The new streaming service, BritBox, will include all surviving episodes of Classic Doctor Who – that’s everything from William Hartnell’s First Doctor to Sylvester McCoy’s Seventh Doctor. This includes animated episodes, amazingly. It’s unclear whether any further Doctor Who content, like The TV Movie (1996) with Paul McGann’s Eighth Doctor or any episodes of the show since its 2005 relaunch.
BritBox officially launched yesterday (7th November 2019), but Doctor Who won’t hit the platform until Boxing Day (26th December 2019, for anyone who doesn’t know what the 24 hours after Christmas Day is called).
What’s more, BritBox will also include the original pilot of An Unearthly Child and the HD version of Jon Pertwee’s debut serial, Spearhead from Space.
That’s over 600 episodes of Doctor Who goodness, in all.
We don’t know as yet which animations will be on BritBox. Numerous missing serials have received the animated treatment (including The Invasion, The Reign of Terror, and The Ice Warriors), though we highly doubt upcoming ones (The Faceless Ones and Fury from the Deep having been announced most recently) will be on BritBox anytime soon.
We assume the telesnap recreation of The Wheel in Space will be available too.
The Netflix-style service includes shows from the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and Channel 5. BBC shows will spend 12 months on iPlayer before going onto BritBox, meaning license fee payers shouldn’t kick off quite so much; ITV programmes move to BritBox after 30 days on the channel’s own catch-up service, ITV Hub.
And no, your license fee doesn’t fund BritBox, so please don’t start writing angry emails.
Other content available on BritBox include An Adventure in Space and Time, Inside No. 9, Life on Mars, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1981), Broadchurch, Van Gogh: Painted With Words, the two Peter Cushing Doctor Who movies, Single Father, Lennon Naked, Doctor Who: The Doctors Revisited, K9 and Company, and The Quatermass Experiment (2005).
BritBox costs £5.99 a month after a 30-day free trial. Which isn’t bad at all!
