Timey Wimey!

Last year the BBC began releasing full season box sets of Classic Doctor Who on blu ray. As you might expect, they started with Tom Baker's first season on the show, since his Fourth Doctor is arguably the most popular version of the Classic Series.

I already owned most of Baker's run on DVD, but I went ahead and bought his first season on blu ray anyway, mostly due to space. The new case is about an inch thick, and takes up about one percent of the space of the DVDs.

Here's where things start to get confusing though. As you can see, the case is labeled Tom Baker, Complete Season One. But chronologically, he debuted in the series' TWELFTH season! Wha...? 

OK, I can kind of understand why they labeled the box set as Season One, as it would likely be confusing if it said the Complete Season Twelve. Casual buyers might be reluctant to buy it, thinking they'd missed the first eleven sets. So I get it.

They did the same thing a few months later when they released Peter Davison's (aka the Fifth Doctor) first season on the show. His was labeled Complete Season One as well, despite the fact that he actually debuted in Season Nineteen! Confused yet?

And now to make things even more convoluted, another Tom Baker box set just went up for pre-order. Inexplicably, the next release is of Tom Baker's SEVENTH year on the show. Which of course is technically Season Eighteen.

So what happened to Seasons Two through Six box sets? Why the hell would they jump straight to Seven? Now when people see them side by side on the shelf, they're definitely going to think they've somehow missed several releases. 

It's almost like they're deliberately designing these releases to fail!

Maybe it's only natural that a series about an alien who travels back and forth in time should be chronologically nonsensical as well.