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Many would say that Tom Baker is their favourite Doctor but for me, the Peter Davidson era was something special. Gone were the days where special effects meant holding something in place with a flimsy thin piece of string. The assistants of the Peter Davidson era (Adric, Nyssa, Tegan, and Turlough) seemed to make for more adventurous stories.

The Doctor and (his new assistant) Peri land on the planet Androzani Minor and as usual find themselves in trouble. The planet is the home of Sharaz Jek who is guarding a supply of Spectrox, the most valuable item in the universe, with the help of some androids and assistance from gunrunners. Government troops from Androzani Major have battled for years in the caves trying to locate Sharaz Jek and his supply of Sectrox. It seems that Morgus, a businessman on Androzani Major, is intent on keeping the price of Spectrox inflated and would perhaps do anything to ensure the military never succeed.

If you haven't been a fan of Dr Who or know anything about The Caves of Androzani, it may be best to skip along to the video transfer section otherwise you'll discover how this ends. If you're still reading now, you probably know this is one of several series which ends in the Doctor regenerating. This time Peter Davidson hands over the reigns to Colin Baker.

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VIDEO
Keeping in mind this series was first shown in early 1984, the 4x3 FULL FRAME transfer isn't too bad. BBC Video cameras of this era weren't the best and the transfer sometimes shows these inadequacies. Gunfire and explosions generally caused havoc with the cameras and these have been faithfully transferred.

Since the BBC stored much of their television archive footage on 1" video tape, the picture quality over the years has diminished. Consequently the picture is a little bit gritty and the colours are a little dull. In some scenes the MPEG encoding is a little over compressed and the end result is some noticeable MPEG artifacting.

The opening sequence has been worked on a little since the original had lots of camera movement while the background matt remained rock solid. It's also worth noting that this version features the minute or so that the ABC always cut out between when Sharaz Jek rips off is mask revealing a horribly disfigured face till after he kills Morgus.

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AUDIO
The audio is plain old Dolby Digital 2.0 but I wouldn't be surprised if someone told me it was originally done in mono and just mixed around a little.

The background music throughout seems to be based loosely around the Cloister Bells that were heard in the Tom Baker series Logopolis, a subtle link to the outcome.

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EXTRAS
The disc comes with some extras should you want to know more about the making of The Caves Of Androzani. The presentation comes with

• Audio Commentary by Peter Davidson, Nicola Bryant, and the director Graeme Harper. This commentary is quite interesting during the first episode and the last half of the last episode but the rest in the middle is pretty average as our trio struggle to say things they remember from over 25 years ago.
• Production notes available as subtitles. These notes feature lots of interesting little bits of information. It's probably worth switching these on the second time you watch this feature.
• Isolated Music Track - presented in Dolby Digital 2.0  (click on the audio options selection)
• "behind the scenes" footage of the final scene which essentially consists of a handi-cam recording continuously just behind all the other cameras.
• Short feature detailing the makeup involved in creating Sharaz Jek.
• Extended version of one of the scenes but after watching it, you'll probably agree it was a good thing it was cut down.
• TV spots and interviews are available
• Photos taken during shooting.

Not many more extras could really be expected since the series was filmed nearly 30 years ago and I'd expect time should be spent equally on providing other Dr Who DVD's with some extras but the extras provided will keep you occupied for a good 30 minutes.

In general, this isn't a bad Dr Who series to own but there are a few others that are cult favourites and should be invested in before this one (such as Logopolis and The Planet of the Spiders).