We take a single episode of a science fiction TV series and overanalyze it to within an
inch of its life.
This is the Fusion Patrol Podcast.
Welcome to the discussion.
Hello and welcome to another episode of Fusion Patrol. I'm Eugene.
And I'm Simon.
And tonight we are looking at yet another, and I am always, always happy when I can add yet another animated Doctor Who adventure to our hopefully someday complete collection of every Doctor Who episode that ever existed.
I can hope.
But this time it's the second Doctor adventure, The Macra Terror.
On an Earth colony, a man, Medoc, causes a scene during practice for a celebration.
He's seen creatures in the colony at night.
His cries are branded as hallucinations, but he runs away before they can restrain him.
He is inadvertently captured by the doctor, Jamie, Polly, and Ben,
who are thanked for capturing the dangerous man and taken back to the colony as guests.
Everyone there is very cheerful and works very hard.
but the doctor has his suspicions and wants to talk to Medoc.
He releases him from captivity.
That night, the doctor finds Medoc outside after curfew.
They encounter the Macra, giant crab-like creatures.
They are recaptured, and Medoc naively believes they'll have to believe him this time.
The leader of the colony is the pilot, but he is overseen by Control,
an unmoving photo of a face on a viewscreen.
Rather than get the doctor in trouble, Medoc lies to the pilot,
telling him that the doctor was trying to convince him to surrender.
Medoc is sent for rehabilitation.
Control orders the Doctor and gang to be subjected to high-power adaptation while they sleep.
Only Ben is weak-willed enough to be overcome by the insidious brainwashing,
and turns the Doctor in for sabotaging the equipment.
Polly leaves, trying to get away from the traitorous Ben, but she encounters the Macra.
Ben finds her and helps her escape the clutches of the Macra,
but when they return to the pilot and try to corroborate the Doctor's tale that there are creatures,
Ben denies the Macra exist.
They convince the pilot to show them the real controller,
not just the photograph on the screen.
And when control allows it, it is the same man, but ancient.
A broken wreck of a man willing to do anything his unseen captors tell him.
The Doctor, Polly, and Jamie are sentenced to working in the gas mines,
and the voice of control makes everyone else forget what they saw.
They meet up with Medoc, who is also in the mines.
He protects the Doctor by getting him assigned above-ground work in the control room.
The Doctor agrees so that he can find a way to cause mischief.
In the mine, Jamie escapes down a forbidden tunnel.
Medoc attempts to follow him, but is killed by the Macra.
When Ben betrays Jamie again, gas is pumped into the tunnels to incapacitate him.
The gas also serves some other sinister purpose.
The Doctor reverses the gas flow just in time to save Jamie,
But he and Polly must escape down another forbidden tunnel,
where they find the control room filled with Macra running the colony.
The Macra need the poisonous gas to survive.
Gosh, if they needed poisonous gas to survive,
we could have just given them all our car pollution.
Escaping and then returning to see the pilot again,
the doctor convinces him to go see what he's discovered.
Control go crazy, deposing the pilot and demanding their capture.
But after the pilot sees the truth, they are trapped in a tunnel with a gas being pumped in.
Ben regains his senses when his friends are in danger and, with the doctor's coaching, causes a gas explosion, killing the Macra.
The colony is saved.
The gang escape the planet before the doctor can be named the new pilot.
The end.
Just gonna ask, what was wrong with the old pilot? He wasn't dead yet.
Anyway, MacRater, so tell us the provenance of this animation.
Simon, I'm sure you're more versed on it than I am.
Well, the provenance is it's from the same stable as the full reanimation of Power of the Daleks
and the more recent animation of the missing bits
or the never filmed bits of Sharda
directed by Graham Norton, I think, at least most of it.
And also the very short screening from a couple of years back
of about 10 minutes of Wheel in Space at the BFI.
That's right.
They did put that BFI, that Wheel in Space thing
that never went anywhere
because they haven't reanimated all of Wheel in Space.
Which we all thought was going to be the rest of Wheel in Space
But it turned out, no, they were not lying when they said
It's just 10 minutes, but there you go
They should be smacked upside the face for that, I have to say
And you don't have access to the BritBox Wheel in Space recreation
That they put together a year or so ago for the United States, do you?
We had something like BritBox over here, but I didn't have it
I don't think it's available in any other form.
What I do have is the...
So Macro Terror has been animated to release on home video,
like a lot of the other ones that we have looked at.
And it has been released along with the recons for the episodes as well.
So you get quite a good double disc Blu-ray or DVD with an animation.
And another difference with this one, well, I guess Shado also was,
but this one was animated in color.
So it was Power of the Daleks.
Oh, no, no, I see what you're saying.
Power of the Daleks was animated black, white, and colorized, wasn't it?
It was indeed.
So it was released with a color version.
So obviously there may have been some market testing going on there,
But it was done, as I understand it, as something of an afterthought where they'd animated it.
And then I think maybe even a different team put the put the colour on to create a colour version because they thought, well, we've got this here and we can make it more more attractive for a modern audience by having it in colour.
And then clearly the next animation release was Sharda and that was going to be in colour anyway, because it's a colour story.
And with this one, they went in and animated it in colour and then produced a black and white version alongside it on the DVD.
So you get the colour version, you get the black and white version and you get the recon episodes.
And it's a very good package.
You get them with the, as has been done with a number of the recons,
with the kind of explanatory text on screen,
because the kind of surviving footage plus stills doesn't always explain all the action.
Right.
You also get the option to play it with the linking narration,
which explains the missing action recorded by Annika Wills for the CD release of it.
So it's a pretty complete package.
And if that weren't enough, you do get 10 minutes of wheeling space on top of that.
Well, I mean, it sounds like an amazing package.
And if only they'd release it in the United States before October of 2019.
I really am at a loss on that.
It's strange.
Very strange.
It's pirated all over the place in the United States.
I know for a fact.
