This 5 Minute Short Is the Best ‘Doctor Who’ Episode of the Year

For a good while now, the BBC has been doing pretty killer short films to celebrate the announcement of an addition to its Doctor Who: The Collection Blu-ray series, slowly but surely remastering year after year of classic Doctor Who. But its latest isn’t just fantastic: in a year that’s been pretty up and down for Doctor Who at large, it’s one of the best things to come out of the show at all.

Today the BBC confirmed that the latest season joining its Doctor Who: The Collection line would be none other than Peter Davison’s final year as the Doctor, 1984’s season 21—which saw the era of the fifth Doctor come to an end, bidding farewell to several of his companions as the show prepared for the arrival of Colin Baker’s sixth Doctor in “The Twin Dilemmaâ€.

The season also featured the special return of the Silurians and the Sea Devils in “Warriors of the Deepâ€, one of Doctor Who‘s greatest ever regeneration stories in “The Caves of Androzani“, and Davison’s only full on-screen encounter with the Daleks in “Resurrection of the Daleksâ€, the latter of which serves as an inspiration for this newest short, as the Doctor and Tegan revisit the site of their last adventure together…

As a tribute to “Resurrectionâ€, it’s great. Davison and Fielding are in fine form (as is Mark Strickson, in a surprise appearance as Turlough), navigating both the lingering tension of their departure and the terrors they faced 40 years ago when the Daleks came to London docklands. But it’s also just a perfect little encapsulation of classic Who at its very best: the creepy vibes, the knowing little touch of cheesiness, the Doctor and Tegan’s banter the synth music. You know what it’s all building up to, and yet when the Daleks reappear out of the Time Corridor that brought them to London back in “Resurrection†too, it’s still just brilliant.

You don’t really care that the Doctor and Tegan look decades older than the last time they were doing all this—Doctor Who doesn’t even deign to throw in an excuse this time; you just accept it because they’re still both so good at being these characters. In 2025 Doctor Who probably couldn’t get away with doing this for more than five minutes at a time like these shorts, but that just makes the gift they are whenever they arrive all the more special… perhaps just even more so when the main show itself spent the year struggling to capture what Doctor Who can be at its best.

Doctor Who: The Collection Season 21 will include all 7 stories from the 1984 season—â€The Warriors of the Deepâ€, “The Awakeningâ€, “Frontiosâ€, “Resurrection of the Daleksâ€, “Planet of Fireâ€, “The Caves of Androzaniâ€, and “The Twin Dilemmaâ€â€”as well as hours of new bonus material, including documentaries on the making of “Resurrection†and “Twin Dilemmaâ€, new interviews with cast and crew, audio commentaries, and even home releases of the new edit of “Warriors†made to celebrate the launch of The War Between the Land and the Sea, and the edit of “Earthshock†made for 2023’s Tales of the TARDIS featuring new interstitials recorded by Davison and Fielding.

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