I have just brought Spearhead from space on BluRay but I have noticed this on other classic multi parters, when playing the story though it still splits them up into episodes with their own titles and credits ect.
What I would like to know is, why dont the disks have an option to play the whole story though without all the individual titles and credits?
Im not saying that they should remove them completely, as Im sure some people would want them to be shown like that, but it would be nice to have to option, for the disk to instruct the player, to skip the extra titles and credits.

What do others think on the matter?

Very often the cliffhanger at the end of one episode is not exactly they same as the reprise at the start of the next. This is especially true of the black and white stories where the reprise was frequently a refilmed version of the previous week's cliffhanger.

Sometimes, as with Planet of the Spiders part 6 the reprise of part 5's cliffhanger was entirely re-edited with extra footage inserted. This is only the most obvious example.

So it's not as straightforward as simply lopping off the credits and reprises.

When Doctor Who was first issued on video a number of stories were released edited as you suggest. For example, Seeds of Death (I think) was one continuous story. But reaction from nearly everyone was negative and the BBC, quite rightly in my opinion, decided that releases on video and now DVD should be presented in their original format.

Anyway, classic Doctor Who stories aren't meant to be watched in one go. I always find it's far more enjoyable to watch a story in individual episodes, as it was intended to be seen.

I'm in the minority. I much prefer to watch the entire story - like a feature film. The four-parters are best for this (90 mins). I remember BBC 1 repeating Doctor Who in the 70's at Bank Holidays - they would screen 'The Daemons' in its entirety...brilliant.
When I first got my VHS in 1979 I would tape each episode ...then carefully wait with the 'pause' button ready to tape the next episode - I ended up with many full-length stories through the 80's!

Having said that - I don't think I could sit through a full-length edition of The War Games!

Well I can see that if the cliffhanger is different then its hard to do, but otherwise it would be just a case of an option to skip the end credits of one and the titles of the next!

Face Of Jack Im with you on the idea of say a 4 or 5 part story working as a 90-120 min feature length viewing.
8 or 10 parters, like 'The War Games', would work as Two 2 hour long viewings.

You'd also have to take into account things like the content of the credits.


If an actor only appears in ep3 of a 4 part story his name will never get seen on the Credits unless the credits for the final episode are expanded to show all actors from the entire story.


I suppose this wouldn't be a problem if the original individual episodes can still be accessed on the DVD but if the only option was a merged story then the end credits would have to be altered.



There has been at least one (I think there are a couple others) story from Classic DW that has been released with the story merged into one continuous version (though the original episodic version was also on the DVD).

I think they should still be episodes- after all, that's how they were made.

This is what Im thinking that they could still work as individual episodes and that you could also play them strung together as individual episodes with all the titles and credits, but have an option that removes the extra titles and credits too!