Key to Time Individual Covers

[The Thinker]

The Beeb

If you click on the link that says 'Individual Covers', you can see the DVD cover for each story. Personally, I think they could be better, but I thought I'd just share this anyway.

[matthewsee]

Just saw A Matter of Time, documentary on The Ribos Operation DVD included in the Key To Time set:
- Found out here that just as Graham Williams replaced Philip Hinchcliffe as Doctor Who producer, Hinchcliffe replaced Williams as producer of the police series Target. Talk about producer swapping.
- The Androids of Tara was inspired in plot by The Prisoner of Zenda. A Matter of Time showed a clip from the 1984 BBC mini-series of The Prisoner of Zenda to showed a similarity with The Androids of Tara. This version of The Prisoner of Zenda also featured John Woodvine. Woodvine had appeared in the final Key To Time story The Armageddon Factor directed by Michael Hayes and Hayes had also directed The Androids of Tara!
If Hayes had a crystal ball at the time of The Androids of Tara I am sure he would have cast Woodvine in The Androids of Tara instead of The Armageddon Factor.

Curiously there are some errors with the subtitles of A Matter of Time with the words "crinoids" (correct spelling Krynoids) and castrians (Kastrians).
Also in a clip from the season 17 story City of Death the Doctor mentioned the year 1505 but the subtitles correlated it as 15:05.

[matthewsee]

On The Ribos Operation DVD saw The Ribos File in which Paul Seed (Graff Vynda-K) that designer Ken Ledsham later worked with him on The House of Cards mini-series which Seed had directed. They were not only contributors of The Ribos Operation to have done something together outside of Doctor Who.

Prentis Hancock (Captain) mentions that he had already worked with director George Spenton-Foster before for the Survivors episode A Little Learning. Hancock says that Survivors episode was written by an actor. That actor is Ian McCulloch who played Greg in the original Survivors series and eventually appeared in Doctor Who in Warriors of the Deep.

[matthewsee]

As it is already well known The Androids of Tara is the Doctor Who version of the book The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope.

There have been a lot of film versions of The Prisoner of Zenda and the one that is mention in the DVD commentary of The Androids of Tara is the 1937 version starring Ronald Colman.

During the commentary in Part 4, director Michael Hayes mentioned Douglas Fairbanks doing a particular scene in the 1937 movie. As a point of clarity it is actually Douglas Fairbanks Jr who was in that movie not his namesake father.

Incidentally I share the same birthdate with Fairbanks, Jr - December 9 and December 9 is the original transmission date for Part 3 of The Androids of Tara when it was aired in 1978.

[matthewsee]

The Androids of Tara featured doppelgangers so one of the special features on the DVD is Double Trouble which looks at the history of doppelgangers in Doctor Who.
When it was mentioned that William Hartnell played dual roles in The Massacre of St Bathrlomew's Eve, two images were presented but neither came from that story. One was from The Crusade & the other The Reign of Terror. Neither of these two stories feature doppelgangers.

All four episodes of The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve are among Doctor Who's 108 missing episodes although images from it do exist. From what I have been told the images that do exist were apparently not good enough to be included in Double Trouble.

[matthewsee]

On The Androids of Tara DVD sleeve, for one of the special features called Double Trouble it says that it includes contributions from Doctor Who Magazine editor Tom Spilsbury. However in Double Trouble itself the on-screen display for Spilsbury says "Assistant Editor, Doctor Who Magazine". The reason for this difference is not because either the DVD sleeve nor Double Trouble made a mistake, it is because of the timing of the R2 and R4 releases.

The Androids of Tara is part of The Key To Time boxset and I have been watching it from the R4 release. The R4 release of the Key To Time came out in November 2007 about three months after the R2 release. In the time between the R2 and R4 releases of The Key To Time, Tom Spilsbury who had been the assistant editor of DWM had replaced Clayton Hickman as editor.

The R4 releases duplicate materials from the R2 releases. It looks like that once the R2s are released, it is really too late to make alterations for the later released R4s.

[matthewsee]

The DVD notes for The Armageddon Factor Part 5 said that Bob Baker and Dave Martin had asked Graham Williams if they could bring back Drax but it did not make it clear Drax's return never materialised.

The DVD notes for the R2/R4 of Key To Time released in 2007 is a straight copy from the notes that was written for the R1 release in 2002. This meant that the notes as presented in the R2/R4 release did not take into account any updated information.
In the notes on The Armageddon Factor Part 5 it says that Bob Baker had co-written the Wallace and Gromit films The Wrong Trousers & A Close Shave.

However between the R1 and R2/R4 releases of the Key To Time, Baker had also co-written Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were Rabbit but this very fact was not updated for the R2/R4 release.

[matthewsee]

Recently saw Rogue Time Lords on The Armageddon Factor special features disc. Overall it is quite enjoyable but there are some niggles I want to express:
- I don't really understand how this is relevant to The Armageddon Factor or to the Key To Time as a whole. Since it is about rogue Time Lords as the title says wouldn't it be more relevant to stories like The Deadly Assassin or The Trial of a Time Lord.
- Doctor Who Adventures editor Moray Laing made a mistake when he says that The Valeyard was a future version of the Doctor between his 12th and 13th regenerations. It is actually between his 12th and 13th lives, the common mistake is in thinking that a numbered Doctor means the same numbered regeneration. The problem with that reasoning is that the Doctor would have been in his first regeneration when he was the First Doctor meaning that the Doctor first regenerated when he was born and that does not really makes sense.
- It showed clips/images of three of the four Borusas. John Arnatt who delivered a very good and sincere performance as Borusa in Invasion of Time got left out, surely there would have been room to include him in the programme as well.