I don't understand why they would not think it would be.
I mean, they're going to release it in the US.
Why not?
I really would market is is it because they have to master it differently for for NTSC or or whatever whatever technically we use now in HD?
I is it because they don't want to crowd other releases?
Well, I think that's much more likely.
I think I think it's much less likely to be anything technical because I can't see why it would require that much time.
And even if it did, you could delay the whole release.
I think it's more likely to be a marketing issue.
Certainly over here, the other kind of big Doctor...
Well, I think you get them in the US as well.
The other kind of big Doctor Who home video releases that are going on now
are getting about three seasons a year of the classic show coming out on Blu-ray.
And they always announce the next one before one gets released.
Well, they held off on doing that when the Macra Terror came out
so that they could give it its own moment in the limelight,
which obviously will have helped it in the UK market.
That was like April, right?
It didn't have done much for the US.
Yes, it came out, or maybe it was earlier than that.
Certainly, yeah, first quarter of 2019.
All right.
Well, and this is all four episodes.
This is all four episodes?
Nothing survives.
It's like Power of the Daleks.
It's all episodes.
Clips survive, but nothing amounting to a complete,
well, I'd say a complete episode.
barely anything amounts to a complete scene so yes it's it's an unlike most of the ones that we
have looked at it's only only power of the daleks was completely and that was obviously six episodes
and this is four episodes so it's a it's a pretty major undertaking in animation terms where all the
others were two episodes at the most yeah why macro terror i mean why that story again i guess
you'd have to you'd have to say well i i mean to turn it the other way around which missing
stories and i i get i guess that there has to be some reason why they're going for completely
missing stories um which which completely missing stories would you like to see back
or an animated version of uh i you know i'd have to be looking at a list in in front of me and to
remember which is completely missing which is completely missing you know i mean i can think
of many episodes well many oh wheel in space comes right off the top of my head but it's not
completely missing well no but episode yeah three and six or three and five of that is still around
two yeah two of them still exist so um and it's an important one picking up cyberman picking up a
new companion um i i my my the thing that automatically comes into my head for complete
stories I want back would be the Highlanders
yeah but it isn't historical
those are not yeah
I'd like to see that I would like to see the
Highlanders don't get me wrong that would be
up there because it is the first episode
with Jamie and
I would definitely like to see that but
you know if I had the list in front of me and there was like
probably any space ones first
would be the more likely
of the bunch but
I don't know it just
seemed you know it would make sense
to me if they just started at the earliest
completely missing episode and said we're going to do missing ones let's do marco polo or which
is a huge one what is it like 28 parts long something it's about it's about seven i think
i mean that is completely missing and i i would love to see that they did power of the daleks
which was six yeah um i get i guess your point about historical stand stands with that but so
what do we have after power of the daleks then okay so let's work on the assumption here that
these guys have created the artwork and they're reusing the artwork although they're not because
polly has a short haircut um but i guess you could just rejig her head um you know from power well
okay i have i have you know what came after power of the dogs you've got the highlanders is that the
very next one yes i thought there was one okay so there's the highlanders and then pretty soon we
get to the moon base uh that's that's a little bit later there's a there's an important one that i
certainly would like to see completely well not completely reanimated the missing episodes
reanimated following the hinders because i consider it to be a significant uh story in
terms of just the quality and a standout in terms of doctor who history which is of course
the underwater menace oh yeah okay see underwater menace i'd like to see them restore the underwater
menace so it wouldn't be that horrible mess that they gave us before the recon was terrible i mean
it's a story it's a story that it deserves be having some attention lavish it might even be
It would be much more watchable if they animated it back again.
I would certainly watch it again if they do that.
I will give them my money again if they animate Underwater Menace.
And I didn't like it, but I am willing to acknowledge that it could very well be
because I thought not only was it just a recon, which I'm not a big fan of,
it was a terrible recon.
The sound was bad.
the pictures they only had like the six pictures for the entire story they just kept using them
over and over and over again um this this sounds though maybe an issue that would put them off
doing the animation but they did i my understanding is that they were told i was told that they were
told so the the guy who did the underwater menace and the reconstruction team was at a gallifrey one
that i attended to i'm sure i must have mentioned at the time and they were given explicit instructions
to do nothing to make it better.
And so no sound processing, no, you know, we can do better,
we can clean up these pictures, we can do something.
No, nothing.
Get it out the door.
And I just, you know, I don't know.
But I think that, you know, I don't think it's thought to be
one of the greatest stories in Doctor Who history by many people.
It's not highly regarded.
I don't think that release did it justice,
that it might be better. And since we're on that topic, prior to watching the Macro Terror,
you know, based on your understanding of fan perception or community perception,
what do you want to call it, the Macro Terror? Where did the Macro Terror sit in the pantheon
of stories that people thought would be important or good? I think there's a reflection here of the
fact that we have we've spent 15 minutes talking about the other stories that might have been
animated rather than talking about the macro terror itself which we have just watched and
so i guess that probably indicates we're not particularly eager to discuss it it's not i
certainly that that that reflect so what i would say is give me any trout and story that's that's
missing i will be delighted to have something back in the fold great um macro terror was never one
that you heard the kind of whispers of oh that's that's a really great story if only that was the
one that that gets rediscovered in some cache of film canisters somewhere right eastern africa or
wherever it's it just doesn't have that kind of reputation nope okay i mean there are people who
would want that one missing episode of web of fear probably would say i'll take one web of fear
over all of Macro Terror.
I think that's short-sighted, but I would...
No, I probably don't care.
I can imagine fandom saying that.
Okay.
I would, yeah.
So I watched this with my friend David,
who is also a very long-time Doctor Who fan.
And going into this, we kind of had a little discussion about this.
It's like, where do you think Macro Terror?
I mean, why Macro Terror?
It's like, this is not...
It's like, this is a mystery why they would pick this one.
But okay, I don't care.
