Omnibus " Omnibus " is a term , arguably more popular in British than American English , used to describe a collection of individual parts of a story into a single entity . The term is used in " Doctor Who " televised fiction to describe the conversion of a serial into a movie . It has a different meaning in print , where it is used to describe the collection of multiple whole " stories " . The term has a further particular meaning in comics , where there is some definitional variability between the US and UK meanings . Television . An " omnibus edition " of a serial is one in which constituent episodes have been edited together to form a single movie . Thus , it begins with the opening titles of episode 1 , and concludes with the closing titles of the final episode , with all intervening credits removed . The various end - of - episode cliffhanger s and their reprises in the following episode are also slimmed so that , effectively , there is no " cliffhanger " , as such , present . Though generally not actually destructive to the content of a serial , the practice could have some minor consequences on the viewer ' s experience of a serial . For instance , if people were only credited in one of the middle episodes , there was a chance — depending on who was doing the editing and how it was being done — that their credit might not appear at the end of the so - called omnibus edition . Also , on those rare occasions when a reprise of a cliffhanger was a different take of the same scene from the previous episode , the editor would have to choose which of the two performances to edit out . By and large , though , an omnibus edition was not so heavily edited as to create a significantly different version of the narrative . United States . This practice was done frequently , if inconsistently , in the United States , to make a standard four - part adventure fit into a ninety - minute time - slot . Often stations ran a version that had been pre - edited by BBC Enterprises , but sometimes they created a unique cut of their own and sometimes slightly re - edited the BBC Enterprises version . Thus omnibus editions did not necessarily conform to a standard . Viewers of a California PBS station may have experienced a slightly different version of a story than a New York PBS station . Indeed , sometimes the same station broadcast slightly different versions of the omnibus on different occasions , depending upon their scheduling needs . It was not uncommon for PBS stations to broadcast omnibus editions during one part of the week and the full episodic versions during another . BBC America also uses this format for its 2013 feature , The Doctors Revisited . Because individual stations sometimes created their own omnibuses , it is difficult to say with any degree of certainty which serials were " ever " broadcast in North America as omnibuses . We know quite definitively which were released to home video — these were exclusively Tom Baker episodes from his first three seasons — but it is impossible to compile a definitive list of all the omnibuses ever created in the US . Anecdotal evidence on fan message boards suggests , however , that the Philip Hinchcliffe era was not the only one to be broadcast in the movie format in some parts of the United States . All we can say for sure about omnibus broadcasts in North America is that after that first three seasons of the Fourth Doctor , BBC Enterprises stopped " offering " the movie versions . Although the term " omnibus " is understood in the US , it is never a word that was used to actually market " Doctor Who " in North America . Indeed , little attention was ever drawn to the fact that the edit was in any way " different " . Thus , fans were free to describe the editions how they wished , and the terms " movie version " or " movie format " have dominance over " omnibus " . United Kingdom . The practice was less usual in the United Kingdom and could only be said to apply twice to the " initial " broadcast of a " Doctor Who " adventure — and then only somewhat arguably . It did begin to happen with more frequency once " Doctor Who " shifted to second - run channels like and during themed " " Doctor Who " nights " on channels like BBC Two . The single instance in which " omnibus " was used to market the initial broadcast of a " Doctor Who " episode was with the animated adventure , " The Infinite Quest " , in which the final episode was originally broadcast as a part of an omnibus edition . All previous episodes of " Quest " had debuted on the CBBC ' s " Totally Doctor Who " . Later , " Dreamland " was also broadcast on BBC Two , but it had previously been made available episodically on BBC Red Button . " Dreamland " thus made its " terrestrial " debut as an omnibus , but its genuine television premiere had been as an episodic event . Home video . BBC Video began their VHS releases of " Doctor Who " stories by using the omnibus format . However , the practice was quickly abandoned in the UK . The format lingered for a bit with their releases to the United States , however , where buyers would have been more accustomed to seeing Fourth Doctor stories presented as movies . Nevertheless , the episodic versions were soon seen as preferrable , and the practice was dropped for even the NTSC versions relatively quickly . Ultimately , all stories originally released as movies were re - released episodically in both PAL and NTSC . Print . Unlike a television omnibus , which collects only one story , a print omnibus is generally one in which multiple stories are present . Put another way , an omnibus is the collection of several books into a single volume . From at least the American perspective , this is true regardless of whether the book is prose or sequential art . However , there is some variability between the way the term is used on both sides of the Atlantic with respect to sequential art . Novels . Target novelisation s of " Doctor Who " serials were sometimes collected by other publishers into omnibus editions , though only the British compilations used the word " omnibus " in their titles . In addition , there was also an British line of paperbacks by Star Books called " Doctor Who Classics " which published two novelisations in a single volume . Seven volumes were published in all , but none of them were marketed as " omnibuses " in any way . Comics . Comics have often been collected in the history of " Doctor Who " . However , there is a difference in what the term means in the UK and the US . In the UK , virtually any collection of comic stories can , and is , called an " omnibus " , " graphic novel " or a " graphic novel omnibus " — at least informally . That said , the word " omnibus " hasn ' t , as of 2010 , ever officially been used in a title for a UK " Doctor Who " publication . In the US , a collection of issues ( which may or may not contain multiple stories ) is more frequently called a , whereas a " collection " of trade paperbacks is called an omnibus . Thus , the 2010 release , " Doctor Who Classics Omnibus " volume 1 , is the combination of the trade paperbacks , " Doctor Who Classics " volumes 1 , 2 , and 3 .