The Krotons - DVD

The Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe help overthrow the Krotons, crystalline beings who are draining mental energy from the primitive Gonds in order to revitalise themselves...


As with episodes of 'The War Games' and 'The Dominators', some of the master copies of 'The Krotons' exist outside the BBC, in the vaults of the British Film Institute (see the article on The War Games for an explanation of how this happened). Before any work was undertaken, it was important to work out who held the best elements. The BFI were contacted and their catalogue implied that they somewhat unexpectedly held two 16mm negatives of episode two and one 16mm neg of episode three. The BBC films were called up first and we quickly discovered that episodes two and three were below-par duplicate negs as expected. Thankfully episode four was an original 16mm neg and episode one we already knew to be the original 35mm film recording neg which had been retained in the library since transmission, this being one of the few episodes to be transmitted from film rather than videotape. The BFI were contacted and asked to send over their films of episodes two and three, at which point it was discovered that one of the supposed two negs held for episode two was actually an off-air U-matic videotape recording of episode one from the 'Five Faces of Doctor Who' repeat season in the early eighties. Thankfully the other films were indeed the film recorder camera negs as expected, so all four episodes could be transferred in optimum quality.

 

• 4 x 25 mins approx monochrome episodes with mono audio.

Commentary with actors Philip Madoc, Richard Ireson and Gilbert Wynn, AFM David Tilley, make-up designer Sylvia James, costume designer Bobi Bartlett and special sounds designer Brian Hodgson. Moderated by Toby Hadoke.

Second Time Around (dur. 52’ 21”) – Faced with star William Hartnell’s deteriorating heath but with a very popular TV programme on their hands, the Doctor Who production team hit on the idea of ‘regenerating’ the show’s hero into a new physical form. This documentary looks back over Patrick Troughton’s tenure as the Second Doctor. With actors Anneke Wills, Deborah Watling, Wendy Padbury and Frazer Hines, producer and script editor Derrick Sherwin, writer and script editor Terrance Dicks, director Christopher Barry, writer Victor Pemberton and new series writer Robert Shearman, and new series script editor Gary Russell. Narrated by Richard Heffer.

Doctor Who Stories – Frazer Hines (part one) (dur.17’ 26”) – actor Frazer Hines reminisces about his time on the series in an interview originally recorded in 2003 for the BBC’s ‘Story of Doctor Who’.

The Doctor’s Strange Love (dur. 7’ 16”) – writers Joseph Lidster and Simon Guerrier taken an affectionate look at ‘The Krotons’ in the latest instalment in our continuing series.


• Plus of course the usual PDF materials, Coming Soon trailer, Programme Subtitles, Subtitle Production Notes and Photo Gallery.


 

Copyright Steve Roberts, 16 August 2012. No reproduction allowed without written permission.