It's Troughton's story.
We're getting it back.
ready to watch it and when we're done with it i will tell you right now we both enjoyed it quite
a bit it's like that's not nearly as bad as we thought it was going to be it's not bad you know
it's like i don't want to give that impression i was that was a perfectly serviceable good episode
service doctor who it wasn't it wasn't fantastic there is a lot of oh we've been captured oh we've
been let loose oh we've been captured oh we've been let loose so we've been captured we've been
let loose but well i i yes i mean i think i think it's not the best trout and team it suffers from
the fact that there are three companions yeah and so the whole ben getting brainwashed thing
is obviously just a way to shunt him out of the picture so i i can wow i can see why ben craze
was not happy about the whole jamie thing you know if this is what they're you mean michael
craze the actor yeah so did i say ben craze yeah michael craze yeah i can see why he was not really
on board with this idea because this smells of hey let's give action to the highland guy
and and i i have i have nothing against ben but he's a long way from being one of my favorite
companions he works quite well because there's a nice dynamic with polly so when when it's the
two of them yeah you know it's him and the duchess i i enjoy i enjoy them as a team rather
rather than being particularly a Ben fan,
I'm a,
you know,
it's Ben and Polly's package.
Jamie is a much,
much more interesting companion.
I would probably rate Jamie and Zoe as perhaps my favorite all time
companion team from the show.
So I can see why he would feel eclipsed.
Yeah.
So that's one thing that came out of it.
And I think another thing I'm going to say is I think this story benefited,
just like I was saying,
I think underwater menace did not benefit from the recon that they did.
i think this story benefited from the fact that they animated it and they did a nice color job
and they didn't try to shot for shot recreate it in in some ways i mean obviously the macro right
right don't look anything like i so let me i i i want i want most of what i want to talk about is
to do with the animation and i have i have in the same way observed the differences
between the animation.
I just got another couple of points about the story
and then I think I'm done with discussing the story.
One is that it seemed to me to be like
Ian Stewart Black had decided it would be a good idea
on a children's TV show to do a retelling of 1984.
But did you notice that?
Is it...
I mean, I just thought, you know, it's kind of like...
Well, the whole control on the screen thing,
very much in your face and reminiscent of the...
Big Brother.
Yeah, in the film version of the rest of it.
But either he thought it would be a good idea
to do a children's version of this book,
or maybe he just thought that, you know, 1984,
ripping story, jolly good,
but it would have been better if it had giant crabs in it.
So let's do that.
uh there are some there are some uh uh interesting uh questions as to why uh yes
why the the macro are what the macro are in this story i i mean that aside i i do quite
i'll admit i quite like the idea of a colony ruled by giant crabs i'm not sure the groundwork
is there to quite put it all together but you know so some of it that the again i think the the
idea of them having of them having to be sealed in this gas in order to survive and that they
you know perhaps because it's not their natural environment they need slaves to mine the gas for
them or whatever it is um bit bit sort of reminiscent of the the gas fats in quatermass
two but maybe that's just because we only recently did it right um but it didn't make sense to me
that then they they were sealed there in their control room fine but then for example where
polly goes onto the building site bumps into them in episode two yeah they're out every night she's
not having any trouble with gas or whatever they seem to be so she can breathe so it's obviously
normal oxygen it doesn't make any sense it doesn't yeah that that part was bugging me throughout the
course of the episode um first off we kind of i think the doctor kind of gives a brief explanation
that maybe these creatures came up from the depths of the planet which eh giant crab like creatures
from caves within the planet it seems a little dodgy and if they can't breathe up here why did
they come up here i mean i guess if they're intelligent maybe it's just like going into space
Yeah, and it's like us developing air travel or, you know, being able to, perhaps a better example, air conditioning, being able to live in large numbers in places where it would probably otherwise be fairly uninhabitable.
Yeah, I can think of a place like that up the top of my head.
Funny that.
Yeah, yes.
And maybe they're trying to, what will we call it?
Let's call it macroform the planet.
Maybe that's the ultimate goal.
Yes.
You know, to gas it all up so that they can live and kill off the colony.
You know, it's not an unreasonable ambition for an alien or for an intelligent race.
Let's not call them alien, but to try to adapt their environment.
So I kind of get that.
But it does just seem a little weird.
Then every night they seem to be able to come out and crawl around the colony,
which, if we're correct, is poisonous gas to them, what we understand.
Now, it would be different if maybe they tried to give us this,
oh, at night the mists come out and the planet's not as habitable for humans.
I think we've seen that on another Doctor Who episode somewhere along the line.
And it's clearly just they need the devices there to have the macro sinister background appearances of the macro before before we get the full on reveal.
It adds tension to the story, et cetera, et cetera.
They just haven't done the groundwork to get away with that kind of shit because there's no there's no actual legitimate story reason why these macro wandering around in the first place.
As far as I can tell. Yeah, there's no reason. I mean, what are they you know, what are they hoping to find out there?
people yeah when you tell the story without it what do you do with that now i kind of wonder
though to flip this and kind of talking about the animation i wonder if the macro would have been
more effective and believable in the original televised form where if i understand correctly
you really don't see them much you know they are really truly in the shadows they are really kind
of hiding off here we're not seeing them ambulate around like they are here i mean they're
pretty mobile in this version you see them you know booking along on their six little legs and
whatnot which you know makes them look like they're doing a lot better out than maybe they did
okay so here's here's the thing about this animation which i think is a particular thing
about what what has been done in this story um in in the degree of it because i think we've talked
in the past maybe a bit about style in particular thinking about things like reign of terror where
there was a much more anime feel to that animation and that was reeled in by the producers saying no
no we want you to stick to stick to something that's a bit more vanilla and yet although the
although the style of the animation which i i is a kind of separate issue which we can come back to
the style of the animation isn't particularly um you know it's not particularly stylized the
the scope of what you can do with animation in terms of budget in the sense that certain things
are very expensive in animation like doing all the kind of motion and lots of different
jobs of complicated things but on the other hand you can make your macro much more impressive
because you don't have any of the constraints of have it having to be a costume and work and
And you can do kind of instead of having to do models of the colony or whatever, you can just do a drawing and it looks terrific and all this kind of thing.
