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Tardis
DVD

DVD, meaning digital versatile disc, (PROSE: The Time Travellers' Almanac) was a digital-based physical visual media format used on Earth in the late 20th century and early 21st century.

Originally developed in the 1990s, DVDs quickly replaced video cassettes as the predominant medium for domestic film and TV viewing and recording. For some years, computer games had frequently contained hidden extra features, which the player would have to search for using clues in the game menus, and the DVD format followed this lead. These hidden extras became known as Easter Eggs. (PROSE: The Time Travellers' Almanac)

In 2001, the Fifth Doctor, Martin Ashcroft, Sir Jack Merrivale and Johanna Bourke recorded a commentary for the 25th anniversary DVD release of the 1976 portmanteau film Doctor Demonic's Tales of Terror. (AUDIO: Special Features)

Billy Shipton, acting on instructions from the Tenth Doctor decades earlier, entered into the DVD authoring business after plying his trade in video publishing. In the 2000s, he arranged secretly to have a specially encoded Easter egg file added to each of seventeen commercially released DVDs.

The file, when opened by viewers, played a one-sided video message from the Doctor recorded in 1969 intended for Sally Sparrow. The message was noticed by Larry Nightingale (who worked in a DVD rental shop) and other Internet forum users before finally being seen by Sally herself in the midst of her encounter with the Weeping Angels in the 2000s.[nb 1] Sally eventually realised that the seventeen DVDs containing the Easter egg consisted of her complete collection 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 Doctor's TARDIS. When inserted into a DVD drive mounted to the control console, it activated the TARDIS and sent it back to 1969 to be retrieved by the Doctor. (TV: Blink)

The Twelfth Doctor still had this kind of DVD in the TARDIS at the time of his travels with Clara Oswald, one of which was used by Courtney Woods in 2049 to return to Minera Luna San Pedro. (TV: Kill the Moon)

Shortly following the London UFO crash in 2006, Rachel posted on the website Doctor Who? to ask if any of the aliens were single to get back at her ex-boyfriend Robbie last week, ending her message by demanding Robbie return her Cindy Crawford Workout DVD. (PROSE: Alien landing confirmed)

After Emma-Louise Cowell and Diane Holmes were accidentally sent through the Cardiff Rift from 1953 to the 2000s,[nb 2] they were both astonished that films were sold in boxes, namely DVDs, and people could watch them at home. (TV: Out of Time)

In the 2000s,[nb 3] Banana Boat was arrested in Lanzarote for selling dodgy DVDs. (TV: A Day in the Death) Ianto had to lie to the Spanish police to get him released. (PROSE: Pack Animals)

Simon owned a copy of Vince Cosmos's performance at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1973. (PROSE: Enter Wildthyme)

The Eleventh Doctor kept DVDs in his TARDIS. Amy Pond's mobile phone was by the collection when they visited Apalapucia. (TV: The Girl Who Waited)

Forbidden Planet sold DVDs. (PROSE: In Search of Doctor X)

Footnotes[]

  1. While Blink itself uncontroversially sets its main setting in 2007 and "twenty minutes to Red Hatching" a year later in 2008—as Kathy Nightingale's letter describes taking "one breath in 2007 and the next in 1920", and the Tenth Doctor's side of his conversation with Sally Sparrow in 1969 happens 38 years before Sally says hers—these are contradicted by heavily conflicting dates in the Redacted audio series later on regarding both Kathy's disappearance and the Red Hatching. In Angels, Abby McPhail identifies 2008 as the year of Kathy's disappearance, which suggests 2009 as the year of the Red Hatching. In Salvation, the Thirteenth Doctor recognises the Red Hatching as the cause of death of Andy Proctor, who was last seen by his daughter Cleo "nearly 20 years" before 2022 according to Recruits.
  2. Episodes 1-10 of the first series of Torchwood are set anywhere from 2006-2009 as a result of conflicting evidence shown in the episodes Ghost Machine, Greeks Bearing Gifts, Random Shoes, To the Last Man, Reset, Adrift, Fragments, Exit Wounds, and The New World. As episode 10, Out of Time, is set at the end of December, this means that episodes 11-13 are almost certainly set the year after episodes 1-10.
  3. The second series of Torchwood is set anywhere from 2007-2010 as a result of conflicting evidence shown in the episodes Ghost Machine, Greeks Bearing Gifts, Random Shoes, To the Last Man, Reset, Adrift, Fragments, Exit Wounds, and The New World, as well as Meat placing the series about a year after the start of series 1.
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