Gallifrey One 2026: A ‘Wilderness Years’ Collection Box Set Is Inevitable

For collectors of Doctor Who: The Collection Blu-ray box sets, two questions persist: when will more 1960s black-&-white seasons become available and will the range include a “Wilderness Years” collection? Both were addressed at last weekend’s Gallifrey One convention in Los Angeles. Comicon.com editor-in-chief Erik Amaya (that’s me, actually) attended all three days of the show and gleaned something important in regards to a “Wilderness” box: it is inevitable.

For those not familiar with the term, the Wilderness Years refers to the period when Doctor Who was not an ongoing TV show. During that time — from 1989 to 2005 — a number of Who related items were released. The 1996 TV movie staring Paul McGann, Daphne Ashbrook, and Eric Roberts is the most high profile, but the 1993 documentary More Than 30 Years In the TARDIS, a couple of charity skits, and the 2003 animated webshort “The Scream of the Shalka” (starring McGann’s Withnail & I costar Richard E. Grant as The Doctor) would all make sense as part of a collection. There are also a handful of bonus features from the Doctor Who DVD range that would also fit snuggly into the potential offering.

Okay, I’ll be honest, I’ve even put a custom Wilderness Years box together with the commercially released DVDs of the TV Movie, “Scream of the Shalka”, and More Than 30 Years. I am that sort of fan, so a proper Blu-ray release is something I’d particularly like.

And it seems an officially licensed and produced set is on its way. During a conversation about the Blu-ray range on Sunday, consultant Pete McTighe — who not only directs the season set trailers, but also wrote several episodes of New Series Doctor Who and worked on spinoff The War Between the Land and the Sea with current Who showrunner Russell T. Davies — addressed a fan question about the TV Movie, stating material from the ’90s has been held back “for a reason.”

Earlier in the weekend, I moderated a panel about what a second Wilderness might look like with the show currently up the air in regards to production and even its star. But during the conversation, the feeling among the panelists about a 1990s Wilderness Years box set was more of a “when” than an “if.” Some even believe the set will indeed be called “Doctor Who: The Wilderness Years” And if the rumors about McGann filming something in an Eighth Doctor costume late last year are true, the “when” may even be sooner than we think.

Of course, that remains conjecture at the moment.

McTighe also addressed the issues in releasing more of the 1960s black-&-white seasons. According to him, the hope is to make those season as comprehensive as possible, so releases have even been delayed to add more animated reconstructions of missing stories like “The Celestial Toymaker”. At present, both of Patrick Troughton‘s latter two seasons as The Doctor — Seasons 5 and 6 to be exact — lack one story each. A Season 3 set, meanwhile, is more problematic as much of it is missing and has yet to be animated. Luckily, audio from all of the missing episodes survives thanks to enterprising fans at the time; something McTighe said he and the entire Blu-ray production team are happy about. Who fans have always been this obsessive.

In terms of announced Collection sets, Season 21 — Peter Davison‘s final year — is due for release in the UK on March 16th and in North America sometime later. After that … who knows? One season each remain to be released from both Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker‘s years as The Doctor before the Collection producers must face down the remaining ’60s stories or release a Wilderness Years set. Time will tell how it all works out, though. It always does.