So, yeah, OK, there's there is a there is a scope to do things that wouldn't have been possible then.
And therefore attention between are you trying to recreate what was or are you trying to do the best possible telling of the story that you've got with the tools that are in front of you?
Because in some sense, the animation is never going to be a perfect substitute for actually rediscovering the original film, if it still exists anywhere.
But maybe the payoff for that is that you can do these things that you wouldn't otherwise be able to do.
And I imagine that's what is behind the thinking here, up to and including choices like making it in colour.
And only making ones that nothing exists,
so you don't have to switch back and forth between the clunk.
So, for example, if one episode of the Macra existed
and we saw the stupid plastic tentacle or claw...
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Your design is much more constrained to match the things
that are in the episodes that exist.
So, you know, in some senses, Sharda absolutely had to do that
because you were switching back and forth from scene to scene
in order to do that.
I am...
Sorry.
No, I was going to say, go ahead.
I was going to ask you about the stylistic choice of rendering the Macra in basically 3D computer rendering instead of what appears to be hand-drawn rendering.
The Macra do not...
There's a lot of 3D in this.
Not the characters, of course.
But those are two-dimensional drawing rigged up just like they did in Power of the Daleks.
But the Macra and stuff are...
No, no, the characters are 3D.
They don't render them the same way they do the Macra.
Even in a shot where you have the macro and the characters.
The textures are different.
They're very different.
Yeah, they're very different.
The macro almost pop off the screen when they're in it.
At least, you know, particularly the scenes where they're crawling in and crawling out.
You're just like, yeah, that's just like they used a completely different animation tool.
They put that one in the computer and said, render that up and just draw me a moving crab.
And as opposed to.
I don't think it's as big a difference to that.
I just think that it's a different texture.
but I think they look good and here's and here's the thing in where I stand on this I am in
principle in favor of doing stuff with the animation you wouldn't otherwise be able to do
I thought Reign of Terror should be more anime and I am quite happy with the idea that you you
know you do you do things with this that allow you to take advantage of possibilities that just
wouldn't have been there I'm almost almost willing to accept having it in colour in principle at
least but the problem that I think that we have with the Macra Terra animation and I think it is
a it's a serious problem in the sense that at least for me it was a serious problem in that
it was distracting me from the story while I was watching it is that the choices that they have made
in terms of things that they can do are now quite considerably at odds with what we are hearing
on the soundtrack and that ultimately is the limitation they have to they have to use the
original soundtrack because that that's what survives and what they show us on screen has in
some way to match up with that so there's a couple of examples to indicate what there's a very simple
one um there's a scene where the doctor is in episode three is i think i know what senior as
as modern detectives like to do writes on a glass screen oh yeah exactly how you'd shoot it's exactly
how you'd shoot it in a in you know a kind of 20 teens type slick tv series i look at that and i
think i will bet you any money you like that is not what they did in the 60s no it's a chalkboard
You can hear the chalk
You can hear his chalk, exactly
So you have
You have this dissonance
Between what they want to do
With the fancy visuals
And what they have available to them with the audio
It's really really simple
When it came up I just thought
That is the perfect example
Of what has been bugging me here
Because it's a total mismatch
What I thought was odd
My reaction to that scene was yes
I clocked that it was chalk
it's obviously chalk and when i saw the lucite board it's like yeah they didn't have that i i
just i know automatically they didn't have that not saying they didn't have lucite boards but i
just you know i know that that wasn't what we had on the screen and then you hear the chalk and you
go that's definitely not but you know what really impresses me about that is that when you hear the
chalk he's writing on the board they match those animations up extremely well you you can tell the
sounds of chalk you know like when you hear you hear you can hear a curve or you can hear a squiggly
when someone is writing with chalk right you can hear that that's a straight line and that's a
yeah you know and they match those up pretty well i mean it is kind of gibberish what he's writing
on the screen but at the same time they did a really good job of it and i thought they were
it's a weird weird how well they're paying attention to that detail when they're doing it
They could have done something like turn that shot on the side so that you couldn't see what the doctor was writing at the moment he was scribbling.
But instead, they kept you there the whole time through the board.
So I thought that was...
Which may be why they wanted to shoot it in that way, because you get to see his face and you get to see what they're writing.
And I guess it's a fairly easy thing to do in modern computer animation.
so probably would have been really easy for them to uh to replace those sounds with the sounds of
a marker too but then where do you well exactly where do you where do you change so where do you
draw the line well so here's so here's another example this this is this is um this is not
well no okay i'll i'll come back i'll see if you come to my my example i want sorry i'll see if you
come to my example that i have one that bugged me i've got one other example of the dissonance
issue which is that the so what so this idea that you can do things with the animation that you
couldn't have done in the studio the the sequence at the end of episode two where the macro attacks
polly or towards the end of episode two it grabs her boot in its claw and picks her up and hangs
are upside down yeah it turns out that stunt animated characters are really cheap yeah because
you can just turn the one you've got upside down and you know there's no there are no health and
safety issues and none of that problem okay that's that's kind of okay but it it it's does that quite
does that that almost matches with the sound she's like help help ben it's got my boot yep it's got
her boot yeah that's sort of right but then you've got ben rather unconvincingly hacking at the
macra's legs the macra's legs don't react because obviously animating that would be incredibly
difficult the macro then does back off it's not clear why because it hasn't been you know the
attack but ben's assault and it wasn't particularly convincing but okay it does back off polly and ben
then stand holding each other exactly where they were with the macro just backing off.
