The TV Movie

As for the DVD releases themselves, the Revisitations boxsets provide an excuse for me to revisit some of my early covers, when I was developing my skills and bedding in the design. Thus, as with the re-issue of 'Remembrance of the Daleks', I plan to redo covers for all re-releases -- at the very least to update the Special Features lists on the back but also to amend some of the typography for consistency with later covers and, where appropriate, tweak the illustrations to correct any elements that have since come to niggle at me. However, I won't be rechristening these 'special editions' as I prefer to keep that term for the re-edits that are occasionally done and expect these re-issues to simply become the default version in most people's collections.

So first up is the TV movie, with 'The Talons of Weng-Chiang' and 'The Caves of Androzani' to follow. This is a particularly welcome reworking as there were several elements of the original illustration -- only the third I produced -- that I wasn't happy with. Primarily there was the issue of picture sources, which I was very limited by ten years ago. Now, with the growths of my collection of DWM and other publications and various internet sources, I had a better selection of images to choose from. While I was happy with the overall design and composition of the original illustration, the only picture element remaining from that is the photo of the Doctor, although even on that I rebalanced the levels a tad to lift some of the darker areas.

I was able to source a better photo of San Franciso from a stock image library I now have access to, although it still isn't the most memorable skyline, with only the Transamerica Pyramid standing out as unique, so I added an overlay of the doomsday time to add some interest. DWM provided a clearer, better resolution photo of the Master than I could originally find, and I was keen to replace the amorphous background with something more concrete, selecting a shot of the Cloister Room set. Similarly I used a shot of the alleyway, particularly the 'Visit London' poster, as a background to the upper panel, although with some heavy motion blurring as the quality wasn't that great. My greatest annoyance with the original illustration was having the Doctor on twice, the shot of him and Grace outside the TARDIS being the only choice I had back then. Initially I was going to replace them with just a shot of the Police Box, when I figured Sylvester plays a significant part in the story and deserved a final appearance on the cover too. Finally, I chose a bronzy tone that seemed to better match the shot of the Doctor and the story itself for both the illustration and the cover background. Oh, and I always regretted using the tagline from the broadcast itself rather than writing my own, so came up with a new one that nicely fitted both the story and the eighth Doctor's regrettably brief TV tenure.

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