Doctor Who: The Complete Sixth Series (DVD)

It is so hard for me to believe that "Dr. Who" is considered a children's program in England. Maybe the new Who's, especially with Tennant and Smith, are changing that. They have pretty "big" themes, interesting and exciting to sci-fi loving adults. I am a true-blue fan, collecting the DVD sets of the original Dr. Who's (which I originally recorded onto VHS from the TV!) as well as the new Dr. Who's.Series 6 of Dr. Who was produced and aired in two sections, with a short hiatus inbetween. The first seven episodes were broadcast in spring 2011. The last six episodes are still being aired in Sept. 2011. That is why Series 6 was broken into two separate DVD releases, known as Part 1 and Part 2.Before Series 6 Part 1 started, there was the 2010 Christmas Special, "A Christmas Carol". I watched that on TV and the ending was pretty emotional, a thoughtful well-done Christmas-y Dickens-like show. "A Christmas Carol" was NOT included in the DVD Series 6 - Part 1. However, it IS included in this "Doctor Who: The Complete Sixth Series".Following is a list of all the episodes for Series 6 which are included in this Complete Sixth Series. A couple of them are just plain good old adventure stories, such as "The Curse of the Black Spot", with a great twist on the myth of the siren and her ability to call sailors to their doom. "The Doctor's Wife" is also a favorite of mine. The Doctor answers a Time Lord distress call and is trapped with the gruesome Auntie and Uncle and the downright weird Idris. But Idris isn't who or what she seems and her interaction with the Doctor is fabulous.Other episodes have themes which carry forward into following episodes, and, to tell the truth, I sometimes had a little trouble keeping track of everything. But that's one good reason for me to buy them on DVD, I get to watch this great sci-fi storytelling all over again, and catch the nuances and details I might have missed the first time.1. "A Christmas Carol" - Awesome story of forgiveness and life-altering love.2. "The Impossible Astronaut" - Finally we find out just what "The Silence" is. It was The Silence that caused the TARDIS to explode at the end of Series 5. Worth watching just to see a puzzled but game Richard Nixon (played excellently by Stuart Milligan).3. "Day of the Moon" - A continuation and completion of the Doctor's dealings with The Silence. The circumstances reminded me some of the movie, "Memento". What would you do if you could not remember something as soon as you turned away from it?4. "The Curse of the Black Spot"5. "The Doctor's Wife"6. "The Rebel Flesh" - Part 1 of a two-part story. A solar tsunami throws the TARDIS onto 22nd century Earth. We know of robots used in conditions where a human could not work. What if you could create dopplegangers of yourself to do the hazardous work? [Sidebar: Recommended sci-fi reading, "Kiln People", by David Brin.]7. "The Almost People" - Part 2 continuation. What if those dopplegangers decided to rebel?8. "A Good Man Goes to War" - This is where the background story gets very convoluted. An Almost People is involved, and Amy and Rory's baby, Melody, is kidnapped. River refuses to help the doctor because it is during this war that he will learn her identity. THAT is worth waiting for. I didn't see it coming.9. "Let's Kill Hitler" - A human crew from the future wants to kill Hitler and change the future. A dilemma. Who wouldn't think the world would be a better place if Hitler could be stopped before he reached full power? Convoluted back story.[I stand corrected. A comment correctly points out that the humans didn't want to kill Hitler, they wanted to collect him for incarceration for his crimes against humanity.]10. "Night Terrors" - Eight-year old George is terrified of monsters in his bedroom. But, naturally, it's not that simple, nothing with the Doctor ever is.11. "The Girl Who Waited" - The Doctor takes Amy and Rory to Apalapucia for a well-deserved vacation. Unfortunately, they land before they find out that the whole planet is suffering from a plague that kills creatures with two hearts. Amy gets separated, and waits 36 years for the doctor to find her, and she's not happy about it.12. "The God Complex" - The Doctor and friends are trapped in an alien "hotel", where opening the wrong door leads to possession and death.13. "Closing Time" - Remember Craig Owens? The Docter moved in and became his roommate in the Series 5 episode, "The Lodger". The Doctor decides to visit him. And Cybermen show up somehow. This episode hasn't been aired as the time I write this review.14. "The Wedding of River Song" - There are some spoilers out there about what is in the last episode, but the actual plot is a closely guarded secret until it airs on October 1, 2011. Time on Earth is set at April 22, 2011, 5:02 pm. Not exactly frozen, what's actually happened is that ALL of time occurs at the same time. This may be due to a woman named River Song.Happy Reader