Polly says, let's go inside, but they don't unless I've missed something there because it looks to me
like the background is exactly the same in the subsequent shot as the previous one.
And then the macro reappears. The logic is all shot to bits. It's like their reaction should be
to run away. Even if the macro is backing off, they should run away, which of course they do
in the original and it is there on the audio and then the macro appear from a different direction
and there is some more logic to it but because that kind of chase sequence all the all the kind
of general movement of body movement of the of the characters is not a strength of these animations
because that stuff is difficult to see they don't do that and so you're left with the pacing from
the audio where there was this running around but scenes that have become incredibly static
with them just sort of standing still.
And if you watch the scene,
because it's part of what is in the surviving footage,
although, as you say,
the Macra in the original may not be as slick and beautiful
as the animated ones,
the effect is vastly, vastly more convincing.
So to see the Macra with its claws curled around Polly
and her boot trapped
and Ben sort of smashing away at it
and then managing to kind of pull her out
because it's not got as strong a hold on her
as we see in the animation or as clear a hold on her.
That is much more convincing.
I've seen that clip.
I wasn't entirely...
I wouldn't say either the animated or the original
were particularly convincing.
The Macra isn't more convincing.
No, I mean, even the holding.
I feel like the holding suffers from the, let's say,
John Pertwee spearhead from space wrapping the tendril around his body
and then pretending to be trapped by it look.
She doesn't really look trapped by the macra,
possibly because they don't look very convinced.
But on the other hand, you're right.
When he picks her up by the leg, it does look awkwardly wrong, too.
It would be much more believable if it was dragging her by the leg
across the ground and she's shouting oh it's got me by the boot and then Ben tries to hit it with
a stick or something. I think that I think the danger is there you you kind of go into a well
hey wouldn't it be cool that we can do this with the animation now we can we can have her hanging
upside down and it might actually serve the soundtrack better given that that's what we've
got to do something that is less impressive in animation terms but more convincing in selling
the story so a couple things then one is the scene that got me that when i watched it both times
because i've watched this through twice um that i thought this is not right and that's the scene
where the doctor is changing the outflow inflow and he hands the keys to polly and he says go
lock the door and then there's a pause and we see polly go up to the door and look at the lock and
look at the keys in her hand and look at the lock and then go back to the doctor and go but won't
they just come through the door anyway go lock the door polly and then she goes back to lock the door
it's like i'm willing to bet she never left the doctor's side i don't think she walked up to the
door and looked at the lock and thought maybe i should second guess the doctor at this exact
moment in time while we're likely to get attacked by guards i'll just go i'll just go check it
It feels more like it's an inaction moment where she hesitates before going to the door.
But it makes her look a lot stupider because she goes there and comes back.
And that one bugged me.
So what do you think about the fact we've been lying to our listeners?
This is not a complete recreation of the Macra Terror.
They cut one scene out.
And it's odd.
When you put this Blu-ray into your player and start watching it,
you get a pre-title sequence.
So there wouldn't have been a pre-title sequence in the 60s.
What you're getting is the last section from the Moonbase,
which leads into this story.
And obviously that has been released on DVD and it's available as real film.
I kind of think, but also there's a slightly weird choice
I have no idea why, it's in black and white
Yes, when I watched it I thought
What did I pick the wrong version to watch here?
When it started out?
I don't know what the hell's going on
Because if you're going to do it in black and white
Why don't you just show the film version of it?
Now I think the reason that it is there
Is because in episode 1 there are references
To when we saw the claws on the scanner
Which they see at the end of the moon base
To give you a cliffhanger
to lead into this serial so there's a there's probably that logic for being for it being
included there but there's something even weirder than that about it which is that because of the
cut that you're about to allude to there is a massive massive continuity issue in this episode
good because i didn't see it but okay they they use it tight so go on then what tell us what the
cut is my understanding is the scene is where after the doctor and the gang have been welcomed
into the colony and they're allowed to go to the restoration clinics the spas and whatnot they
attempt some sort of mechanical device to give the doctor a new set of clothes that scene's been
removed and i and they said oh it's just too much of a problem to do that so we decided to cut it
out yeah well yes it's it's it's i mean it's slightly it's it's a longish scene and it involves
slightly more than that it involves the doctor it's it's a machine where the doctor goes in
and obviously the gag is the doctor is this kind of um rather crumpled scruffy figure he goes into
this machine and he comes out all smartened up and ben and polly oh this is fantastic and then he
there's another machine and he says something like what what's this and the pilot said oh no
don't go into that and but he goes into it uh late he goes into it anyway and he cut he comes out
and he's been all returned to his normal scruffy self and it's apparently a rough and tumble machine
um that doesn't create a continuity issue what does create a continuity issue is there is also
smartening up for polly whose hair gets cut whose hair gets cut okay i knew that she got the cut
during the episode but and they just chose to make her short-haired because she does not have
it at the end of moon base which is the discontinuity when you're watching the the the film
version at the end of moon base of the clip that they decided to reanimate as the pre-title sequence
yes it is black and white so it matches it being black and white prior to you know the the title
starting but polly has long hair obviously because she has long hair for the first part of episode
one of the macro terror and they've just decided that you know that's an extra head we're going to
have to do for Polly we can't afford to do that we'll just plus we can't afford you know the
effect of doing a smart version of the Doctor for a one-off gag so they decide to to do her
short head from the beginning so actually this unnecessary recreation of the pre-title sequence
which has been faithfully rendered in black and white even though there is a black and white film
available isn't faithful because she's got short hair what do you think about them leaving a scene
out i mean it's you're right it's not a terribly important scene it's not important scene for the
story but we could make a good argument that there are many many many scenes in doctor who stories
that are not important scenes to the story right i mean you could trim you could trim up a lot of
stories from seven parts to four if you started yeah taking an editorial cut and going yeah let's
just not do that scene it doesn't advance the plot and we watched about 35 minute version of
Marco Polo so yeah you know it can be done I think there is an argument when you were talking about
that sequence with Polly taking the keys over to the door I think there is an argument for saying
they should actually trim the audio to fit the animation in some cases now whether they should
have cut out Polly in the scene I was bellyaching about where she says let's go inside and they don't
side whether they should cut her saying let's go inside that I may draw a line there I think the
whole thing maybe should have been handled differently but the principle is yeah I don't
think there is anything wrong with with cutting it because you're not actually at the end of the day
you're not recreating the the story that you would have seen because that's impossible and in a way
if you're you're going to have to use your imagination for it anyway if you want the best
cues, the best evidence of what it would have looked like, then you need to watch the reconstructions.
