You're listening to Fusion Patrol, a listener-supported podcast.
Each week, we take a single episode of a science fiction TV series or movie
and overanalyze it to within an inch of its life.
Welcome to the discussion.
Hello and welcome to another episode of Fusion Patrol. I'm Eugene.
And I'm Simon.
And tonight, we're coming to the end of a bumper crop year for Doctor Who animations.
We have had four this year, culminating with Galaxy 4.
First Doctor adventure we've had animated in quite a while.
So we have looked at Galaxy 4 before and when it was put out on as a bonus feature on another disc, although I don't remember which one.
It wasn't animated.
Was it the Aztecs?
It was.
And it was a partial photo snap missing footage recreation.
Partially animated.
Cut down.
Yeah, it had some little 3D chumblies in it and whatnot.
But we are looking at the proper, full-on, animated Blu-ray release.
And since we have talked about it before, my synopsis might reflect that.
So, story synopsis, the four-part, Galaxy 4.
The Doctor, Vicky, and Steven land on what appears to be a dead or dying planet.
But soon, the TARDIS is being investigated by small robots.
Vicky coins the name Chumblies because they walk in a Chumbly fashion.
investigating they are somewhat taken prisoners by the chumblees who cannot speak they're being
taken somewhere but the trio are rescued by the draven beautiful amazonian warriors taken to their
spaceship which is wrecked on the planet they meet maga the head draven she explains that they're
war with the rills the hideous disgusting creatures that control the chumblees the rill have also
crashed on the planet. Further complication, the planet will self-destruct in two days' time.
Holding Stephen prisoner, the Draven coerces the Doctor and Vicky to try to take the Rill spacecraft
so that they can all escape. This goes wrong when Vicky is captured and they discover that the Rills,
who are ammonia-breathing creatures, are actually advanced and peaceful and have only been trying to
help the Draven. The Doctor agrees to transfer power from the TARDIS to the Rill so they can
escape the planet. Things all come down to the wire as the Dravens try to take possession of
the real ship as the planet dies. The Rills and the TARDIS escape, leaving the Draven to their fate.
Right. What are your thoughts on this second dip at Galaxy 4?
Well, obviously the big change is the animation, but I am just going to have to mention the fact
that my take on the story is different from what it was five years ago.
And so I was quite, I was sort of having watched the animated version
that we've just had and then going back and listening to what I said then.
I kind of listened to five-year-old me laying out the case
for why the story didn't do a very good job of world building
and what was wrong with the writing and everything.
And, you know, it was a reasonable case, reasonably made case.
But five year old me was wrong. That was the problem with it.
And actually, I ended up agreeing with everything that you said this time around, you know, that it is the way the way actually a lot of the things that aren't included in this are help it to be a well focused morality tale.
the the kind of beauty on the inside stuff and and all that i don't think you need an indigenous
population i don't even think you need an explanation for why the planet is going to
to blow up i found it quite an enjoyable viewing um and that wasn't really true last time and so
one of the things that i'm curious about is whether that is an effect of having the animated version
to look at rather than the sort of mix that we had last time of um well essentially one and a
half episodes of live animation bolstered with um bolstered with a sort of cut down partially
animated partially photoshopped reconstruction i will go on the record right now and say that
I think it's the animation and I am willing to bet good money if and when they ever released
the underwater menace properly animated I will like it better than I did the version that they
released because you know it lived and died on the voices you heard and the words they spoke
and it was not in any way benefited by what they put on the screen and I'm sure it's better than
I think it is. And I'm still marveling at the fact that you liked it. But, and it's interesting
because a five-year-old ago, us, I liked Galaxy 4. And we reviewed this just after having reviewed
Underwater Menace, which I did not like. And I liked Galaxy 4 the way they had done it. I thought
that, you know, maybe coming off of how awful the Underwater Menace job was, that what we saw in
Galaxy 4 was a lot more enjoyable. I, however, and I enjoyed this. I enjoyed watching it this time.
I was like, yay, another one, Doctor Who. Good. This is good, Doctor Who. I am so going to get
done watching this before I have to watch another episode of The Flux so that I can, you know,
cleanse the palate and I found the original story having watched it five years ago and the only time
I ever watched it should be pretty forgettable and so I kind of was surprised again at what was
happening I knew the basic tale of the Draven's bad real's good but I was surprised at how much
of it is like yeah I kind of remember this but I don't and I don't know if that's a function
of having watched it in the stills animation
and live action recreation.
But it'll be interesting to see in five years
if I remember Galaxy 4 again.
It'll be interesting to see in five years
if I remember anything again.
But I did enjoy it,
but I don't feel like I got the same feeling out of it
that I did last time.
And I can't tell you what it is,
But listening to myself talk about it on the podcast, I definitely liked it.
I definitely liked it this time.
