Weird Doctor Who VHSes

Between 1983 and 2003, every existing episode of Doctor Who was released on VHS by the BBC, before starting the whole process again on DVD. You'd think this would be fairly simple, but a couple of the releases were a bit strange. Let's examine some of the strangeness, shall we?

The Brain of Morbius (released 1984)
The first few releases were all done in 'compilation' format - the original 4-to-6 part serial edited together into one big movie. There would be a few edits made for whatever reasons. However, the original release of The Brain of Morbius was a heavily edited 60-minute version! That's over half an hour of material (not including opening and closing credits) deleted! The compilations ultimately proved unpopular, and beginning with their release of The Daleks in 1989 unedited, episodic versions were used, with most of the stories originally released as compilations being rereleased...

The Time Warrior (released 1989)
...Except this one. The Time Warrior was the final story to be released in 'compilation' form and, for whatever reason, never received an episodic rerelease. It was not until the DVD came out in 2007 that fans could see Sarah Jane's first serial as it was originally broadcast.

(NB: Most of the episodic rereleases of the stories originally done as movies were in 1994, around a decade after the original release, although Terror of the Zygons wasn't reissued until 1999, and perhaps due to complaints the unedited version of Morbius was released much earlier, in 1990.)

The Curse of Fenric (released 1991)
With the show off-air, John Nathan-Turner spent a lot of time working on projects for BBC Video. Some of them were quite good, others were The Pertwee Years. The release of The Curse of Fenric marked the first time a special extended cut was made for a DW story's home release. Curse infamously had to be cut down to the bone for its original broadcast, and in the original story characters appear to teleport from one area to another, due to the erratic nature of the final, high-paced edit. The VHS version adds 7 minutes of extra material. The later DVD release included the serial as originally broadcast and a movie-style Special Edition with 12 minutes of unbroadcast material, meaning Nathan-Turner's re-edit remains exclusive to the VHS release.

I also believe this story to hold the record of 'shortest gap between broadcast and VHS release for a classic serial', standing at just 15 months.

The Tomb of the Cybermen (released 1992)
This previously thought lost serial was rediscovered in Hong Kong in 1991 and hurriedly prepared for VHS release, which you must admit is a pretty good selling point. (Not least because some fans who didn't read Doctor Who Magazine were apparently totally unaware it had been found until they entered their local video shop and saw the VHS for sale...)

Shada (released 1992)
With this serial infamously unfinished due to strike action at the BBC, Nathan-Turner later got his hands on it for one of his BBC Video projects (having made several attempts to remount the production for broadcast whilst the show's producer), with what was filmed combined with linking narration by Tom Baker. The release also came with a facsimile of the original script. Controversially, the initial DVD release in 2013 was a remastered version of the VHS, with Baker's linking narration and all; an animated version would later be released in 2017.

The Daemons (released 1993)
This is one of several Jon Pertwee stories that only exists in monochrome form and had to be recoloured for VHS release, combining the black-and-white version and an inferior quality American (and hence NTSC format) colour version, and then manually adding colour by hand in the case of sequences that had been cut from the latter. This technique would also be used for Terror of the Autons and Doctor Who and the Silurians later that year; however, several other serials (The Ambassadors of Death, The Mind of Evil and Invasion of the Dinosaurs) were in worse condition and would have to wait for their DVD releases to be seen in full colour once again. In the case of that last one, the technique used to restore colour was only partially successful. Part One was the only episode of the serial affected, and hence the DVD includes a high-quality version of the monochrome print, and a lower-quality, 'best-efforts' version that's partially in colour.

Silver Nemesis (released 1993)
Following on from Fenric, here was another serial where they took an opportunity to do a re-edit, with 11 minutes of material being reinstated. An hour-long American documentary had also been commissioned to cover this (the 25th Anniversary story), and this was included a a special feature on the VHS. The DVD version included most (but not all) of the deleted scenes as a separate reel, and due to rights issues did not include the documentary at all, making the VHS still relatively sought-after.

The Invasion (released 1993)
Partially missing serials from the 1960s where only one or two episodes survived had been released as part of VHSes such as The Hartnell Years, where three episodes that were the only parts of their respective serials that survived were interspersed with a magazine programme-style format about the era and other clips. But what to do with, say, The Invasion - an eight-part story that was only missing two episodes? Simple - following on from the 'success' of Shada, release it with linking narration by Nicholas Courtney, in-character as The Brigadier, covering what happened (extremely briefly - presumably the scriptbook issued with Shada proved prohibitively expensive or they might have done it again here). You're probably aware that later on the DVDs were able to make animated reconstructions of the missing episodes.

Ghost Light (released 1994)
Guest star Katharine Schlesinger was wrongly credited as 'Katherine' on the original broadcast of parts 1 & 2. The VHS release corrected both episodes; the DVD does too, although the original continuity included as part of the special features includes the misspelled version for completists.

Time and the Rani (released 1995)
The original 1987 broadcast of Part Four erroneously used an early version of the opening titles with a notably different appearance of Sylvester McCoy's face. The correct version was substituted for the VHS release, but the DVD release reverted to what was originally broadcast.

The Five Doctors Special Edition (released 1995)
The third and final re-edit, this time also incorporating new special effects; it seems that by this point BBC Video had got a bit annoyed with Nathan-Turner hanging around all the time and he wasn't involved in this one. This version is notable for including every bit of material filmed but not used in the originally broadcast version irrespective of whether it made sense or not.

The War Machines (released 1997)
The group that would come to be known as the Doctor Who Restoration Team had come on board at this point, and these episodes - edited for content by overseas censors - had their lost material painstakingly reinstated or recreated. (Several Hartnell serials from the early years of the range would also be re-released as 'remastered' versions.) Around this time little 'extras' would start appearing on the videos, with this one including a clip from Blue Peter and a featurette on the restoration.

Battlefield (released 1998)
Another slightly extended McCoy edit, this time with 4 minutes of new material. Again, a more substantial Special Edition was done for the DVD release, alongside the originally broadcast serial.

The Ice Warriors Collection (released 1998)
Another serial in a similar situation to The Invasion above, this collection includes the four surviving episodes, reconstructions of the two missing episodes, an audio CD with the unedited soundtracks of the two missing episodes and a booklet on the fictional history of the Ice Warriors.

The Crusade and The Space Museum (released 1999)
A second episode of The Crusade was recovered in this year; the first episode had previously been released with The Hartnell Years, and to avoid people feel like they were double-dipping for the sake of a single episode they threw in the entirety of the hugely unpopular The Space Museum, linking material by William Russell, an audio CD with the missing episodes' soundtracks, some postcards and a TARDIS keyring.

The First Doctor Collection (released 2002)
With the VHS range rapidly coming to an edge and the era of DVD on the horizon, the people behind the range had a problem: they'd released all the stories that were any good at the beginning of the range, and now they only had the dregs left (the final titles released included The Mutants, Meglos and The Horns of Nimon). This collection bundled together the final unreleased William Hartnell serials that survived in their entirety: The Sensorites, The Time Meddler and The Gunfighters. (The first one was slightly edited to remove an infamous scene where the microphones accidentally pick up members of the production crew talking.)

The Reign of Terror (released 2003)
This was the final release in the range, and had a limited print run of 8,000, with each copy being individually numbered and including a 40th Anniversary pin badge. It featured the four (out of six) surviving episodes of Hartnell's The Reign of Terror, plus the two (of six) survivors of Troughton's The Faceless Ones and the (at the time) only surviving episode of The Web of Fear.