Well, I gotta say, I will stand with the color version on this. I thought it does not detract
to me. You could make a film in color, and you can make a film in black and white, and there are
times, like if you did it today, and you made it in black and white, it would be a stylistic choice,
but it was not a stylistic choice when they were making Doctor Who.
It was a economic choice.
But they were shooting for black and white.
They were shooting for black and white, but that's gone.
We're completely making new visuals here.
So there is no, since these people are not lit the same way,
they are not standing the same way, the sets are not necessarily the same,
I'm going to go with go full color, and I thought it looked really nice.
And I'll tell you where it looked best was the outdoor scenes.
I thought the planetary scenes looked really, I mean, far beyond the scope of Doctor Who in the 1960s.
You look at that and you go, yeah, that's good.
That's nice.
That quarry has never looked so good by being replaced.
Well, because you don't have to draw a quarry and then draw a planetary set into it if you're animating.
I mean, that is the whole point of, I guess, the argument I've been making.
And the logical extrapolation from that is I have to accept the colour version of it.
In a way, so I mean, obviously, there was a colour version of Power of the Daleks, which actually isn't that bad, I have to admit.
Oh, I know that hurt. I know that hurt for you to admit that.
Well, part of the reason is because I'm still not super keen on the black and white version of Power of the Daleks and some of the recolouring they do.
so i think the color so it's interesting particularly when you get the same animators
working on different stories and obviously the animation evolves over oh you know that just just
time and the advance of technology and the kind of honing and practice uh that they that the
animators get from doing more and more of this changes the quality of it and i think that
what what they what they have done with this one in terms of the color is actually much better
than what they did with Power of the Daleks, which was more kind of primary colours.
And this, I will accept that the prime version of this, the intended version of this, is in colour.
And in particular, it's lit for colour.
One of the best things about this animation is there is just some absolutely stunning lighting.
It's not just the outdoor scenes, it's the outdoor scenes at night.
you know, the shadowy scenes where the doctor is meeting...
Me-doc.
Thank you.
I thought we had a Skype problem there for a second.
No.
He's listening.
I was like, oh, no, we've lost it.
A memory problem.
But, no, I think that stuff looks great.
And, as I say, the colors are not so bright.
They are much more muted, you know, dark greens and things.
And when it, because the Wheel in Space sequence is colour only,
and that, you know, that's kind of almost monochrome,
but sort of with the blues and the occasional splash of colour here and there.
It's pretty good. It's pretty good.
But the black and white version is better.
That's not a question of principle.
It's just, it looks better.
It's because not only has the colour improved since Power of the Daleks,
but also, and I think this might be partly because they've animated it for colour,
they've got a lot of the tones in black and white better.
So it's not quite as contrasty.
And although they've lit for colour,
those lit scenes, maybe some of them do actually look better in colour than black and white,
they still look stunning in black and white.
And all the interior scenes do look better in black and white.
And this is obviously just a personal thing,
and I'm just making a qualitative judgment,
but I like the black and white version better,
And I find it easier to fit it in, you know, in my head with the soundtrack and the, you know, knowing this is Troughton plus Ben, Polly and Jamie.
I find it just, it feels more, I can sort of more relax into it and forget that I'm watching an animation.
I haven't watched the black and white version, so I can't comment on it.
I am probably predisposed to not think that's going to be true.
Well, I was presupposed to thinking the black and white version would be streets ahead.
So I certainly have a bias toward black and white.
I think you will probably, therefore, if you don't have that bias, you will probably, therefore, prefer the colour.
I mean, most people, I think, will prefer the colour.
I wanted to watch the whole thing in black and white.
I didn't.
I only watched an episode in black and white.
So I've only got that comparison.
Likewise, I wanted to watch the whole thing as a recon.
I only watched one episode as a recon, or one in a bit.
But it's a great thing about this package that you have the ability to watch these different versions and make the comparison and choose what you like.
Speaking of color choices, what did you think of their choice and style for the opening credits?
So, first of all, have they got the credits wrong?
Have they?
Well, did they actually change the credits between Moonbase and Macro Terror?
why are they not the same credits as there is some point where they well
macroter well moonbase had the no face version right yeah yeah it had yeah
somewhere early on they added trouton's face but i don't know where they added
it i don't know i just i just assumed the
whole of season four had the same titles but maybe not
it surprised me that it had a different title the problem is the others in
season four are the faceless ones in the evil of daleks
so we don't know
I mean they've got episodes of all those
oh yeah so we could
look at the surviving episodes which seem to be
on Lost in Time or something
we won't have the answer now
but maybe in the show notes we'll have been able
to do the homework on that
I thought maybe what they'd done was because
they did the titles for
Wheel in Space which they would
be the correct titles for
Wheel in Space yeah
and then they thought well we'll use them
for Macro Terror because otherwise we'll have to do a color version of the titles for season four.
But they have taken...
You know, I do understand because I do think it was a bit jarring in Power of the Daleks
to have black and white titles and then a color, you know, going into color.
But I don't, I still, I just don't like it.
Sorry.
I, you know, when we watch the credits roll, because of course I'm, you're watching the,
you're watching the black and white moon base footage
when you're watching the color version.
So like I said, I put it on.
It was in black and white.