And yet somehow, I don't think it, I don't know.
I'm not saying I'm detracting this time.
It just kind of feels like it was a different experience.
And I don't know if that's good or bad, but I'm going to go with good just because make more animations.
But I'm not.
So my feeling on this is it is definitely a different experience.
When we talked about it before, we kind of felt like that what they had done with the previous animation was quite an impressive way of filling in the gaps where there's a load of missing material.
It showed very much where the kind of gaps were.
But on the other hand, it conveyed very much what you were kind of supposed to be getting from the visuals that were accompanying the soundtrack that, of course, you're still able to hear.
And in terms of the actual animation in the new Galaxy 4, it's the same people, you know, Big Finish Creative, DigiTunes, etc., who did Fury from the Deep.
And my reaction to it is almost exactly the same.
I dislike the same things I disliked before.
I like the things that I liked before.
But what's interesting to me in comparing the kind of two versions that we have had now of Galaxy 4 is that it is a different experience.
When you say it's a different experience watching this, I think it deliberately is a different experience.
I mean, we've sort of touched on this before, but there are perhaps bigger divergences between what would be a pure kind of this is what was this animation is reconstructing what might have been in the 1960s to know this is actually now a realisation of the story in a way that takes full advantage of the things that.
are now possible and it i mean it's not yeah it it it's not straying too far i think from the
spirit of the story that it that it did you know you've still it's still got a match with the
soundtrack that you're hearing right um and it's and it's still got to feel like it's part of that
that kind of heart and all season but it it it what what you're what you're kind of seeing with
the with the the previous animated version was very much this is this is to give you an idea of
what it could have looked like let your let your brain fill in the gaps here but this is this is
basically you watching a 1960s studio bound Doctor Who in black and white whereas this is a much
bigger scale because you know it's if you're on an alien planet and the thing was filmed in a studio
and it's I mean we'll come back to this but it's it's in color and it includes sequences that
were not and obviously could not have been in the original production and i think that's quite an
interesting choice i i you know i i know where you're going there is the fact that so for example
there are scenes where someone's up on a cliff looking down on them at distance when in the
studio version they they were no more no way seven feet away yeah and uh but what i do think is
interesting is that they took the design, the studio set design of the planet with the weird
looking plants and what, and they just stretched it out so that it is, it is that studio set with
those weird studio plants, but it's big and they can operate in a bigger canvas. And I think that
works very, very well. And I, I appreciate it. They've just taken this world and they said,
if that studio had actually been Pinewood instead of Closetwood,
then, and we'd had a budget instead of a shoebox,
this is what this set probably would have looked like.
And I, yeah, I mean, I, I would,
I would say there's nothing there that wouldn't have been achievable in the
sixties, but you would have had to, I mean,
I'm not somewhere else.
I think you'd have needed location shoots in the Outback, but you know,
It is not like it's something that you couldn't do, but it is something that they very definitely didn't do.
And what's quite interesting about it is the previous reconstruction very much designed around fitting around the existing footage.
And we did kind of talk about how jarring it was to go from or how jarring I found it to go from a kind of section that had been recreated by essentially a sequence of stills into some of the some of the kind of existing live action footage and then back into the stills.
And they've done the complete opposite here in the sense that although they have got an episode and a half of live action footage, they've animated all four episodes.
And did you watch episode three or did you watch it straight through animation?
I watched it straight through animation.
I did watch some of it.
Which is a different experience, isn't it?
Yes. Yes, it is. Yeah, it is.
I'll tell you, I made a couple of notes. And one of the things that really got me was there's a scene in the original where they they approached the Dravan spacecraft for the first time.
And when you look at that exterior Dravan spaceship and you hear them talking about how a piece of junk it is, basically.
I will say this the BBC actual version looks like a bigger piece of junk than the animated version
it looks it looks better in the and I can you can see that they're kind of trying to make it look
grungy but they have not succeeded in what the BBC art department did in the original probably
through lack of money rather than design but I think it's more accident than intention I think
it's accident by intent but that was because there are some scenes again because i was going
into this thing kind of fresh-ish so when steve's like wow what a piece of junk you know you're
looking around the ship and i'm going doesn't really look like a piece of junk to me but then
i guess maybe i'm seeing that through steven the spaceman's eyes who knows something about
starships to me it's just like spaceship and to him it's like oh yeah this is you know look at
climatic regulator or whatever it has and but it it does it does look like a piece of junk in the
in the bbc version i wonder if that inspired when douglas adams wrote arthur dent's reaction to the
vogon ship and then seeing heart of gold and going this is what i think a spaceship should look like
so sorry something just occurred to me on that on that see just this is a slight tangent but on that
sequence of the first approach to the Dharvin spaceship. I think there is an example there
of where they have actually been somewhat constrained by the original in the sense that
the approach to the Dharvin spaceship is the very beginning of the existing footage from episode one.
