DVD

DVD, or "digital veratile disc"/"digital video disc" was a video playback technology developed on Earth in the 1990s, and which became the dominant playback format for visual entertainment media in the first decade of the 21st century.

Billy Shipton, acting on instructions received from the Doctor decades earlier, entered into the DVD authoring business after plying his trade in video publishing. In the mid-2000s, he arranged surreptiously to have a specially encoded Easter egg file added to each of 14 commercially released DVDs. The file, when located by viewers, played a one-sided video message from the Doctor recorded in 1969 intended for Sally Sparrow. Ultimately, the message would be first noticed by Larry Nightingale (who worked in a DVD rental shop) and other Internet forum users, before finally being seen by Sparrow herself in the midst of her encounter with the Weeping Angels. Sparrow eventually realizes that the 14 DVDs containing the Easter egg consisted of her complete collection of DVDs at that time. The Easter egg file served an additional purpose; it transformed each encoded DVD into a special control disc good for a single one-way journey in the TARDIS. When inserted into a DVD drive mounted to the control console, the file activated the TARDIS and sent it back to 1969 to be retrieved by the Doctor. (DW: Blink)

Real world
Doctor Who, like many other television programs, has seen many episodes released to DVD since the late 1990s. The first story to be released in this format was a remastered and reedited version of DW: The Five Doctors. Since then, BBC Video, later in conjunction with 2 Entertain, has released many classic-series stories in the format, often with commentary, documentaries and other features. Some serials, such as The Ark in Space, have included the option to view with upgraded special effects, while some releases such as The Curse of Fenric have included extended versions with previously unbroadcast material.

Serials from all seven original Doctors have been released to DVD in both the UK and North America, while the 1996 telefilm has also been released in that format, but in the UK only. Except for the two season-long story arcs, The Trial of a Time Lord and The Key to Time, BBC Video/2|Entertain has chosen to release individual serials, rather than complete seasons, for the classic series, although several themed releases, or multi-story arcs, have been issued as well. A special release, Lost in Time, collected "orphaned" episodes from the 1960s (the remainder of the stories in question having been wiped).

The revived series has been released differently, with BBC Video choosing to initially issue "vanilla" (special feature-lite) single-disc releases of two or three episodes, followed by a full-season box set (with extras) later. Included in the box set are specially edited versions of Doctor Who Confidential, as well as, when applicable, charity mini-episodes such as Time Crash. North America consumers have been able to buy the full-season box sets for all four series to date, although so far only Series 1 (2005) has been issued in Region 1 in the UK "vanilla, single disc" format, too. The spin-off animated adventure The Infinite Quest has also seen DVD release.

All official Doctor Who spin-offs have also been issued to DVD: K-9 and Company: A Girl's Best Friend, Torchwood (including its behind-the-scenes spinoff series, Torchwood Declassified) and The Sarah Jane Adventures, although the second season of SJA has yet to be issued.

In 2009, a magazine called Doctor Who DVD Files was launched in the UK, featuring photos and stories built around an enclosed DVD featuring two episodes from the revived series. Due to licensing issues this publication is presently only available in Great Britain.

As Doctor Who enters its "gap year" of specials, BBC Video has so far released the 2008 Christmas Special The Next Doctor to DVD; it remains to be seen if similar single-special releases will occur as the year progresses, and whether any of these will be issued in North America, or if a box set will instead be issued there, presumably in early 2010.