Review: Doctor Who, The Invasion
Sep. 13th, 2007 12:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeriendhalSummary: The Doctor, Zoe and Jamie find themselves on present day Earth (1968) as a mysterious electronics industrialist conspires with a familiar enemy to invade the Earth.
The Invasion was one of those Doctor Who serials that suffered from the short sighted policies of the BBC during the early 70's, when they threw out their tapes of classic DW episodes in a cost-saving measure, since at the time re-runs weren't something they bothered with, and the market for VCR tapes had not yet been created. Six of the eight episodes were later recovered from overseas stations that had purchased the serial for broadcast. Meanwhile, Cosgrove Studios, coming off their successful online flash animation series "Scream of the Shalka" got the job of animating the missing first and fourth episode, recreating the audio from cassette tapes made by fans when they viewed the series for its first and only broadcast in Britain and Australia and the action from still photos and the original shooting script.
The need to re-create this entire series was obvious to everyone. It's the second serial to feature the Brig (previously as a Colonel), it's the first to introduce UNIT, it's the last serial in the 60's to feature the Cybermen, who wouldn't return until "Planet of Gold", and it features the iconic imagery of the Cybermen marching in front of St. Paul's Cathedral. It also manages to be a cracking good story, despite being drawn out over eight episodes, which is usually a tension killer for a Doctor Who serial.
The animated episodes work reasonably well. The audio team did a yeoman job at cleaning up the data they recieved from the cassette tapes, mixing several together to get the best sound they possibly could under the circumstances. The actual animation may or may not work for the indvidual viewer. What you get is basically Flash animation with a standard 24 frame/sec rate (as opposed to the more limited 8 frame/sec rate of the online "Shalka"). So when people move, they seem to bob across the screen rather than walk, much like animated Muppets, except for rare instances of roto-scoping walking or running. That said, things are helped immensely by the stylistic black and white drawings of the animators, which make up for the limited budget they were operating under.
I won't discuss the story here, except to say that it's an above average tale, and well filmed. Though poor Packer comes across as the most hapless villian's flunky that I've ever seen in a non-comedy show.
Extras include the usual text information scrawl, a commentary track by the Cosgrove Hall animators, photo gallery and animated character gallery, and several documentaries, including one concerning the production of the original serial, one about producing the animated recreations, and a final one about the happy obsession several young boys (now mildly embarrassed middle-agers) had in audio taping Doctor Who, and how their tapes were used to recreate the dialog and background music.
The Invasion was one of those Doctor Who serials that suffered from the short sighted policies of the BBC during the early 70's, when they threw out their tapes of classic DW episodes in a cost-saving measure, since at the time re-runs weren't something they bothered with, and the market for VCR tapes had not yet been created. Six of the eight episodes were later recovered from overseas stations that had purchased the serial for broadcast. Meanwhile, Cosgrove Studios, coming off their successful online flash animation series "Scream of the Shalka" got the job of animating the missing first and fourth episode, recreating the audio from cassette tapes made by fans when they viewed the series for its first and only broadcast in Britain and Australia and the action from still photos and the original shooting script.
The need to re-create this entire series was obvious to everyone. It's the second serial to feature the Brig (previously as a Colonel), it's the first to introduce UNIT, it's the last serial in the 60's to feature the Cybermen, who wouldn't return until "Planet of Gold", and it features the iconic imagery of the Cybermen marching in front of St. Paul's Cathedral. It also manages to be a cracking good story, despite being drawn out over eight episodes, which is usually a tension killer for a Doctor Who serial.
The animated episodes work reasonably well. The audio team did a yeoman job at cleaning up the data they recieved from the cassette tapes, mixing several together to get the best sound they possibly could under the circumstances. The actual animation may or may not work for the indvidual viewer. What you get is basically Flash animation with a standard 24 frame/sec rate (as opposed to the more limited 8 frame/sec rate of the online "Shalka"). So when people move, they seem to bob across the screen rather than walk, much like animated Muppets, except for rare instances of roto-scoping walking or running. That said, things are helped immensely by the stylistic black and white drawings of the animators, which make up for the limited budget they were operating under.
I won't discuss the story here, except to say that it's an above average tale, and well filmed. Though poor Packer comes across as the most hapless villian's flunky that I've ever seen in a non-comedy show.
Extras include the usual text information scrawl, a commentary track by the Cosgrove Hall animators, photo gallery and animated character gallery, and several documentaries, including one concerning the production of the original serial, one about producing the animated recreations, and a final one about the happy obsession several young boys (now mildly embarrassed middle-agers) had in audio taping Doctor Who, and how their tapes were used to recreate the dialog and background music.