So people will be quite familiar with seeing the kind of actors rushing up and going through the
door there for me as i kind of said with fury of the deep the big weakness of this animation is
when you see the kind of where essentially where it's fine when they're just sort of standing there
talking to each other but when they're doing whole body movements in particular running it looks
really bad and the fact that they you know most of most of the episodes all of episode two all of
episode four are missing they don't have any tele snaps etc etc they it frees them up to sort of just
do whatever they want which includes they can play to the strength of the animation and not do the
things that look a bit naff so I did wonder whether that kind of running from the right hand side to
the left hand side of the screen with their legs sort of scissoring was something that they only
put in there because they thought it was a kind of essential element that fans would remember
hmm i'll tell you one thing that i noticed that was different in that same kind of area and and
maybe this is the director of the original wanted to play the script differently than the animator
wanted to play the script but what i got out of watching the animated version was lines like uh
the doctor and steven talking about the thing the ship saying it's you know it's a piece of junk oh
it's fossilized and then steven going well it has got one or two things of interest to it
and it feels like he's talking about the dravins but if you watch my version he is looking around
at the ship not the girls when he says that line and it doesn't sound nearly as creepy
and and it's like huh i that that is different i i i read that scene completely differently
i read everything steven says in the animation when he's talking about anything good he's talking
about the the pulchritude of the dravins and anything and in the anime or in the live it
just didn't quite it doesn't come off that way and it could just be the director said oh don't
be staring them right in the look around the room or something look at the ceiling or something so
it's you know imagine their eyes are up there yeah do you because it's it's i guess it's harder
to be subtle in the animation and yeah there are there are definitely things that are harder to do
in the animation and then there are things that are easier to do in the animation yeah so i i mean
i noticed a number of quite specific differences around what they've chosen to do with the animation
know are different they did anyway the big one for me is in that in that sequence and you know
it's very obvious that it's different because we have that surviving clip of the scene when marga
is talking about how they came to the planet the animation goes to this massive flashback of the
ships arriving which you know even even if you didn't have that clip you think well would they
would they have been able to do that and uh i i don't i think that's quite an interesting
choice i think essentially i i like it i can see what it adds because you know you can you can argue
that had they been able to do it at the time then they might well have done yeah and it adds more
visual interest um to a scene that is essentially somebody standing there talking to you and a person
they're talking to you in animation is in animation kind of yeah exactly so so it it's
something that is is not terror it doesn't come off terribly well in the animation is also a lot
more difficult to do so the animators have made their jobs easier by doing a simpler animation
which is also kind of visually rewarding would i be right in assuming that the scene where
they recount how maga so i believe it's the real recounting it how how maga actually killed her own
soldier the wounded soldier in episode four we we also see that in flashback in in episode four in
the animated version but i've enough that i see and from the interviews on the making of documentary
they clearly filmed that scene so in other words the director did use that device
yeah when people are no it's in episode three isn't it it's in episode three i'm not sure
we have we do have sequence that does exist have have we got that sequence of of manga shooting
or do we just have some stills of that and and the actress talking about how they did that i i
don't know because i didn't i didn't watch the i definitely i definitely have a recollection of it
um so but my point is simply that it's you know it is in the style of what that director did
in that story anyway well actually i think i think that is where the big potential problem
with it exists because what you've got there is a flashback which is in as far as we can tell
from everything else in the story a a true recollection of what actually happened so there
are two ways you could interpret what the flashbacks are they could be a visual representation
of what the character is telling us or they could be us actually seeing something that happened at
an earlier time through the magic of editing and right fair enough no it is in episode three by
the way the flashback that is in there is it could be either because we believe it to be true
and the real is telling us something true the flashback in episode one that they've added
could not be real because it contradicts what we are told by the real when he recounts what
marga has recounted in episode three and we didn't get his flashback version we didn't get his
flashback version but but but we're told that they you know they stopped there and there was this
standoff and there was a you know there's a different account of who fired first and etc etc
and so it doesn't what what we are told by the real at that point does not tally with what we
see in the in the new animated flashback that we get in episode one so that that very much is in
the style of the flashback is purely a visual representation of what the character is saying
it doesn't give us any clue as to what the truth is you know i that that that made me pause and
think you know is is is this kind of quite major artistic choice is that acceptable
you know i i think it is because of the the i think it works but i i think you know after your
explanation i would have i would have gone ahead and said they should have also animated what the
real said so that you have two animations of the two different versions i mean i i i agree i i am
I am very, very much easier now about, well, I guess I never have.
I mean, it's one of the things that I felt about the way they reigned in the reign of terror.
I thought it was unnecessary because I quite liked the very heavily stylized animation in that.
