More Early Doctor Who VHS Branding...

When they finally got their heads round the selling of pre-recorded sell-thru VHS tapes, the BBC toyed with applying different types of branding to the Doctor Who range using some of their other brands for guidance...

Doctor Who - The Original VHS Branding!

We got a video recorder back in 1981. My Dad was flushed and also forked out for some pre-recorded videotapes. He paid £39.99 for 'Star Trek - Shore Leave' - released on the Mountain Video label. It was amazing at the time that I was able to watch an episode of Star Trek at my leisure and not have to rely on the whims of a BBC Scheduler. The fact that the video quality and the film print of said episode were something akin to a Super8 film that had spent the past decade on the floor of a public toilet, was incidental. It was just magic! 

Fast forward (do you see what I did there?) to in the mid-eighties and BBC Enterprises were also quite impressed by the new technology. They decided to release a selection of Doctor Who episodes on their new BBC Video label. 

Top Doctor Who producer JNT was given the task of connecting up two VHS recorders and editing together omnibus versions of classic stories (or at least the ones that had been stored on the bottom shelf at BBC Archives to save getting the steps). 

Once done, he headed off to the BBC Enterprises portakabin at Television Centre with the de-tabbed master tapes - together with a box of blank VHS's he'd got from Woolies with Gary's discount card - and after much scratching of heads, the first of the new hi-tech releases were made available to very rich fans. 

It was a start anyway...

TV21 - Today's News Tomorrow from Yesterday!

Paper arrived this morning...

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Doctor Who relaunch on VHS - cancelled!

You may recall some covers I posted for some early Doctor Who DVDs late last year.

It appears that my post was a little premature - particularly the footnote regarding the re-launch of the Doctor Who VHS range in 2005. 

I've uncovered some material from the BBC Branding and Exploitation Archive in Taunton which throws a little more light on the abandoned project. 

No other material exists other than a handful of cover proofs and a copy of a trade ad. 

I tried phoning Ken Barlow about his participation but the lady at the Granada Television switchboard told me to 'piss off' in a rather broad Mancunian accent. 

Charming...!!

EastEnders - The New Missing Adventures!

After their failure with doing Blakes's Seven New Adventures, Virgin still felt the urge to produce new fiction based on a TV series to build on their success with Doctor Who.

So they turned to the most popular show on TV and commissioned a series of original novels.

The BBC were appalled...

(Christmas Spirits cover based on artwork at BBC EastEnders website)