I'm like, oh, I thought I'd picked the color version.
Oh, well, I'm not going to stop and go back and pick a different one.
I'll just watch it through.
And when the credits roll in and they are in Pertwee vision, basically,
I think they took the exact style that they did in Pertwee
with the circles of color and just overlaid them over the static.
And I thought it worked really well.
I mean, for trying to figure out what you would do,
because there's no frame of reference for what they were going to do to that.
Are they going to individually animate all the different bubbles?
And they weren't.
And they go, oh, they did exactly the same cheat they did on Pertwee,
because Pertwee's credits are black and white, shot through gels.
That's how they did it.
It's black and white feedback, but they overlaid some color gels to that to get the color howl around stuff that they did.
So I thought, clever idea to just, well, that's what they did back then, so let's do that.
I thought they looked quite good.
I mean, if you're going to have color credits, I thought they did a bang-up job of coming as close as they could to what they would have done at that time.
Yeah, yes. But therein lies the kind of philosophical confusion underpinning what they are doing.
Because as we have discussed, there are shots in the actual episode that are nothing like what they could have done at the time.
Correct.
So they could have done something completely different with these credits that would have been beyond the technological capability if they were doing them in colour.
Now, they have taken the credits as they were.
They've taken the black and white credits and they've made them in.
They've stretched them for widescreen because the whole thing's in widescreen.
And then they've, you know, having done a remaster on them.
And then they've done this colourisation, which I agree with you, I think, is influenced by the way Pertwee was done and therefore matches what could have happened at the time.
But it's created something for me there because that certainly was shot for black and white.
And it's created something for me that is maybe the uncanny valley of colourised black and white credits because it's too close to the Pertwee version.
And there's something simple and beautiful about the black and white Troughton face credits.
I like them a lot.
The version of the credits that you have, it's crisper than the earlier ones with Troughton's face and all the rest of it.
And I really like the Pertwee ones as well.
but they are different. And this is a bit of a horrible mishmash in my view. That's harsh. I
agree with you. They do look pretty good. And if you judge them on their own, I think you would
regard them favorably. But because I'm comparing them to both of these others, I'm feeling like
it's neither fish nor fowl. Okay, let me ask a completely tangential question. And I realize
that this has nothing... We've already had the sort of... We've already had the debate, and rightly
so. They were shooting in black and white. So therefore, when they were making these,
they were lighting for black and white. They were costuming for black and white. They were doing set
design for black and white. All that stuff, those are artistic decisions that had to be made with
the technical knowledge of the limitations of the medium that they were working in. So, you know,
I do get why when somebody comes along and tries to colorize an old black and white movie or a TV
show why there is a bit of an outrage. And a lot of the times the outrage comes about because how
bad of a job they do. Because I can still remember seeing some shots of, you know, Basil Rathbone
and Nigel Bruth where their hair was flesh tone in places. And just like, wow, you guys just,
you just missed that by a mile. But let me ask this question. Because in the last few years,
if you keep up with this completely trivial bit of information,
scientists, archaeologists have, or paleontologists, let's get that right,
have begun to find ways to analyze fossil data, certain fossil structures,
and get color information out of it by looking at pigmentation and whatnot.
And we know that with computer technology and with the electronic technology that they had,
It's not inconceivable that at some point in the future, a computer could look at a black and white recording and actually draw back the original color as shot.
I think that will happen quite soon.
I think that's a real possibility.
What's your thought on that?
I know that's very tangential.
Well, my thought is that, as you say, what that will do is it will recreate the color version.
It will recreate the real color.
the colour that was being shot on black and white film,
the colour that would have been viewed by you
if you were standing where the camera is in that studio.
But what you'd have been looking at would have been colours
that were chosen for creating an effect in black and white on the screen.
So to me, it certainly would have a kind of,
it would be incredibly interesting, you know,
just from the curiosity value, it would be well, well, well seen.
so I'm kind of looking forward to it from that point of view.
Artistically I don't really have any interest in it
because I don't see anything wrong with black and white
and if that's what they were creating then fine.
I think the reason why I do not like colourisation
not because they're bad
but just because I don't see what is wrong with black and white
that somehow it is seen as being inferior
and in some ways that's the opposite of the truth
But because there's a market for color and black and white somehow puts people off, they colorize in order to try and broaden the audience.
Is it a bad thing if you can broaden an audience, though?
Well, if you get more people watching.
If you make the thing worse.
So give me the black and white is what I'm saying.
Give me my quality black and white over just color for color's sake.
I mean, I would happily watch some Acro Terror in color.
I probably would still, I mean, by choice, I'd go for black and white, but it would be almost a coin toss.
Power of the Daleks, I'd watch in black and white.
Okay, so looking at the list, before we go on, assuming that they've already got, you know, models or artwork done up,
so they're sticking with Troughton.
The only thing that's completely missing is the Highlanders and the Fury from the Deep,
which, you know, completely all episodes missing in the Troughton era.