And that's partly because I consider these to be works of art in their own right.
So, you know, although they are working with material from the original production in the sense of using
soundtrack let's not pretend that what they are realizing is what em's intended in his right or
you know derek martinus's interpretation of it they they may be trying to extrapolate something
there but what we're talking about we're seeing on screen is you know the the it's it's not it's
not actually uh gary russell who directs this one it's it's chloe greff who i think worked on
Fury of the Deep but wasn't the director but it's it's her take or at the very least it's her take
on what she thinks that Ems or Martinus wanted to happen or should have wanted to happen it you
know it's her hope for what they would have liked to happen but who can say you know Ems isn't with
us anymore so you can't you can't kind of you you can't say this is this is what he would have wanted
done if he was you know if he was writing for something that had a budget with money to rent
Pinewood or go to the Outback I'm not really I'm not really suggesting that I think they would have
a problem with it I'm just saying I really don't think it matters what they think it should be like
what matters to me in terms of experiencing this now is the coherence of what we see on screen as
a work in its own right this is this is inspired by the original production of galaxy 4 but it is
in at least to some degree a remake and the perhaps going back to this question of why did
i find it more enjoyable perhaps the reason around that is because it does it does feel more coherent
to be watching this single vision of what it's like.
Yes, the animation isn't perfect,
but it does have a lot of benefits over the original.
If you still watch episode three,
and I kind of mentioned this before,
but the way that Vicky gets trapped by the rill in the ship,
by an effect, these bars coming down
that obviously are terribly lightweight
and not capable of holding anyone in.
And so, you know, immediately that takes me out of it.
And, you know, likewise, you have the Doctor and Ricky
hiding behind a box at one point,
and it clearly, it wouldn't,
I don't know why they're hiding,
because the Chumbleeys can only detect them by sound,
but it wouldn't prevent them being seen
if they could be seen.
So those kinds of things are failures
of the original production.
And I mean, last time around, I did.
I tried to make the case.
No, there was problems with the writing.
But actually, I think it was probably the issues I had were around the production,
because the animated version wears its shortcomings on its sleeve, in a sense.
It's not pretending to be live action in any sense,
but it gives you an animated version of the story that I think is what it is.
And in terms of that, I think it's a very enjoyable watch.
I have a couple of questions about the one thing that I mean, there are a couple of things.
For example, the Chumleys have a much more articulated claw.
OK, fine. Yeah. I mean, it is kind of in keeping with they did have a sort of claw thing.
It was pretty pathetic, but it was it.
It moves in a way that, you know, again, coming back to this thing of what they couldn't possibly have done at the time.
moves in a way that they couldn't have made something like that because it's too thin to
articulate so smoothly right yeah but the you know that one that one is nothing i mean it's
yes it's it's just we somebody said this thing's got a claw and it reaches out and grabs it somebody
in the art department said uh okay but in the animation department they can just go go for it
There are two things that seemed to me very different, and they must be artistic choices, one of which has relevance to the story, one of which does not.
The one that does, to me, have relevance, it doesn't.
It doesn't make a difference, but it does.
To me, the Dravan look identical.
They look like they're clones.
the grown Dravan look like they're clones in the animated version when they are obviously not
in the original version and nothing is made of that except that you know Maga says these aren't
living beings they're made in a test tube and the animation sort of conveys that better because
they do look like they're off an assembly line more so than they did in in reality and and they
must have done that on purpose because oh yeah they did about the fact that they do a very good
job of capturing the original actor uh in their likeness so that you know that i can spot wanda
ventnum when i see her in an animated form you're like oh wow look at that i know that i know that
person and here uh i know they were probably trying to downplay their individuality in the
original by hiring to a type but you know they weren't quite the same height and they weren't
they didn't look quite the same and certainly they're very distinguishable visually and
obviously in this version they are they have different voices but they're obviously identical
in the sense that they've reused the the exact same model it kind of changes it kind of changes
the Dravan but it doesn't make any impact on this story but you know if you were if you were going
to have a a future Dravan story which approach would you go with the clone Dravan or would you
go with the the similar but not the like I am sympathetic to to um I mean Gary Russell would
say that was the intention and I I don't want to contradict what I just said I mean we don't
We don't necessarily know whether this would have been done
if it were possible.
But yes, I mean, it's not just that they are identical
in terms of being clones.
It's that he actually creates a little dock for them to plug into.
