DVD Extras: Comedy Skits
This week, I’ve been working my way through my Christmas present DVDs: Doctor Who: The Beginning collection. I’ve watched An Unearthly Child alone and with the commentary track. I even managed a good five minutes of the commentary track and the information track at the same time (ouch! my brain.) There are several extras on the DVD of this first ever Doctor Who story. Alongside the photo gallery and the unaired Pilot episode, there are also four very funny skits. Three of them feature Mark Gatiss, author of “The Unquiet Dead” and “Idiot’s Lantern.” These three seem to have been shown on television sometime in 1999. Sadly, I was not able to locate them on YouTube for you. All I could find was someone’s re-enactment of one of them. Sigh. You’re stuck buying/borrowing a copy of the DVD from someone. In any case, the first skit is called: The Pitch of Fear, and it is the theoretical first “pitch” of the Doctor Who show to a BBC bigwig. They manage to fit so much Doctor Who stuff into such a short sketch. I loved it. The Corridor Sketch is the only non-Gatiss one, and it features Nicholas Briggs (voice of all Daleks) as an interviewer trying to cover the first day of filming on An Unearthly Child. Keep your eyes open for a surprise appearance from an old friend at the end of this one. Skit number three is my favorite of the lot. The Web of Caves features Mark Gatiss as The Doctor, who must contend with a couple of wanna be baddies. They are so pleased when he finally agrees to try and stop them. Terribly silly. The final skit is The Kidnappers, which is pretty much what it says on the tin. A famous Doctor Who actor guest stars in this one.
So, there you are. Four more reasons why you might want to take a look at Doctor Who: The Beginning. These DVDs are definitely feature-rich.
Doctor Who: The Beginning, An Unearthly Child, Doctor Who, Mark Gatiss, The Pitch of Fear, The Corridor Sketch, The Web of Caves, The Kidnappers
Leave a Reply