Doctor Who – Under the Radar

My Apple TV did something very strange today – something that I can’t recall that it has ever done before. I think it crashed.

One minute it was showing my flickr screensaver and the next moment I noticed it was asking me what language I wanted my Apple TV to operate in. I choose English and it forced a reboot.

When it was done, I poked around to see if I had somehow missed a software update and looked over the content. Under TV shows, there was a staggering number of channels! Far more than I realized were available on the Apple TV. (TV being such crap as it is, rarely has anything I want to watch, let alone pay for the “privilege”.) But there was BBC America, so I thought, why not look.

Shock! Primeval! Torchwood (blech), Little Britain and Doctor Who… but not just Doctor Who with a Tennant… I was full-on staring at Tom Baker in Creature From the Pit! Sure enough, iTunes now not only has classic Doctor Who, but they have episodes spanning most of the Doctors and many that have never been released on DVD.

Real classics like “Time and the Rani”, “Underworld”, “The Sun Makers” and Nightmare of Eden”. Sadly, Horns of Nimon seems to be missing.

All kidding aside, there’s about 27 stories, including real classics like The Time Monster, Planet of the Spiders, the Mutants and The Krotons.

Each story is sold by the individual episode of $1.99 each, with each story being packaged as a “season” for the cost of the episodes put together.

A quick check on the net revealed this story on Wired from last month revealing that they were available. Wonder why I never saw anything about it in either my regularly monitored Doctor Who or Apple news feeds?