So the reason I think you can say that,
I don't know that it's something they would have done
or that it was their intention,
would have been their intention to do that if they could,
but you can back it up from the text because that that thing of whatever it is recharging or
revitalizing with nutrients or whatever it is does tie directly into the the comment that marga
makes about them being created it reinforces something that's already there it may literally
say in the script you know the women are identical and you know that just you know in stage direction
uh or or we don't we don't know what's in that part of it that doesn't necessarily get translated
uh onto screen the other one it's very very much different and i'm gonna put it in the positive
category but at the same time it's kind of it's kind of a shame and that's the draven ship now
I'll be the first to say the Draven ship in the original is rubbish. It is really the most
pathetic spaceship we've ever seen. And maybe it isn't. I have some doubts there. But you know,
it's clear. It looks like it's made out of plastic around triangular frames. It's really something,
Nothing like what you see in the animation except for the triangular shapes.
But on the other hand, I think it was a bold and daring attempt to do something very different in the original.
It's like, we don't have much money.
What can we do?
We can say this is alien, so it can be completely unlike our expectations.
And they tried something, and it didn't work.
And I just kind of wonder if they should have tried a little harder to incorporate that into the animation.
I think that, I mean, this is guesswork because I haven't heard anything from the animators to back this up.
And I mean, I like the fact they include the triangular elements of it because it does feel like there's a nod to the original spaceship in there.
But I think the transparency would create difficulties for them in animating it in much the same way that they have turned Vicky's dress into a solid green colour instead of the kind of, I mean, you can't see the colour in the surviving clips.
But I think Peter Purvis said it was green and you can see that it's a sort of paisley patterning.
And they didn't want to reanimate the Paisley patterning in much the same way that the other team of animators felt that it was a terrible mistake to have given Patrick Troughton his Czech trousers in Power of the Daleks.
Yeah.
So I think all of the kind of transparency stuff in the spaceship, it is cool.
I agree with you.
And I like the ambition there.
I just think they would, the animators would have made the same mistake.
They would have been overstretching if they tried to recreate that.
You know, the thing that occurred to me while I was kind of blundering through that was, is there supposed to be a ship and then like an extension built on the front where they're doing work?
I think there's something there. There's something external or additional that is about the ammonia generation.
Even the animated version, there's kind of like a two-layer effect.
And I'm just kind of wondering if maybe that's a temporary structure they've built outside the ship.
Maybe that's what they were kind of going for.
There was something about the, in the animated, because I completely forgot about the transparent real ship.
But there was something about the animated version.
Something the doctor said as they approached the ship that made me think that maybe there was a work area out front.
And if so, I could forgive that for being transparent plastic because it's a tent.
But I don't know.
I definitely liked this or I found it easier to accept the ship in the animated version.
So I liked that in the animated version.
Again, in terms of the differences, I put it in the positive column.
You know, a bit like the planet blowing up and all the cracks appearing.
You know, you don't see the planet blowing up.
Yes, I understand in the original you don't see the ship take off either.
No, that's what I mean.
And the fact that we see the ship doing things that it wouldn't have been possible for it to do.
And we see the planet exploding in a way that you just couldn't have, you know, you couldn't have added that effect or realize that in the studio.
So they're definitely, you know, they're all part of the same thing of saying this is our playground now.
We can we can add, we can imagine, we can explore limits that no longer exist, even while there are other limits that are simply due to the fact of animation.
So the other one, which is kind of like a whole separate topic in its own right, and it's something that we've touched on with several of these because it's the modern way, isn't it, is they make it in colour, in colour widescreen, in fact.
Yeah.
So I, and, you know, that's a whole new realisation there.
I mean, they may be they may have asked Peter Purvis what color Vicky's dress was, but a lot of those decisions are brand new creative decisions.
Even if they had known what things were in the studio, you've no way of knowing whether they were deliberately.
Well, they wouldn't have been deliberately those colors.
They might have been colored for black contrast rather than the actual color.
So what did you think of the colors and the color palette in this one?
I thought that it's very interestingly timed to come out around the same time Dune did.
You've definitely got that big orangey, sweeping, lifeless planet look.
I was fine with it.
I don't know if that's what I envisioned it being, but it certainly fit perfectly in my mind that that would be what it would look like.
Did you watch any of the episodes in black and white?
I did watch. I watched the first one in black and white.
Right. I mean, I only I only ask because I kind of agree with you about the the kind of the Australian inspired scenery.
It's it's they they realize something there that definitely isn't in the isn't in the studio.
