Doctor Who: Galaxy 4

The most unexpected animation from The Doctor Who team so far? I think so, and even though it perhaps wasn't high on anyone's list, it was a welcome release, and the story holds up well.

The show now seems so focused on big stories, don't expect that here, it's a very smart, little story, one which makes you question perception, is something beautiful good, is something ugly bad? It holds up rather well.

The animation itself, the surface of the planet does look awesome, it gives it a real grand, epic feel, however when you contrast that with the interiors for the ship, they look so sparse, it feels as though they were somewhat unfinished. The flooring somehow looks like a super cheap carpet from Carpetright in the 1990's.

Overall, I really enjoyed it, 7/10.

The first Doctor (William Hartnell) and his companions Vicki and Steven (Maureen O'Brien and Peter Purves) find themselves on a doomed planet in the midst of a fight between the survivors of two crashed spaceship, the attractive Drahvins (led by the cruel and duplicitous Maaga, well played by Stephanie Bidmead) and the repulsive Rills. This is an animated recreation of the four-part season 3 episode (only part 3 along with the audio-track, some video fragments, and numerous still images still exist). The animation (which I watched in the B/W option) is simplistic but serves its purpose although I question the need for 'upgrading' the special effects (for example, in the original, the battle in space is described, not shown and the great pyramidal Rill spaceship was in reality, made up of scaffolding and plastic sheets). Even for a short 4-part arc, storyline is a bit slim but the central premise, with its the underlying 'looks can deceive' moral is interesting (and predates the goofy 'The Golden Man' episode of 'Lost in Space' (1966, S2,E15)). Although not subtle in the part, Hartnell is one of my favorite Doctors - a tetchy, sometimes supercilious know-it-all (which is what I would expect from a 'Timelord', I disliked the 'progressive' 'people's Timelord' persona cultivated by Capaldi and Whittaker half a century later). O'Brien and Purves are good as the Doctor's companions although they are somewhat less developed than the best of the later sidekicks (such as Jamie McCrimmon or Sarah Jane Smith). Amusingly, the Drahvin cast was switched to female to reflect the increasing empowerment of women in the early 1960s but the blonde distaff aliens are portrayed as über-feminists who kill off all of their species' males except those needed for breeding stock. The existing footage provides a nice sense of what the original episode would have looked like (typical '60s Doctor: low-budget but imaginative - the entire episode seems to have been shot on a single stage and at times you catch glimpses of the other sets in the corners of the frame). I had previously watched what remained of 'Galaxy 4' but I enjoyed seeing the story in its entirety, even in this somewhat patched-together format. It is unfortunate that the BBC didn't have the foresight (budget?) to maintain these shows although they likely didn't recognise the enduring popularity of the character or anticipate that the show would still be being produced well into the next millennium.