Doctor Who: The Savages Is the Pick of the Week

Fans of Classic Doctor Who know that there are a great many of those old episodes completely lost to time. Basically, back in the 1960s and early ’70s, the BBC had no reason to archive shows. Videotapes were expensive and difficult to store, and there was no home-video market, so they would erase them and record something new on them. Initially, almost all of the First (William Hartnell) and Second (Patrick Troughton) Doctors’ episodes were thought to be completely lost. But thanks to thousands of fans all over the globe, a great many stories have been discovered and released on home video. A great many more have surviving audio but no video. Periodically, one of those stories will get released with new animation to go with the audio.

This week, one such story is getting one such release. The Savages was the ninth story of the third season of Doctor Who. It originally aired in the Spring of 1966. It starred William Hartnell as the Doctor and Peter Purves and Jackie Lane as his companions, Steven and Dodo. The story involves the team landing on a planet with two distinct types of people – intelligent, well-mannered humanoids known as the Elders, and others known as the Savages. I haven’t seen this story, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that we discover that the Elders are evil and the Savages are noble.

Whether I’m correct or not does not deter me from wanting to purchase this story or from making it my Pick of the Week.

Also out this week that looks interesting:

Blaxsploitation Classics, Vol. 1 4K UHD: Shout Select is releasing six certifiable genre classics from the 1970s on UHD. If it weren’t for the absolutely awful-looking cover art, I’d have made this my pick. The films include: Across 110th Street, Coffy, Hell Up in Harlem, Black Caesar, Truck Turner, and Sheba, Baby.

Jason X / Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday: These two late-entry Friday the 13th films are getting the 4K UHD treatment from Arrow Video, complete with lots of great extras. Neither film is very good, and I’m not sure they really need a UHD upgrade, but as a fan of the series, this is still pretty cool.

Presence: The first of two films Steven Soderbergh released this year (the other being Black Bag) is a haunted house flick starring Lucy Liu and Chris Sullivan. I’m a huge fan of the director, and I can’t wait to see this.

Withnail and I 4K UHD: Criterion is upgrading their release of writer-director Bruce Robinson’s seminal British comedy about two men (Richard E. Grant and Paul McGann) who go on a bender.

How to Get Ahead in Advertising: Also from Criterion and also by Robinson, Grant stars in this black comedy about an ad exec who cannot come up with a slogan for a pimple cream. He then discovers a strange boil on his shoulder. Then the boil begins to talk. Things get weirder from there.

Lady of the Law: 88 Films continues to release some overlooked martial-arts films. This one stars Lo Lieh as a man falsely accused of a crime being relentlessly pursued by a justice seeker.

The Rapacious Jailbreaker: Radiance Films has this release of a Japanese crime thriller about a man who is really good at breaking out of jail.

The Iron Rose: Jean Rollin directs this horror film about a couple who get lost in a mysterious cemetery. Powerhouse Films has given it a new 4K transfer and filled the disc with a lot of extras.