but equally it works well in black and white i'm not sure that's a color thing other than the fact
that they've then gone for the kind of red look of it they've got three suns right so they they are
i think it's three right so i can see how they might go for a strong yellowy orange feel to it
as well you know that because that that kind of fits with that hot burning you know in in your
mind i think that's that probably is why that works well i i'm not that keen on it right the
you may not be surprised because i've been a bit skeptical about color but i was i was kind of
getting there um particularly the faceless ones and you know to some extent evil i was and that's
obviously the other team but i just i liked the way they were coloring it fitted with their style
of animation this feels a little bit more kind of uh bright primary colors i felt a bit like i
i did i watched an episode or two in color but i think i felt i preferred the black and white
from an aesthetic viewpoint but the one thing that i would say did kind of work and and the
and the other thing to note you know just in terms of the packaging is they're still presenting the
black and white version on disc one which i am finding a bit odd because you know when you hear
gary russell talking about it he's saying you know we're starting with the thinking about it
in terms of the color version and anyway when they present it on disc one they present it with
four animated episodes and the existing episode as an extra rather than you know there could be
a logic in saying you present the black and white on disc one because people want to watch it with
the existing episode and it's less of a kind of transition to to go through um but the the kind
of thing that made me feel like there was a kind of again it's about the coherence of it and the
fact that it backed up the art the other artistic choices being made within the animation of having
the kind of the way the colors and the way it's drawn is that it had quite a sort of 60s comic
strip feel to it yeah yeah it kind of did I quite liked I mean I could almost imagine seeing
seeing it in one of the 1960s because obviously the comic strips were drawn in color and you know
you could take take a frame from this put a few speech bubbles on it and it you could feel like
that's where it had come from so in terms of that by the end of you know the second episode I'd
watched in colour I was sort of coming around to thinking well maybe that is a better way to
experience it even though I didn't feel that the the colouring job was as good as the other team
were doing it still actually is adding something to the story to the sense of it to to the atmosphere
to this delicate balance between creating a sense of this being a story set in the future but which
was at least partially created in the 1960s so i i you know hats off in terms of that one thing that
i'm going to ask about it's rhetorical mostly the end of this story has a very long comparatively
intro to mission to the unknown which is such an odd duck for those who don't know mission to the
unknown is a one-part story with no doctor or companions in it at all that is a lead-in to the
Dalek's master plan is this is this a slavish recreation to something or should they have cut
it off or are they going to do mission to the unknown someday because if they're never going
to do mission you know if they do Dalek's master plan which is big about 12 parts right yeah um
if they're going to do Dalek's master plan,
my thought is they damn well better put Mission to the Unknown on that disc as well.
Because no one's ever going to buy Mission to the Unknown on its own.
Standing, no doctor, no nothing.
I don't know.
You know, I, this is, I normally,
because a lot of them have a little bit of a tag into the next episode,
and it doesn't bother me.
But for some reason, this one, I'm looking at it going,
I wonder if they should have just left that off.
If if sure, it was part of it, but I don't know.
It's interesting, isn't it, that we're kind of talking about experiencing this episode in a number of different ways.
And so one of them is the story in its own right, treating this as a new work.
And another is to kind of use it to infill the gaps where things have gone missing so that you can experience that you can complete an experience of some Doctor Who that you're not otherwise going to see.
And the Galaxy 4 animation that we liked, you know, the previous attempt to doing the Galaxy 4 animation that we liked as at least a form of reconstruction compared to the others.
It actually, in order to do that preservation, it cut a load of the audio out.
And I certainly felt that was kind of quite justified in tightening up and giving you the better pacing.
So there is and I mean, we also discussed it thinking about it on the Macro Terra.
there's a scene cut with the rumble,
it's not called the rumble tumble machine,
but you know what I'm referring to.
Yeah.
Again, you know,
they've made a choice to take something out
because they thought that trying to add it in
would take something away from the episode.
And obviously,
even just a couple of minutes of Mission to the Unknown,
when you've got all of these sets for a desert planet,
and then you suddenly have to animate something
with a character you haven't had in a jungle,
that's quite a lot of effort.
for two minutes so i yeah i do totally get where you're coming from i wouldn't have objected if it
wasn't on there but to me i wasn't surprised it was on there because the fact that on the previous
recon they'd included it in their whatever it was 12 15 minute version of the exploding planet
even though they cut out a load of the actual story was a bigger surprise so so if they're
going to do that well probably they are going to do this yeah i kind of wonder you know we had four
stories this year animated in in whole or in part that includes web of fear which was only
the one episode but i'm not i'm not poo-pooing that that's a lot of animation for one year
and i don't know something about this made me think 2022 is the year of the daleks master plan
Because that would be a big one. If you include Mission to the Unknown, that's 13 episodes. That's three full animated stories worth in some in up to three full stories of animated work.
So, I mean, that might be where we're going for 2022.
If you're looking for clues, I did, just before we did this, I spotted that Chloe Grech, the director of this one, had done a commentary on episode four.
And at the end of that, she does obviously talk about doing a bit of Mission to the Unknown.
And I can't tell if this is an unguarded comment, but she does talk about how difficult she found it and whether and whether it made her think twice about putting her hand up for doing the Daleks master plan.
Oh, OK.
So it I mean, that suggests two things to me.
Firstly, although there doesn't seem to be anything announced at this stage, we are expecting there to be more animations.
And presumably the fact that she talked about it in that casual way means there have been conversations going on, as you would expect.
