Just when Australian fans of Doctor Who thought they’d been forgotten, the newly recovered Second Doctor serials The Enemy of the World and The Web of Fear appeared on the iTunes Australia site. Released at midnight London time (9.00 Qld Time) in the UK and the US, it appeared for several hours that Australian fans would miss out.
The complete six part serial The Enemy of the World is available to purchase for $14.99, whilst The Web of Fear, which is missing one episode but has a reconstruction of episode three in lieu, is offered at the same price. iTunes is the only platform that these long missing stories are presently being offered for sale on. Both stories will be released on DVD in due course.
Frazer Hines (Jamie) and Deborah Watling (Victoria) at the private screening and press conference for The Web of Fear and The Enemy of the World yesterday
Vivien Fleming
The Doctor Who Mind Robber 
Interesting … did you see the DVD release at BBC SHOP? With this note at the end: “Please note, due to issues around broadcasting and licensing agreements, this title is not available to buy from BBC Shop in Australia or New Zealand.” Hmmm … can’t you just order it from the BBC UK site like I think I might be doing now? http://www.bbcshop.com/doctor-who/doctor-who-enemy-of-the-world-limited-collectors-edition-slipcase-dvd/invt/bbcdvd3866
The statement’s a bit ambiguous because as best as I know there’s no BBC Shops in Australia and NZ. The ABC Shop has the rights to sell BBC product in Australia and I trust that there’s a similar agreement with the NZ broadcaster. Our DVDs are coded region 4, although ordinarily the UK released ones are dual coded region 2 + 4.
I suspect what they’re saying is that they won’t post to Australia and NZ, The ABC shop doesn’t have it listed for release or pre-order yet, and nor does JB Hi Fi where I usually buy Australian released DVDs. It’s not coming up on either the Australian or the UK Fishpond sites either.
The fans in NZ will be pretty annoyed, I’m sure. I need to check on Twitter again, however I was speaking to a guy in NZ on Friday and iTunes NZ hadn’t released either of the two serials. He was justifiably screaming blue murder. I hope they’ve got it on iTunes in NZ by now as they’ve been supporting Doctor Who as long as we have in Australia – for nearly 50 years!
I’ve checked iTunes NZ and they still don’t seem to have them. I’ve tweeted the guy in NZ again just to confirm that they’re not available his end. I’ll do a blog post about the whole NZ issue as it’s outrageous. I’ve got NZ readers and after all, they are our Kiwi Cousins!
Apparently both stories will be released on DVD in Australia and New Zealand via Roadshow — The Enemy of the World on 27th November and The Web of Fear in early 2014 (that’s according to http://www.dwca.org.au/?q=blog/enemy-world-and-web-fear-recovered). I hope the information is accurate. One way or another, I’m sure they’ll turn up for sale somewhere : )
Thanks Anna!