Steelbooks: Christopher Eccleston

UK Release History

Series One was originally released across four vanilla DVDs between May and September 2005 in SD with a 2.0 soundtrack as broadcast.

In November 2005 a 5-disc DVD followed set with 5.1 sound, optional commentaries, and a full collection of bonuses, housed in a cube-shaped box in a TARDIS design (reissued the following October using the same artwork but a more sensible slimline package). Between October and December they were also released on Sony’s proprietory UMD format, designed for use with their PSP portable gaming/media device.

An HD upscale premiered as part of the November 2013 complete series 1-7 set, then as a 3-disc standalone set in August 2015, with a steelbook following in March 2017. Contents were per the 5-disc DVD but with layout changes to reduce the disc count. The upscales were created from the 576p25 master, converted to 1080p24 (with credits rebuilt); 24p was chosen for global compatibility but has resulted in pitch-corrected slowdown. The bonuses all remained in 576p25.

The steelbook was released as an Amazon exclusive on 20th March 2017, with art by Lee Binding.

Disc Layout

[commentaries listed in square brackets]

Disc One

• Rose (46’20”) [Russell T Davies, Phil Collinson and Julie Gardner]
• The End of the World (46’48”) [Phil Collinson and Will Cohen]
• The Unquiet Dead (46’59”) [Euros Lyn, Mark Gatiss and Simon Callow]
• Aliens of London (47’29”) [Julie Gardner, Will Cohen and David Verrey]
• World War Three (45’05”) [Phil Collinson, Annette Badland and Helen Raynor]

Bonuses: BBC Breakfast Interview with Christopher Eccleston (11’44”), Destroying the Lair (3’23”), Making Doctor Who with Russell T Davies (15’32”), Laying Ghosts (8’25”), Launch Trailers (2’46”), Storyboard of Opening Trailer (0’47”), Deconstructing Big Ben (4’52”)

Total Disc Contents: 4h58m20s.

Disc Two

• Dalek (47’36”) [Bruno Langley, Nick Briggs, Robert Shearman and David Houghton]
• The Long Game (46’37”) [Brian Grant, Christine Adams and Bruno Langley]
• Father’s Day (45’10”) [Phil Collinson, Shaun Dingwall, Billie Piper and Paul Cornell]
• The Empty Child (43’46”) [Steven Moffat, David Houghton and John Barrowman]
• The Doctor Dances (44’52”) [Steven Moffat, John Barrowman and David Houghton]

Bonus: On Set with Billie Piper (19’04”), Mike Tucker’s Mocks of Balloons (5’32”), Designing Doctor Who (20’52”), The Adventures of Captain Jack (8’31”), Trailers [4-6, 13, post-13] (3’27”), Additional Launch Trailer (0’57”) – Easter egg, move left from ‘Trailers’.

Total Disc Content: 4h46m23s\

Disc Three

• Boom Town (45’27”) [Phil Collinson, John Barrowman and Annette Badland]
• Bad Wolf (44’58”) [Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner and Phil Collinson]
• The Parting of the Ways (47’54”) [Julie Gardner, Billie Piper and John Barrowman]

Bonus Confidential Cutdowns

• Bringing Back the Doctor (12’05”)
• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (11’17”)
• TARDIS Tales (11’09”)
• I Get a Side-Kick Out of You (10’59”)
• Why on Earth? (13’09”)
• Dalek (10’51”)
• The Dark Side (11’38”)
• Time Trouble (12’54”)
• Special Effects (14’09”)
• Weird Science (13’14”)
• Unsung Heroes and Violent Death (12’36”)
• The World of Who (13’24”)
• The Last Battle (9’40”)

Total Disc Contents: 4h55m24s

All episodes also contain the option to play back with an audio-described track for the blind or partially sighted (this was present on the box-set DVDs but not the vanilla releases).

Missing Bonuses

The October 2009 “Dalek Collection” DVD set (featuring seven Dalek episodes from seasons 1-4) also includes exclusive bonuses: David Tennant Introduction, Best Dalek Moments.

The 2013 release The Doctors Revisited: 9-11 contains a Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways omnibus with exclusive intro by Steven Moffat.

A 2015 Bittorrent bundle celebrating the 10th anniversary of Rose (and later released on DVD in Italy) featured an exclusive introduction to the first Eccleston episode by Peter Capaldi.

The thirteen full length Confidential episodes have never been commercially released.

Errors

As noted above, because of the decision to create an international HD master, the 24p conversion runs slower than the broadcast version. The pitch has been corrected, however the episodes all run a little longer than they should.

During the remastering process, the titles were remade in HD. This is standard practice for many upscales, as soft text reveals the SD nature of the original. When recreating the titles here, however, the tyepface was emboldened when compared to the original broadcast. This issue is common throughout Series One, Two, Three and Four.

The following errors were present on earlier releases but fixed for the Steelbook:

Although the 2.0 soundtrack on the vanilla DVDs/UMDs was mostly as-broadcast, a cue was missing from Rose where the Doctor is introducing himself in the Powell estate. This appeared in the broadcast mix and in later releases, but was missing from the early leaked edit and the vanilla releases.

On the DVD box-set, a chapter in World War Three skips if “Play All” is selected. 

An alternate take of some of Nick Brigg’s Dalek dialogue in the episode of the same name was used on the DVD box-set (although the correct version would appear on the audio description track).

One shot of Rose in the “Next Time…” sequence of Boom Town was accidentally replaced on the DVD box-set version