In October 1983, Revenge of the Cybermen was the BBC's first Doctor Who video release, and it's an extraordinary thing. As Richard Atkinson or Daniel O'Malley notes (www.timelash.com/tardis/display.php?863), it's got an Earthshock Cyberman and a Season 18 Tom Baker. It's also, less problematically, got the 1983 logo and starfield titles (which had been going since Season 18).
To put that in a bit of context, 'Earthshock' had been broadcast in March 1982 and 'The Five Doctors' (with the same Cybermen) was coming up on 25 November 1983, so presumably there was some desire to make the monsters and the series as recognisable as possible. Who could have expected the market to recognise outdated Cybermen, logos and title screens? I rather like all the 1980s features. The only thing that would be better than all those elements was if they'd stuck Peter Davison on the cover too.
What I'm surprised by is how shoddy it is. It manages to make both the Doctor and the Cyberman peripheral, the true focus being the cluster of stars. The Longleat Convention, where the title was allegedly decided upon by popular consensus (shannonsullivan.com/drwho/serials/4d.html), had been in April 1983 (richardwho.co.uk/exhibitions/longleat1983/index.asp), so maybe it was a rush job and that explains the shoddiness.
The May 1984 reissue (timelash.com/tardis/display.php?863) (or simultaneous Betamax release if tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Revenge_of_the_Cybermen_(TV_story) is to be believed but I'm not sure it is in this case) corrects both the errors identified by Richiel O'Malkinson and the compositional wonkiness.
Now, this is a lovely bit of work but it's still odd. Just look at some of the other BBC Video covers of the era...
You get single-photo covers, like February 1982's The People's Champion (
pre-cert.co.uk/display.php?vId=UK00502) (much like the soon-to-come Brain of Morbius), photo-album covers like March 1984's All Creatures Great and Small (pre-cert.co.uk/display.php?vId=UK00401) or bits of logo-focused design like December 1983's Top of the Pops pre-cert.co.uk/display.php?vId=UK00535). Occasionally you get an audacious hybrid, like 1981's Delia Smith's Home Cooking (pre-cert.co.uk/display.php?vId=UK00424), but still nothing like the odd photo montage that both releases of Revenge of the Cybermen were going for.
Even if you look at films on video, the only addition you get to these formats is paintings that blend key characters and scenes (most often just the film poster or a detail from it reprinted), for example March 1983's Diamonds are Forever (pre-cert.co.uk/display.php?vId=UK10395) - a style more akin to the Doctor Who covers later in the video range and indeed in the DVD range, though they'd reverted to using photos to create the collages by that point.
In a quick and far from thorough search, the only roughly contemporary video cover employing the same format as Revenge of the Cybermen is October 1983's Elvis on Tour (pre-cert.co.uk/display.php?vId=UK05237), in which Elvis takes the roles of both hero and monster.
So what was Sid Sutton up to? Well, have a look at Target's September 1983 release of Terminus as well as three earlier painted covers, all effectively two-image montages with a monster on the left and a hero on the right:
Were the video covers following in the wake of the Target books? It would make sense if Sutton decided that this was how the market recognised Who in a shop on a shelf.
Anyway, for a look at the book, click here...
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