You know, any of the missing episodes could come into this.
What you know, what might we do now or what might what might we be asked to do next and how might we approach it if we were these kind of things?
So that that in itself probably shouldn't be surprising.
And the comment also suggests that this isn't two minutes of the next animation.
this is two minutes that have been created specifically for the galaxy 4 release and
if yeah you know if if if there is a daleks master plan they will probably redo those two minutes be
my would be my guess although the fact that they they talk about it as being part of the daleks
master plan absolutely reinforces your suggestion this would be mission mission to the unknown would
be released with the the kind of main serial yeah where else would you do it it just it just doesn't
make any sense but no i think it's quite right you know one one thing that just occurred to me
uh the other day uh as i was eagerly anticipating this showing up it's like you know the timing of
this i'm i'm i'm gonna bet that before the flux is over we're gonna see the return of the draven
or the rills i think this is this is a tie-in that's what i think wow well i do i'm i have i
have to say i think the chumblies are pretty cool i i would like to see more chumblies so obviously
we would be the rills we would see and i think they they actually kind of think they should
you know it's interesting that there's a line in this where the doctor says you know we shall never
meet again and in the context of doctor who series three when the tardis goes from one place to
another and no one has a clue where it's going that makes perfect sense you will never see them
again because the universe and all of time is very vast yes but we know that the doctor that
yeah it used to be a lot bigger and i would actually love to see them redo the real in in
modern doctor who uh you know as not you know not as a villain obviously because they're not
although you know in a different phase in their history maybe they were who knows but
it would be an interesting throwback to the show.
I don't have a lot of thoughts on the story.
We talked about it before we were here.
But I did think that the Draven were an interesting construct.
In other words, we got quite a bit about the Draven,
and yet they're not really used a lot in this.
And it almost feels like they deserve a second look.
at some point as well and i don't know if that's just because i'm re you know they they threw in
the stuff about killing the men and and the clone beings and whatnot just to make them different or
whether they had something to go on but i i kind of you know that that's one that could have gone
for another another story i i i i would kind of say i don't want to see either the draven or the
or the real again because partly for the reasons that i now think this is a much better
a better episode and i say you know i think actually the writing in this is really nice
that's i mean the in the surviving episode uh sorry in the surviving clip in the first episode
was that cracking speech marga has you know if you if you were to conquer space they said you
will need soldiers so here i am confronted with danger and the only one able to think and i i
loved all of that but even more than that i think i loved the kind of parting speech from
the the real where they said though though we are beings a separate planet you from your solar
system and we from another space uh our ways at thoughts time do not seem to be all that different
it has been an honor to know and serve you and they kind of although i'm sympathetic in some
ways the modern way of making the monsters more nuanced it's not quite as black and white they
have more complicated motivations and desires the simplicity of this story is quite appealing the
fact that it is you know the real are good and the dravin are bad is kind of what makes it work
and i don't want to i don't want to kind of taint that by coming back to them so i think we should
i think we should have chumblies without them yeah i i it's now a cliche it was much fresher concept
Exactly. And that would be why you couldn't just do, you couldn't just do it again. But it was just, it was nicely realized. It was very nicely realized, I thought.
Anything else on this specifically? I want to talk a little bit about the slate of animations that we've had briefly otherwise.
Well, I've got one thing, and it's not quite on this specifically, so it might be a sort of lead into what you're about to talk about, which is not only is this the first Hartnell that we've seen for a while and the first Hartnell we've seen in color, but more significantly to me, when they release these new animations, they've been using the same second Doctor title sequence, which is now in color.
and we talked a bit about that when that debuted
this is the first time we've seen the
original title sequence
in color what do you think
I was bored I was
disappointed I was disappointed
in it I have to say
you wanted more flashing
you know variations of color
I like the fact that they took
the Troughton one
and they kind of
applied the logic of the
Pertwee coloring
with the sort of...
But they can't do that for this because, you know,
the Troughton and the Pertwee eras are contiguous.
So you can see how you could extrapolate back
into the Troughton era from that.
This is too far removed.
Is it?
I mean, this is just the title sequence prior to the...
I don't know.
Well, no, because I think you see huge differences
by the time you get into Tom Baker.
It was very much just slap an orange gel on it and go.
And maybe that's a little too little.
I don't know.
I've got to say, I quite liked it because it didn't do too much.
I know from what Gary Russell has said about it,
that they did have more colours in it and they took them out.
And I feel that's good because it's such an iconic sequence.
And that does come, it works incredibly well in black and white.
It's not animated, is it?
That's not an animated recreation.
That's just the original sequence with a color filter slapped over.
It's animated like the other ones are.
I never, never got that.
I thought that was the real thing just with a color filter slapped over it.
Well, it's obviously animated rather well,
but it's easy to animate something that isn't, you know,
like it's not like animating a human or.
