BBC Provides the Missing Doctor Who DVD Cast Commentary
Doctor Who - Season 3 courtesy BBC Video
This past November 6th saw the DVD release of
Doctor Who - The Complete 3rd Season in North America, culminating in an epic three-part story where The Doctor (David Tennant) had battled, and seemingly lost the Earth to, one of his longest-running enemies.
The advance material and the included booklet for the DVD release both said that the season finale, "The Last of the Time Lords", would include a cast commentary track by David Tennant ("The Doctor"), Freema Agyeman ("Martha Jones") and John Barrowman ("Capt. Jack Harkness" of
Torchwood). However, that wasn't the commentary track fans found on the release when it arrived! Instead there was a podcast, which had previously been released on the internet, recorded by show producers Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner and Phil Collinson.
Naturally fans felt upset, especially when it became known that the proper cast commentary had been included in the U.K.'s DVD release of the same episode. Our own Gord Lacey turned to BBC Video for an explanation, and they exclusively told him that "the original commentary track for Series 3, Episode 13 featuring David Tennant, Freema Agyeman and John Barrowman could not be cleared for the North American DVD."
Now BBC America has apparently cleared it - enough, anyway - to provide the cast commentary track for
download from their website! Yes, you can retrieve it right now and sync it up with your DVD release. I've listened to it last night, and it's well worth getting.
Also, BBC America will air the episode this Saturday evening (April 19th, 7PM Eastern), so if you download the track then you'll be able to run it alongside the broadcast (as they remind you at the download site, don't forget to pause the commentary playback during commercials).
It's not as perfect as having the commentary track actually on the DVD, of course, but we think that the folks at the BBC get good marks for somehow making the commentary track available to folks in the USA. Good show!
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David Lambert
Purchase Doctor Who - The Complete 3rd Season from Amazon.com
