The Collection Rumours

Speculation on the existence of a Wilderness Years collection comes from multiple notable special features released during the wilderness years being absent from the season 26 collection despite being included with releases of Survival in the past. Usually when special features from the DVDs aren’t included in the blu-ray collection the story they were originally packaged with is in, it’s because they plan to include it with a different season it fits better with. But where do these special features fit better than they would with season 26? None, unless there’s a wilderness years collection.

Also, it’d be a way to rerelease content like the TV movie, Curse of Fatal Death, and Scream of the Shalka.

And, like much speculation, it’s built on hope. People want this stuff to come to blu-ray in a uniform collection with the rest of Classic Who. They want content like Death Comes to Time and Real Time to finally be rereleased. They don’t want bits and pieces and scraps like the TARDIS website clips to be left out forever. And so they dream.

Anyways, I remember one of the people working on the collection blu-ray sets saying that they were considering doing similar releases for nuwho in the future, but I can’t find the source. I hope they do, there’s a lot of unreleased nuwho special features. Some minisodes, concerts, the uncut versions of Doctor Who Confidential, clips from the website, the entirety of Totally Doctor Who, the Tenth Planet recreated scenes from the theatrical version of Twice Upon a Time, etc.

From what I've heard

- Season 2, and Season 20 are the next collections being planned (Unsure which is first)

The origin of the wilderness years box set is mostly fan imagination, spiraling from a comment that Paul McGann deserved his own box set, not just adding his movie to Season 26

Unaware of any discussion of new Who collections

Peter Purves and Maureen O'Brien recently spoke about doing interviews for Season 2, so that's definitely coming. It makes sense for them to release it, as it's the most complete of 60s Who. Curious to know what they'll do for the two missing episodes of The Crusaders, I'm guessing it'll be telesnap recons.

You're not gonna find many official announcements by the Collection team about the sets but they usually answer questions on GallifreyBase or at BFI screenings promoting the Collection.

The current rumours out there are:

• S2 and S20 are next

• Wilderness Years Box Set is going to be a thing

• NuWho Collection range is not a thing but could be if Classic range does well

The evidence for S2 is the fact that Peter Purves and Maureen O'Brien accidentally slipped at a convention that they had done some work for behind the scenes in a collection box set. Since they were both companions in S2 and S3 it's going to be one of the two and S3 is too difficult to be done this early.

The evidence for S20 is the fact that the collection team confirmed that they wanted to do S20 a while ago but couldn't because Mark Strickson couldn't come down to the UK for behind the scenes filming because of the lockdown in Australia. Because restrictions have eased up as of July 6th, we can assume that they're going to try and get filming done while they have the chance and finally get that S20 set out there.

The evidence for Wilderness Years is the fact that a bunch of special features about the Wilderness Years that were originally on the McCoy DVDs have been completely removed from the S26 box set without explanation. This is very unusual for the collection team as they always put the DVD special features on the Collection Sets or give an explanation as to why they couldn't. Their silence on the matter all but confirms a Wilderness Years set.

Now as for the Collection range, the team that works on the Classic range has stated that there is no plans to work on the NuWho sets but that they would love it if they could work on them once the Classic range is done.

Do we know if it will solely consist of classic who or will it eventually do modern who etc.

I suppose it's possible they may decide in 10 years to sell the new series eps to the fans in another format with more extras but they also may figure that they've been there, done that, move on.

I'm not sure a Collection-style boxset could be done for the revival. The entire reason the Collections exist is because the fandom was passionate enough about the classic episodes to endlessly navel-gaze about them, creating the wealth of special features seen on the DVDs (and later the Blu-rays). It also helped that the DVDs were released during the later wilderness years, at a time when interest among fans was increasing again. (This is probably why Big Finish exists as well.) [edit: And come to think of it, the revival itself!]

Not to say there won't be a, say, Eleventh Doctor Collection in the future, but there just doesn't seem to be the same mindset among fans. Maybe in a few more years? Who knows if we'll feel nostalgic for Who in the same way older fans did.