So I have all the animated releases sitting on my DVD shelf but have only watched a small percentage of them - The Reign of Terror, Galaxy 4, The Tenth Planet, The Invasion and Shada.
I’m 4/6 of the way through The Power of the Daleks and I’m very impressed by the Dalek work.
What are your thoughts and opinions on the animations? Which ones should I be looking forward to (I’m working through the stories in order with my eldest so have been saving all the Troughtons). Which ones work better as black and white or in colour?
I love the animations, particularly the newer ones. The Macra Terror, The Faceless Ones, The Evil of the Daleks and The Abominable Snowmen are all loving recreations of the missing stories and impressively well-made considering the limited resources. The colour version help the stories pop out more. They’ve become the definitive versions of these stories for me.
I don’t remember the last time I had seen evil of the daleks before I watched the animation, but the I didn’t really remember it well when I watched it (a couple of years ago I think?) and it gave me a new appreciation for the story
Some are just badly done but at least they doing them. I do like that they colorize alot of the newer ones and give options for black and white for people that enjoy them that way. Always a joy to see the differences they take compared to recons.
I’ve been comparing the Power animations and recons. I was astounded by how much footage from Power exists. It’s great we can choose which version to watch.
My main gripe with these is the fact that they keep changing the animation styles. Right when I thought they’d found their definitive style with the past few releases, they changed it again for the upcoming Celestial Toymaker animation. And watching the newer animations makes some of the earlier ones (The Reign of Terror in particular) look really rough. I hope they do go back and redo some of those (though they might not, due to costs).
And then there’s the failed experiment that was the 3D-animated Episode 3 of The Web of Fear. I always watch the Loose Cannon recon instead, because that animation is horrendous.
I wish they had a bigger budget. We have been watching Star Wars: The Bad Batch and wow those animations are beautiful. But they must be very expensive!
It’s different teams though, isn’t it. And the Toymaker animation is building on the work of The Web of Fear 3, I think. I’m looking forward to Toymaker simply because it looks so weird which I think will suit the story.
I know some of the animations aren’t to everyone’s taste and the narrative decisions made cause some fans to get a bit cross but, with the fully animated releases also getting full reconstructions, I think we are very lucky that we can choose how we watch these missing episodes.
I don’t really rate either The Myth Makers or The Highlanders but I would be up for re-evaluating them with some proper visuals. Myth Makers, in particular, suffers from a lack of photographic record.
Master Plan is my most wanted as well, though we will most likely never get it due to the humongous proportions of the story. Marco Polo is also high on the list, as are The Wheel in Space and The Savages. I’m not a big fan of the completely missing late Hartnell-era historicals, but The Myth Makers and The Massacre would be interesting to see with a bit more movement to support the soundtrack.
While I am not always a big Fan of them, I am eternally grateful for any (Yes even the Web Animation, despite skipping that one for a long while, it’s not good but oh well). I do love the Approach Planet 14 made with their Animation, it works well if you fill in Gaps. I do prefer overall the newer approach slightly, especially with complete missing Stories it fits very well, a Story like Toymaker is so much better in the Animation. Macra Terror is also a great Example. Although the newer approach can also miss, Fury of the Deep was really poor in my Opinion. I know a lot of wish we would get one style, but I, for one, prefer getting some different Artstyles with the Animations, even through stuff like Evil and Macra should be the Gold Standard for the current Animations.
The Toymaker one seems to be one of the rare Times, where I actually chose to go with the Color Version instead, it works so well!
I want them to finally do the Smugglers, it’s a great Story and it deserves another Chance. Daleks Masterplan and Massacre are high too, but I think I would be very critical with those since those Stories mean so much to me. (DMP is also unlikely for a while)
