Dr Who

Anyone listening or has listened to the Dalek Empire/War stories on audible?

Classic DVD ahoy.

"Fury From The Deep" - a wholly animated version of a 1960s Season 5 "lost classic" starring Patrick Troughton.

An eccentric choice ? Given the far more potentially crowd-pleasing and worthy of animation treatment missing Troughton serials that remain unreleased eg.

"The Evil Of The Daleks" (duh - the clue is in the title - it has Daleks.)

"The Abominable Snowmen" (being held back in case they do actually find episode 3 of the sequel The Web of Fear and can then release an expensive double story boxset?)

"The Wheel In Space" (which doesn't have Cybermen in the title, but you could solve that quite easily by putting a big picture of one on the cover).

"The Highlanders" (err...no, you've gone mad M-L-L, not even the die-hardest of Classic Dr Who fans wants a cartoon version of a Culloden themed "comedy" without any sci-fi aliens)

However, "Fury" as I suppose we are obliged to call it, in a grudging nod to its unique status as the only Troughton story not starting with "The" in the title, has a long (undeserved?) reputation of being a sinister lost masterpiece, in a way that the similarly lost season 5 opener "The Tomb of The Cybermen" did before it unfortunately was rediscovered in its entirety some time in the 1990s, released on VHS, and found to be ...err...not really quite as impressive as all the articles of reminiscences from grizzled old fans in Dr Who Monthly would have had us believe.

"Tomb" however, being a brisk 4 part romp with some Cybermen in it, remains - however imperfectly - a better watch imo than "Fury" 's fairly dull over-extended 6-part story. This largely features a lot of people standing around in refinery control rooms arguing about whether or not their gas pipes are blocked.

It might be an interesting experiment (though not for the poor viewers) to force people to watch this and then the Jon Pertwee 7-part marathon "Inferno" (which similarly features a lot of tedious jawing about drilling and pipes and the like) back-to-back to see if it sends anyone barking mad with tedium. At least "Inferno" has a paralllel-world sub-plot to mix it up.

Occasionally somebody is taken over by some seaweed (difficult to animate) or incapacitated by guys in overalls with blackened mouths breathing gas at them (impossible to animate and convey any real sense of terror, which suggests the original live-action director did a great job to get these sequences cut by Australian censors which sadly no cut-price 2D animation can convey).

Briefly some helicopters fly about over the sea around some sea forts past some animated tentacles, before the Doctor finally faces down a tsunami of foam and seaweed with a recording of his companion Victoria's scream.

I'm guessing this was a tough sell in the original live-action version with the BBC foam machine in a TV studio, and a cartoon version imo has an equally hard time trying to realise this.

The poor animators were on a hiding to nothing being given a serial featuring heavily as it does things not easily portrayed in simple 2D animation (tides/sea scapes/gas/living seaweed/bubbling foam) imho this release shows why the fan lunatics shouldn't be in charge of the DVD asylum.

So I don't like criticising animators who probably had to toil long and thanklessly (and for who knows what kind of wage ?) during Covid lockdown conditions to produce this. All I can say is I don't blame them, they were given an impossible task.

I think it looks as good as it could reasonably expect to do under the budget and time constraints but I really do question the wisdom of them trying to do 2.5 hour feature length animation on these budgets - did they not learn from "The Power Of The Daleks" ?

In a commentary, the Big Finish producer explains to Tony Haddock (sorry Doddle) that slavishly recreating the look of how the live-action might have appeared was not the aim. Fair enough. What nobody seems to have had the courage to consider though is - in that case why not ditch/edit the slow plodding 6 part soundtrack, cut out the inessential tedious "the pipe's blocked/no it isn't/I tell you there's something down there" padding and put together a swifter moving 90 minute edit and save the animators having to guess what's happening in all the silences and points where people seem to be standing around not saying anything ?

Feels longer than its 2.5 hours running time, had to watch it in two sittings, and it still felt too long - and that can't be blamed on the animation, that's just the standard 60s Dr Who failing of too little story/budget eked out to meet a predetermined episode count/production schedule.

The only thing it does reasonably well, and which modern Who is praised for, is overtly signal and give time to deal with the departure of companion Victoria.
She decides after a season of encounters with Daleks (killed her dad), Cybermen, robot Yeti(twice), Ice Warriors, a meglomaniacal doppleganger of the Doctor setting off earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and finally said killer seaweed; that on the whole she's a bit fed up of being in mortal peril and scared out of her wits day after day and decides to stay on 1960s Earth with some vaguely normal people in the hope of getting a bit of peace and quiet and to lead some kind of life without having to look over her shoulder for murderous aliens; even though the heavy hints that fellow companion Jamie obviously has the hots for her but can't bring himself to also stay behind and leave the Doctor on his own, leading to a poignant farewell.

However, watched without the whole context of Season 5, as this DVD may well be, Jamie's final line "I couldn't care less" (in response to the Doctor's question about their next destination) may sadly be more apposite for the casual viewer.

Can't see this DVD flying off the shelves of Sainsburys and Tesco even in the future-coming pre-Christmas lockdown; which bodes ill in our soon-to-be coming permanent dystopian virus-ravaged and economically ruined society for the chances of getting large piles of money to produce any similar animated treatments for the few remaining "lost classics" ?

Bless them though, they do milk it - options to watch in Black & White, or Colour, or the "telesnaps" photo reconstructions, audio commentaries, and the obligatory "Revisited" documentary where they whisk the few remaining actors and production people alive out to whatever cold seaside town it was filmed in and even put them on a helicopter out to the abandoned sea forts, and etc etc.

All in all ?
Inessential.
So I suspect a "Special Edition" beckons.

(08-10-2020 18:29 )M-L-L Wrote:  Wow something else needs to be posted so this rant isn't the last post on the thread.

But more than one is required so we can turn the page.

Peter Davison on This is Your Life any good?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LDYhZw91fo

I've not got any of these recent "reanimated" DVD jobs. Or the Blu-rays.

The big problem with Fury is that the fearsome Weed Creature actually looks like a big shaggy spider in the existing clips, which may just be counter-productive.

The animations come out based on costing of how many sets, characters, episodes etc have to be represented in drawings. Unfortunately they are costly to make so budgetary concerns can be seen to be holding back something like Evil. The animators have said as much. It's also why there is no properly consistent production company used or house style even. They just hawk to see who can do each one. (When they started leaving bits out to make the costings it was time for me to stop buying them tbh. But the likes of Fury or Evil I may make an exception!)

Also there's sense in not having all the good ones come out at the start of any range.

^ Well quite. And then you get better animations done for the Collected Blu-Ray "Season" boxset.

Seriously, as ever you make valid points, I personally was just a bit surprised this story was chosen given that they seemed to have already done a chunk of test animation for The Wheel In Space that was featured on one of the previous releases.

Any comments on the Daleks' new look for the upcoming Christmas special? Think it's about the third or fourth time they have featured on the front cover of Radio Times and I reckon some of original artworks must be valuable (and expensive) to find.

They've given them tits I hear.

£3.30 for a Radio Times? Sod that.

Revolution Of The Daleks Trailer

https://youtu.be/OEVWuYVUsBs

On BBC1 New Years Day

Hope it is as good as the trailer made it out to be though I am certain many of us probably may not be as thrilled as others