Warning: Spoilers for both series 5 and 6. You can call me foolish, that's fine, for I'm not an expert of the whoniverse as I haven't seen the classical series. In high school, I got curious about Dr. Who, so I searched the internet, and watched a random episode, and I loved it, so I became a budding fan. Then I watched every single episodes in series 4 and 5, and a few other random ones I found on the internet for free. (I'm from China, and pirate movies and software was considered totally normal as nobody cares, though it seems that they begin to care recently, so I got the complete series 5 and a random other episodes for free. Well, I don't do that any more, as I think that's a form of stealing. Also, I didn't watch the classical series because I couldn't find it for free online when I was in China.) However, after series 5, I decided to leave Dr. Who, because of some disappointing episodes that made me think that Dr. Who is nothing but fighting monsters. The worst episode in series 5 to me is the one in which the Doctor met Van Gogh. It was like nothing was going on. Another episode that disappointed me was the one in which a child's voice asking for help is played in a house and it turns out that an alien is looking for someone to operate its ship inside the house and the Doctor conquered it by having the guy kiss the girl. I understand that the episode meant to explore the big theme of love, but that ending is way too quick, eazy, and disappointing. I mean, all the great thrills and suspense throughout the episode end in such a sketchy way. That's why I'm talking about series 5 in this comment to series 6. I came back to series 6 after years off Dr. Who since I once made a dream about Cybermen and I still remember the first two episodes, which I consider among the best in this series, that left me some suspense after I quit Dr. Who. I want to find out what's going on in the suspense.Now, a few episodes in this series are also suffering from the problem of disappointing and sketchy ending. Also, the synopsis displayed by Amazon is sometimes disappointing. I agree with some other comments that the Night Terror is disappointing, as it's not scary at all, contrary to what's being said, and even though it successfully built up some tension, it fails to end in a spectacular way anticipated from the tension. Closing Time is suffering even more severely from this problem. It's like nothing happened. Even people missing didn't appear that scary there, and the Cybermen did nothing cool as they should as in the Christmas special in series 4 and Nightmare in Silver in series 7. And the Almost People, same problem. I really like the theme of that episode since it brings out some very important topics such as human identity. But I was disappointed when I saw that most of Gangers got so easily reverted, making the plot look too fake and artificial. I expected most of them being ruthless and can't be shaken by love, thus making the fight more difficult and more spectacular. But what I expected did not happen. The God Complex also has this problem, though not as bad. Series 4 didn't seem to have such a severe problem.I also agree with some other comments that this series is not well-integrated. At first I thought that the producer wants us to appreciate this series as an integrate whole as there're many flashbacks to the first two episode. However, I find some filler episodes; I don't know what's the point of having them there as they don't really help developing the theme set in the first two episode. Fillers include: The Curse of the Black Spot, The Doctor's Wife (whose title is misleading), Night Terror, The Girl Who Waited, and the God Complex. I also agree with some other comments for I don't like it when the Doctor fooled the law of the universe so easily by hiding in the robot.Another bad thing I found about this series is that while it's aimed at children, I don't think this is a children's show. I watched the first two episodes with my best friend in high school, while I enjoyed it, she, still one year older than me, got so scared and she claimed that Dr. Who must be a ghost story. This even scares an 18-year-old, so it must scare younger children. I also consider the skulls in the Wedding of River Song too scary for children. Also, I think The God Complex which seems to make fun of faith in general and scenes about homosexuality will offend so many people all over the world and as those issues are highly polarized in our society, I denounce the placement of those one sided leftist views in a TV show for children (I'm not a right wing activist), since I want children to be exposed to both side of those highly polarized issues as well as opinions not fitting into the extremes so they can critically evaluate instead of falling into one of the extremes. Polarized issues are particularly difficult since it's hard to stay calm when arguing. I also don't want anger to arise around a show aimed to make people happy, and that's why I still consider Star Wars the best, since it resonates with something deep in all people regardless of religious or political beliefs.Now let me talk about what I like. I think Dr. Who is a cultural response to modern physics and cosmology, in particular the theory of relativity that gives time a counterintuitive color, and something like Schrodinger's cat. Dr. Who appeals so much, because of its imaginative exploration of those acstract ideas. Another theme I like is the human identity in emotion and love. I like how this show addresses how a parent loves his child even though this has been poorly used so the endings are not spectacular. It would be a lot better if those scenes develop like in Star Wars, in which there's more development of the theme of fatherly love, from Vadar's ruthlessness to his return to his humanity. In particular, this series brings out the Gangers, and the issue of personhood. This Doctor is pretty handsome, and I really like his haircut. However, he sometimes acts silly and makes silly mistakes. I like The Girl Who Waited even though it looks like a filler, since it's great on its own. It explores the abstract idea of different flow of time and parallel reality. It's cool to explore what's unrealistic like fairytales and possible implications of current scientific discoveries. River Song's Wedding is also nice for the same reason, except that fooling the law of the universe is a flaw.I'm not a fan. I like art in general even though I'm a science major. Shall I watch the newer Dr. Who? I don't know, probably no, as I'm disappointed by the endings and fillers in this series. I think I'll wait until some episodes become classics, so I can avoid wasting time on what doesn't worth my time. I don't expect every single episode to be classic since I don't expect continual creation to extend this show to be always successful. I think the next Dr. Who I'll watch will be from the classic series, the classic from the classic.

