Doctor Who: City of Death (PG)
(Michael Hayes, 1979)
Tom Baker, Lalla Ward, Julian Glover
Film ••••• Extras •••••
Released: 7 November
"Blimey!" you're thinking, "That new Christopher Eccleston version of 'Dr Who' was so great I wept for joy at being alive! Perhaps I should check out the old series?" If such thoughts occur to you, tread carefully - pick the wrong DVD and you may get stuck with a creaky black and white fracas between chirruping ant-men and giant butterflies, or an ambitious duvet cover menacing a power station.
Douglas Adams's 'City Of Death', though, is one of the show's undisputed classics and probably the story that comes closest to the 2005 update's combination of tight plotting, ingeniously lunatic ideas and self-deprecating humour. The pitch is astonishing: Tom Baker's Doctor ("You're a beautiful woman probably") and gorgeous clever-clogs pal Romana race around your actual Paris desperate to stop a seaweed-headed cyclops in a white three-piece from using multiple genuine copies of the Mona Lisa to retroactively wipe out humanity.
Stranger still, the villain has a decent motivation and you won't need to be fluent in Nerd to follow the story. The entire cast has a great time, including Jeffrey Archer look-a-like Julian Glover as arch alien art thief, Scaroth, 'Space: 1999' stalwart, Catherine Schell as his beautifully cheek-boned wife, plus John Cleese and Eleanor Bron moonlighting as pretentious culture vultures.
The generous and appropriately tongue-in-cheek extras, including some Baker and Cleese sketches, run through the adventure's production in such thorough detail they'll manage to satisfy even the most anal 'Doctor Who' obsessive. Deliriously wonderful. - Christmas has come early. JH
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