Doctor Who Season 9

DVD Wholesale Quick Overview:

Peter Capaldi returns as the Doctor alongside Jenna Coleman and guests including Game of Thrones’ Maisie Williams. Now that the Doctor and Clara have established a dynamic as a partnership of equals, they’re relishing the fun and thrills that all of space and time has to offer. Tangling with ghosts, Vikings and the ultimate evil of the Daleks, they embark on their biggest adventures yet.

Let’s be honest: every time there is a new Doctor, the premier season is usually a little more rough. The new actor takes some time to find his voice, and we the audience have to get over our grief at losing the old Doctor whom we have usually learned to like (how much I loved Matt Smith by the end was inversely proportional to how much I hated him replacing Tennant at the beginning). Capaldi was an even harder transition, since he’s the first “grumpy old man” version of The Doctor in the reboot, and thus more of a departure.

This makes the fact that Capaldi aces it in the first episodes completely satisfying. The Doctor can’t be an easy roll to play; how often does a character successfully pull off switching from manic silliness to action to compelling sadness to silly again? And yet here is Capaldi, riffing on a guitar while riding a tank before battling a snake monster before having an extended (and memorable) nostalgic conversation with an old arch-rival. That each part works is a triumph: that they all work together is a miracle. The Capaldi of this season has worked out exactly how the cranky old guy complaining about all these meddlesome youngsters and the gleeful mad scientist with child-like enthusiasm both fit into the same cohesive Doctor. At the same time, the writers have learned how to play to his strengths and, thus far, minimize his weaknesses. This Doctor doesn’t need to have actual human kids around him to play up the old man-aspect; virtually everyone is a “kid” compared to him.

Likewise, they’ve hit pay dirt in Megan Gomez’s “Missy,” who fills the River Song plot function of being the quirky and competent equal who shows up at random and manages to steal just a bit of his thunder. She’s also not the only classic element this season improved: The Daleks have not just one, but two new developments: what death means for a Dalek, and how the tanks distorts the Dalek’s commands. Together, they open up a ton of possibility for future Dalek plots that aren’t just permutations old Dalek plots. While I wouldn’t mourn an actual once-and-for-all end to the Daleks and Cybermen in favor of making room for new monsters like The Boneless, Season 9 gives them a twist that is both reasonably consistent while making room for new surprises.

Just to pull it all together, they incorporate footage from the Classic Doctor to bridge the old and new themes, which was kind of cool, silly, nostalgic and a bit too clever all at the same time. In other words, it couldn’t have fit Doctor Who more perfectly.

– Dylan R. Vane

DVD Wholesale Main Features :   

Actors: Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman, Maisie Williams
Directors: Various
Format: Multiple Formats, Box set, Color, Dolby, Full Screen, NTSC
Language: English
Region: Region 1
Number of discs: 5
Rated: NR – Not Rated
Studio: BBC Home Entertainment
DVD Release Date: April 5, 2016
Run Time: 585 minutes