There’s a new(-ish) way for Whovians to get Max

Last year, Doctor Who moved from streaming on Max to streaming on Disney+ outside of the UK. Thanks to the pairing of Disney+ and Hulu, you can watch everything from the 60th-anniversary specials to the latest Doctor Who eps, as well as Torchwood and the Sarah Jane Adventures. If you have BritBox you can watch all the classic Doctor Who shows going back to An Unearthly Child from 1963. But if you want to watch the episodes from the first 13 seasons of the return of Doctor Who in 2005, you need an account with Max. But it turns out there’s a new option.

I had Disney Plus a few years ago so I could watch Get Back, but I let it lapse because I hardly ever used it. I got it again for the newest episodes of Doctor Who, and I had to pick which bundle I wanted. You can get Disney+ by itself, with Hulu, or in a triple bundle of Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+. Since I only watch ESPN for Dodgers games, I got the Disney+/Hulu duo.

A couple of years ago, the only way you could watch the Doctor Who episodes from the relaunch in 2005 (the New Who episodes, or as I like to call them, NuWho) was on Max, but they also had Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures, so it was even more worth the money. The only Doctor Who spinoff that may have been missing (if memory serves me) was Class, the short-lived spinoff from the Peter Capaldi years. It turns out Hulu now has Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures, but if you want the NuWho episodes, you still need a subscription for Max. (Class is available on Apple+ for those with a subscription. Personally, I won’t give Apple money unless they start supporting computers running the Linux operating system.)

My Second Life costume for All Hallow's Eve 2024, a mashup of my new feline ensemble and a Doctor Who gas maskAs All Hallow’s Eve drew near this past week, I came up with a new Second Life costume. Instead of my usual skeleton woman, I decided to go feline with the gas mask from 2005’s The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances. You can get the details on the costume over on the Nanci’s Naughties website.

Of course, I had to reactivate my old Max account and started looking for any deals I could find. Lo and behold, it turns out that Disney+ has two new bundles with Hulu and Max, one with adverts and one without. The best part is that since I already had the advert-free bundle of Disney+ and Hulu, adding an advert-free subscription to Max only adds $10 a month to my Disney+ bill.

Screenshot from the Disney+ website showing the Disney+, Hulu, Max bundle

If you already have a Disney+ and Hulu Duo bundle you can add Max by logging into Disney+, going to Account, and selecting Change Your Plan. If you have the Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+ Trio, I’m sorry to say that you can’t add Max to your Trio bundle.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some work in Second Life to do, plus I’ll be spending the next week avoiding news about the election by binging Whoniverse episodes in chronological order. It’s a bloody shame I can’t include episodes of Class, but c’est la vie.

Have you seen the #Hamilfilm yet?

Updated Tue 11 August 2020 to include changes in the order of how the ensemble members are sorted.

The movie had been scheduled for an October 2021 release but, since the coronavirus pandemic shut down the Great Bright Way, the Hamilton producers were able to get the release date pushed up.

As we got ready for the premiere of the movie, dubbed the #Hamilfilm, the Disney Studios Twitter account posted a series of images to serve as a premier program for the film’s release, similar to the Playbills that theatergoers get when they see the stage production. I quickly saved the images to my laptop so I could refer to them while watching the movie, and I ended up creating a PDF of the files to use them more easily. I added a Playbill-style cast listing that incorporates some of the ensemble track information from the Hamilcast podcast, which I’ve already shared on Twitter.

Version 3 of my Hamilfilm complete cast pages

Twitter user Mrs. Bullwinkle told me about a graphic created by The Hamilton Bracelet listing the times within the movie for each of the songs so we can jump to them, and I’ve since added that to my PDF.

Meanwhile, I’ve been asking both the Disney Studios and the Hamilton producers if they’d mind if I shared my PDF. If they said not to share it, I’d drop the matter, but I haven’t gotten any response, so I looked for the best way to share it. I found a website that turns PDF files into digital magazines and created an account, but the uploading process should take ten minutes, and it’s already been over an hour since I uploaded my PDF.

Silly me, because I can easily share the PDF via this site. This is the third version of the PDF, and if I update it again, I’ll update this page. The first version was just the images from the Disney Studios, and the cast pages above, although without the source credit for the ensemble tracks and the head shots. The second version added the Hamilton Song Cheat Sheet, and this newest version got the credit information on the cast pages.

Of course, if Disney or the Hamilton team asks me to take this PDF down, I will. In the meantime, I hope this adds to your enjoyment of the #Hamilfilm. If you’re like me and wasn’t sure if you wanted to buy Disney+, the $9.99 monthly cost is a lot less than the price of a ticket to the theatre, and you can watch it as many times as you want in any given month. Talk about a bargain!

Watch the #Hamilfilm on Disney+. Make sure you watch the whole credits to hear the exit music that you can’t hear on the Original Broadway Cast Recording (OBCR), and don’t forget to watch the extras.

*Alas, not every country around the world can get Disney+, so their wish still has yet to be granted.