in the Troughton era that's right Fury from the Deep is six episodes I can still kind of see them
doing that before the Highlanders although the Highlanders they'd have all the characters
animated including Ben and Polly and they wouldn't from Fury in the Deep no maybe they would when do
we leave yeah yeah that's that's Victoria okay if you if you want to get into speculation I have an
observation which is that it's kind of observation just in terms of the quality of the the animation
itself you know just in its own terms which it which is that um i think there has been an advance
since power of the daleks in in it um well i mean it's sort of but yeah i mean i i i'm still going
to say it's not up to the standards of the invasion but it's different it's similar to
power of the daleks because we're looking at the same people doing it and since then i think um
the animation has improved in terms of particularly the the kind of facial expression and such the
body movement has always been slightly um yeah still did weird yeah um but but i think what is
interesting about it is that that is most noticeable in trouton it's like they i don't
know if it's a different model but it whatever they've they've improved the rigging and he now
has quite a large expressive range and he does look different though you know the drawing is
slightly different though there have been some revisions made conversely i actually think ben
and polly are slightly they they look a bit different and obviously polly has different
hair and stuff but they look to me less expressive than are of the daleks and jamie looks more
expressive than they do like there has been more effort put into rigging the jamie and the doctor
which brings me to my speculation yeah which is are we getting another are they putting more
effort in there are we getting another story that involves both jamie and the doctor and so that
made me think oh maybe it is wheel in space after all because they've done the first 10 minutes
and that and that's that's my hopeful fan conspiracy theory approach and the kind of
then the realist in me goes oh hang on a minute the reason that jamie and the doctor might be
better is because they put a lot of effort into doing those 10 minutes of of within space and
they look very good in that they look as good in that as as the macro terror so they already had
that and we're we're still you know we're still in a situation in animation terms because i i do
make this comparison to the the invasion which is kind of unfair because they're doing four episodes
instead of just two so and you know with power it was six so the budget has to stretch two or
three times as far as it as it as it did for for um the invasion yeah and assuming they have the
same budget which i doubt that they did i think they put more in well we know yeah the invasion
had a lot of money and it shows but then the subsequent ones there was quite a lot of variation
between animation houses. I liked the Planet 55 ones, so Reign of Terror and the Moonbase
looked very good to me. It's partly, I think, a stylistic decision, but I also think it has to do
with the fact that the better animations in this series, because the animation in The Invasion is
in many ways quite crude. I mean, for a start, it's 2D, so you only ever see full-profile,
full-on or three-quarters shots, but the whole thing is cut and edited in a way that makes
that kind of hides the weaknesses with that whereas there are a lot of scenes in macro for
example where you do see these kind of quite long distance shots of people walking and it's painful
or jamie running through corridors and you think there must have been another way to shoot that
or the worst one jamie unlocking a door and you think god why why are we seeing seconds of this
on screen when he's he's barely even able to turn his hands let alone adjust the position of the key
in the lock yeah there is that it it's it's it's pretty tedious to watch and so i think in in some
ways the the the real strength of the of the best animators in this is the ability is the kind of
self-awareness to know what they're good at and what they're not and to make sure that they don't
do the things they're not good at fair enough i will just add one thing the faces of the majorettes
in the parade yeah terrifying terrifying so i mean i know they're all kind of zombie-like people
but at least the people in the crowds kind of had facial movement but they had nothing they were
just flat terrifying dead soulless and that's a pretty early scene in the in the episode the
first shot of them coming forward and raising the arm i'm like oh please it's got to be better than
this because anyway it's it's important to to set up your expectations like um i slight tangent but
it it's it's related i was listening to to david tenner interview michael sheen who's obviously
done a number of films where he has been other people like tony blair or brian clough or whoever
and he was talking about the whole business of imitating someone else because obviously that's
not what he's doing he's doing he's giving a performance he's not trying to be an imitator
but it's in relation to someone who the audience is going to be familiar with so how do you get
them to accept you as that person and his his thing about it was you don't have to be that
person but you have to make you have to put your audience at ease straight away with how different
you are so they can get over that and then get into the story and I kind of think there is
something for the animators in this which is that they need to set up the expectations of the
audience about how much animation there will be in the story so how much you know facial movement
there will be or whatever in in each character and how much because we're going to have to do
some of the work here how much of that work we are going to have to do with our own imaginations
And I think in particular, again, it's a weakness of this one and Power of the Daleks is that the animation, because they're using both 3D and 2D techniques in it, it is quite mixed.
And it creates, you know, that scene you mentioned with the majorettes, it's very different looking at their faces than it is looking at Troughton's face.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
You've got to somehow adjust to that because if you just look at Troughton's face, you think, well, that's what people look like.
you know i mean obviously he's the the main character but from a viewer's point of view
you don't think in terms of well he's the main character therefore he's had money spent on
making his face move it's just like he's a person and or you do yeah if you had a load of extras in
the scene they would look like they might not be the best actors or whatever but they would
for the time they were on scene they would look look like people and their faces would
look like real faces and that's the problem with the majorette scene there is there is a guy um
He's, I can't tell you what scene he's in and I can't tell you what his name is.
He's kind of like he may have been an actor of Asian descent.
And it's like, I think that really is modeled off the real actor.
Because that looks like an actor I've seen in bit parts in British television.
But I didn't catch the name on it.
But I wonder.
I mean, the pilot wasn't drawn well enough for me to go when I watched it.
That's Peter Jeffery.
Obviously, as soon as I saw the recon, I was like, oh, that's Peter Jeffrey.
And then when I watched episode two in animation, I could see, oh, they've drawn Peter Jeffrey, but not well enough for me to recognize it.
So I think they were doing that to some extent.
They weren't just making up the characters from scratch.
OK. I, you know, I figured they would do that with the main characters.
But when they got to the secondary ones, I didn't know whether they would even have pictures, you know, of all the people that were standing on scenes.
Yeah. If it's an extra in a scene.
He had a couple of lines, but that was it.
And he was in the crowd scene at the end, not talking.
But then that's just because they were reusing people they had previously animated.
But, yeah.
All right.
Well, I think that's pretty much all we've got on the Macra Terror.
When it comes out in the United States for people in the U.S., buy it.
Absolutely.
Go buy it.
Buy it.
Convince them to make more.
We want Fury of the Deep.
Well, I want Fury of the Deep.
Anyway, somebody wants Fury of the Deep.
I want Fury of the Deep.
I want all the episodes filled in in animation.
And I will not rest until they've done that.
I will keep complaining until such time.
Simon, thank you for joining me.
It's a pleasure, as always.
And listeners, I hope you get the chance to join us again
for another animated Doctor Who episode.
Absolutely.
Soon.
But otherwise, please join us again next time on Fusion Patrol.
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Ben regains his sentences.
His sentences.
I don't have my sentences, but Ben's got his.