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| Jamie comes face to face with The Macra... |
After a couple serials that benefited from existing episodes, The Macra Terror returns to "fully missing" stories. Save for a few censor clips (including the particularly memorable Episode 2 cliffhanger) and some brief 8 mm clips, no substantial footage survives.
After the success of the animated release of The Power of the Daleks, The Macra Terrorwas selected as a follow-up. It was a good choice. It's an excellent story that, to all appearances, suffered from lackluster production and a particularly poor monster. This new format allows the animators to fix those problems - and they do.
The Macra themselves are the biggest beneficiaries. Censor clips reveal the originals to be ludicrously fake, even by standards of the time, and all but immobile. The animated Macra look good. They are creepy and genuinely alien, blending the script cues of being like both insects and germs. They move, sometimes quite quickly, and to good effect in scenes that see the creatures menacing Polly and Jamie. All told, this may be the one time a Doctor Who story is actively improved by virtue of being missing!
My readers may recall that I had issues with the initial animation of Power of the Daleks. This is from the same animation team... but they appear to have worked out the bugs (along with actually being given enough time to do the job properly). While there is still the occasional moment that looks off, such as the Doctor and Polly straining to close a door that security guards are trying to force open, these moments are few in number. Movement is smoother, faces are more expressive, and the result is a product that is not merely "better than a still reconstruction," but one that's actually engrossing in its own right.
My review mentions a couple of minor trims. I regret the elimination of the scene in which the Doctor is cleaned up, only to immediately rumple himself again, as it basically parallels the story as a whole. Still, the omissions are understandable; they were not plot-critical and were difficult to animate. If the price of quality is the loss of a brief aside here and there, it is one I can accept.
It wasn't long ago that the prospect of fully-animated releases of missing stories was dismissed as a commercially unviable pipe dream. To see that dream achieved as well as has been done here, and in service of such a good overall story, is a pleasure.
Previous Releases:
For those who do not enjoy animation, the story's soundtrack was previously given a quality BBC Audio release. Unlike most stories, narrated by companion actors, this story was narrated by Colin Baker (originally recorded for an audio cassette release in the 1990s). There are a few uninentional sniggers within the narration, some double-entendres slipping through. Still, the typical clarity of the BBC audio combines with the ability of the listener to summon up an atmospheric setting and a scary monster to make this a viable way to enjoy this story.
The story was also reconstructed by Loose Cannon. Their original version was their first-ever reconstruction, and the image quality was blurry. It was later redone with better audio and crystal-clear images... Though the very clarity of the images reinforced the weakness of the visual elements. As noted, the animation in this case is almost certainly better than the original television serial.
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