I want to start off by emphasising the fact that this isn't actually a negative review or me saying that it's a bad release. The revival series steelbook releases are absolutely wonderful for collectors like myself and this marks the fourth format on which I've owned S6 now, much like the previous seasons.This one though....it's disappointing in that it lacks any real value for money save for the exquisite but slightly infuriating artwork. Sophie Cowdrey has done the artwork for the last few re-releases and I've always enjoyed her work but for her to have included the prolific racist & transphobic 'activist' Frances Barber on the rear cover is a huge disappointment. I know she had a significant role in S6 but she wasn't on the original 2011 release artwork and she needn't have been on this one either.In terms of the contents, there's another problem. Disc holders. There's six discs in this release on account of the 2010 Christmas special "A Christmas Carol" being present on its own disc as well as the bonus disc with the cut-down versions of Doctor Who confidential's final run before it was axed but there's only 2 actual disc holders unlike Series 5 which had the 2 plus a double sided middle tray. This means that 3 discs are crammed in each on top of each other which is far from ideal and will eventually ruin the discs.It just wouldn't be that hard to have 2 overlapped disc holders on each half of the steelbook with a double tray in the middle. This is basic stuff.In terms of the episodes themselves, this release gives the best possible presentation of the episodes themselves as it brings the UK transmitted HD masters from the original replacement discs of the 2011 release. For those wondering, the original 2011 discs featured grain issues from the disc authoring. They issued replacement discs with the correct encoding which fixed the issues with grain meaning the episodes were presented in true HD in its original transmitted format with next time trailers intact. So huge points for this being the steelbook releases are exactly true to the transmitted episodes.Overall, it's a decent release but there's a few features which could've been included such as Doctor Who at The Proms 2010 which was released on the solo DVD & Blu-Ray of " A Christmas Carol" but never on the series boxset. Of course you could buy the Blu-Ray cheap and swap the discs out but fans shouldn't have to spend more just for a bonus feature which shouldn't be single release exclusive in the first place.Glad to add it to the steelbook collection but it's just going to be a shelf item for me I think.

