the Next Episode caption at the end of the final episode.
The first five releases came out before it was a requirement for UK releases to contain BBFC certificates. The Five Doctors was the first one to sport such a logo. Revenge of the Cybermen and Pyramids of Mars were reissued in 1986 and 1987 with no changes to the sleeve except for new catalogue number and added certificates – the tapes were identical including the copyright dates on the leaders. The Seeds of Death was also reissued in 1988 to add a certificate, but as noted above there were changes to the tape content.
The 1988 reissues of The Robots of Death and The Day of the Daleks contained minor sleeve changes (although already had certificates on their first releases), including the addition of credits for the classical music in Robots.
Four tapes premiered in Australia: The Talons of Weng-Chiang (April 1987, and also in the US in February 1988), Terror of the Zygons (April 1987) The Ark in Space (January 1989) and The Time Warrior (Mar 1989). All had exclusive sleeve designs, but used the omnibus content later released in the UK (in the case of Talons though, the censored nun-chuks were present and correct). The latter two featured amusingly detailed synopses on the reverse which rather spoiled the endings.
The Daleks was the only one of these early releases in episodic form (except of course for The Five Doctors). It was split across two tapes, which were sold in two separate cases attached together for sale with sellotape and with notes on the spine advising they should not be sold separately.
The art on these early releases was almost all in the form of photographic montages by Sid Sutton. Exceptions were The Five Doctors (where Sutton used Andrew Skilleter’s art prepared for the Radio Times) and both Terror of the Zygons and The Daleks which were photographic but in each case uncredited.
The interiors of the sleeves were generally blank, although The Daleks contained an advert for the BBC Video range, beginning a trend that would last until the late 90s.
The first version of Revenge of the Cybermen opened with a trailer for BBC Video entitled ‘Video Tasties’, hosted by Tom Baker, followed by a plain white copyright warning, and then the BBC Video ‘star logo’. It closed with the same logo and a 1983 copyright. The second release removed the trailer and the copyright warning.
The Brain of Morbius also used the star logo but added a revised copyright warning at the start and end, and updated the date to 1984.
Pyramids of Mars replaced the copyright warning with a flashier yellow and blue affair that animated onscreen letter-by-letter at the start (and disappeared in reverse at the end), and changed the music behind the star logo to be a little more stylish. This format remained until Spearhead from Space, with the copyright date being the same as the release date, with a couple of exceptions: The Seeds of Death‘s and Death to the Daleks’s 1987 releases were both copyrighted 1986, and The Seeds of Death ‘s first release cleverly transitioned the bright colourful star logo into b/w at the tape opening and then back out of b/w at the end.
Terror of the Zygons introduced a new format which would last 1991: a yellow copyright message to open the tape followed by a ‘globe logo’ that wraps up, and then unwraps again at the tape’s end before a repeat of the copyright and the date of release.
The BBFC required the first episode title to appear to share the name the tape was known as. Since the first episode of The Daleks was titled The Dead Planet, a slightly animated title card was added just before the opening credits on each tape.
BBC Video experimented with a number of other formats during the 1980s:
- The first release of Revenge of the Cybermen, along with Brains of Morbius through to The Day of the Daleks, were all released simultaneously on Betamax, with the catalogue number prefix changed from BBCV to BBCB (eg Pyramids of Mars became BBCB2014, while the VHS was BBCV2014). The sleeves were identical but with ‘Beta’ stickers on the spines.
- Revenge of the Cybermen and The Brain of Morbius received V2000 releases. The catalogue numbers, confusingly, were BBCV2003 and BBCV2012.
- The second release of Revenge of the Cybermen, and The Brain of Morbius, were accompanied by laserdisc releases as BBCL2003 and BBCL2012.
And finally, an analysis of the tape labels: Up to the 1986 Revenge of the Cybermen, the labels were blue, and from then on they represented the certifications: ie mostly green (for U) but yellow (for PG) for Terror of the Zygons and The Talons of Weng-Chiang.