Yeah.
Oh, I will.
I will add this.
When I put this on to watch, my son was in the room,
my 16 year old son was in the room and this is obviously just anecdotal,
but started up,
the credits came up,
which were in black and white.
And then once you go into the show,
it's obvious it's animated.
And he's like,
what is this?
And I go,
Oh,
it's a,
one of the missing episodes that they've,
that they've animated.
So they're,
they're filling in the gap.
And he just looked at it.
He goes,
how old is it?
I said,
well,
it's,
it's from like the third season of Dr.
Who.
So it's from the 60s.
They go, no, how old is the animation?
And we go, no, it's brand new.
Why?
Why is it in black and white?
Just utterly, utterly confounded by the notion that they would waste their time animating it in black and white.
I got to see that.
I don't think the black and white adds anything.
I know you like the black and white ones, but I just don't see the value in it either.
I'm not, I'm not as, I think the problem is the colour detracts, the black and white is better.
But on the other hand, I do think the colour, as I've said, adds something else.
So I'm not as kind of, quite as kind of hardcore about saying, I think they're just wasting their time doing this in colour.
And obviously they're not spending time animating in black and white.
They are animating it in colour and then they are creating a black and white version from that.
And not that it doesn't require some effort on their part.
And obviously it's different aspect ratio and there's all the work associated with that.
But it's nothing like animating it completely separately in black and white.
Yeah. And I kind of appreciate the fact that we have, you know, I think I've said this before, that we have the different versions of it.
So we can choose what we watch and we can choose how we combine the original episode with animation, whether that's black and white or color.
We've talked about this every time we do the animation and we never have the definitive answer to our fingertips.
So I took the opportunity to go through the list of first, second, and third Doctor stories and write down which ones are still missing.
When I say missing, missing and not animated.
And which ones have been animated, including things like Web of Fear, where they only had to do one episode.
That falls into the animated.
Anyway, so where we stand at the moment is they have animated 12 stories and there are 14 missing ones.
So we're almost halfway there.
And that's if we count Mission to the Unknown as a separate story. Otherwise, we're at 12 and 13. So that's good.
So that kind of suggests that the work needing to be done is the same as the work that has been done.
But in fact, a lot of the stories that have already been animated are stories where they've animated just one or two episodes.
Whereas the new approach, setting aside the web of fear.
I hope they don't go back and reanimate.
I hope they do go back and reanimate.
No, not before they do the others.
in its current form what i'm saying is the work that they have to do now because they have set a
pattern of releases where they basically animate the entire serial and indeed the serials that
are remaining are the ones with more episodes missing means that there's a lot more work still
to be done than has been done already yeah well but they're also getting better at doing the work
and they're probably doing the work more efficiently and quicker and certainly cheaper.
So, you know, yes, there's more work, but they're getting momentum
and they're getting skill sets built and, you know, practical knowledge.
So anyway, so just to tick them off, season three is a mess.
It's still missing Mission to the Unknown, the Myth Makers, the Daleks Master Plan,
the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve, the Celestial Toymaker, and the Savages. And of those,
obviously it's the Daleks Master Plan and maybe the Celestial Toymaker that are the likely
candidates. And everyone seems to be broken up about the Celestial Toymaker, but to me that
one sounds like rubbish. But hey, I'll take it. And they've only animated Galaxy 4 in Season 3.
season four which spans hartnell trouton we're only missing the smugglers the highlanders and a
proper underwater menace well i think those i think those are very difficult ones to animate so
i'm not expecting them anytime soon and then you know season five we're getting close abominable
snowmen and wheel in space and i mean there's been talk about both of those for ages yeah i my my
money is undoubtedly on season five i think season season six is possible but season five is really
much more likely and the space pirates yeah is season six is the only thing missing from that
so i don't have anything else i don't have anything else all right in that case we we have there is no
announcement of the next animation we have no idea what it's going to be but you know whenever
it comes along, we will be there.
Oh, yes.
Simon, thank you for joining me.
It's a pleasure, as always.
And listeners, I hope you'll join us all again next time on Fusion Patrol.
We hope you've enjoyed listening to Fusion Patrol, a listener-supported podcast.
There are over 500 previous episodes available at FusionPatrol.com.
Come join the conversation on Twitter, our website, or Facebook.
Find out how you can become a supporter at patreon.com slash fusion patrol.
Supporters get early access to all regular episodes, bonus episodes, and more.
There's even an optional podcast series where we're looking at the classic TV series Babylon 5.
Our music is Fight the Future by Amber Wolf.
This has been a Lone Locust production.
Next time we'll be looking at two episodes of Ultra Q.
with Grow Up Little Turtle and SOS, Mount Fuji.
Come join the conversation at Fusion Patrol.
control.