The first box set jumped/pixellated on most of the discs and glitched on the special features. Amazon kindly sent me a free replacement, (thanks Kaayva!) and this played all the episodes but the special features would only play on discs 1,2 and only the first two special features on disc 5. On 3 and 4 it just went back to start up full stop. Not the first time this has happened on BBC DVDs, their quality has gone down while their price has risen. Bear in mind this was a new box set, still in its wrapping. Not Amazon's fault, but not what I paid for. Episodes were great though. The three stars are for the excellent episodes (now they play) and for the customer service, not for the BBC. The BBC need to buck their ideas up tbh, have bought all of the Dr Who Series of the reboot 1-7 so far, and have had issues with three others of them (not from Amazon.)

Being a huge Dr Who family as a whole (we, as parents, having watched it since Jon Pertwee's time, children since the 2005 revival) we are gradually buying the series on DVD, and some of them 'belong' to our eldest daughter because they were requested, and bought as, presents for birthdays, and this Series 6 DVD was bought for this purpose... but of course we've all watched it anyway! It follows the same format as the previous DVDs - fans who've already bought any of them will already be familiar with it (so don't need to read the rest of my review!) but for those who haven't, it are 'extras' such as episode commentaries (for 'The Impossible Astronaut', 'The Doctor's Wife', 'The Almost People' and 'The Wedding of River Song' - so only four episodes, and if I had a gripe it would be that I do wish they'd make them for all the episodes!), 'monster files' (more of a detailed background to adversaries created for various episodes, such as 'the flesh' in 'The Almost People'/'The Rebel Flesh', showing how the make-up was created and achieved, revealing more about why they act as they do etc) and little mini 'tardisodes' (I think they're called?) which set up, or follow up, certain events in the main series. If you're visually impaired or hearing impaired there is audio commentary (make sure you don't turn it on by mistake - it's easy to do if you're a bit 'trigger happy' with your remote!) and subtitling for every episode (I find the subtitles helpful when I'm listening to the commentaries - that way you don't miss out on dialogue, which is obviously dipped to allow the commentary to be heard, which means you can still identify/keep up with the important bits of dialogue the commentary is referring to!). If you are a fan you will probably already have one or more of the DVDs already, but if you liked Series 6, and haven't bought any of the others for any reason but are considering buying this one, then I hope some of the reviews here have helped you decide!

… and I have been since the very first episode! There have been Doctors that I loved and Doctors that really have disliked but I was one of those sad bunnies who got so excited when they announced that it was coming back! I was dismayed when I heard that Christopher Eccleston was going to get the ball rolling because I saw him as a serious (very serious!) actor but I thought he was brilliant in the part and I couldn't imagine anybody else in the part.David Tennant was excellent as his replacement and went on to make the part very much his own with his triumvirate of strong women and a new take on the Master. But the Doctor began to lose his way and in the two-parter, The End of Time, after saving the world from the surviving Time Lords he regenerates into Matt Smith, the youngest Doctor ever!I really enjoyed his first series watching his performance from crazy kid to displaying an incredible depth of age when he was talking to the young Amy. This second series is even better. His abilities as an actor are all on display and the stories were such fun in a multitude of ways. I can't wait for the next series and the 50th anniversary show. He is a wonderful Doctor and hope he won't leave the show too soon.

another limited edition doctor who steelbook release, this time series six. i am not reviewing series six itself as you already know whether you like it or not but this steebook is drop dead gorgeous to look at. as a bit of a collector i already have series six on dvd and bluray so this steelbook will remain unopened in my collection.