I recently got my copy of The Macra Terror on DVD and sat down to watch it. I decided to write up a little review. Note that I just have the plain old DVD set, not the Blu-Ray one. I don’t think there’s too much of a difference in extras, though.
I’m not going to do a review of the actual story as lots of fans before me have already posted their thoughts. The animation itself was very well done. The likenesses of the Doctor and his companions are quite good and their movements (as well as that of the other people) seem very natural. I know fans have complained that their movements looked quite stiff and unnatural in previous animations, especially in The Power of the Daleks and The Ice Warriors. I’ve noticed that myself and I think they’ve improved it quite a bit in this one.
The intro starts off at the end of The Moonbase, and this is in black and white on both the black-and-white and color versions of the animation (more on that later). Interestingly, they’ve got Polly with her cropped haircut here instead of where it shows up the first time after her “shampoo” early in Episode 1. I assume they did it for simplicity’s sake though, and to save a bit of time. Such was the case for the omission of the scene where the Doctor gets his “makeover” and then gets his old look back, as well as Ben and Jamie getting their “treatments.” Fortunately, we can still see this scene in the original episode reconstructions that are provided as an Extra on the set. I also noticed that Jamie is wearing his light-colored turtleneck shirt which he started with in the beginning of the episode instead of changing into that odd uniform like Ben. Again I assume it was done to save time and for simplicity, and perhaps for emphasis on Ben being brainwashed by the Macra.
As an aside, one thing I hate about the story being missing is that we didn’t get to see Jamie doing his “Highland Fling.” They did recreate this for the animation, though, and part of me wonders how close it is to the original. 😉
As for the extras, there is a good selection of them on this set. First, I like the fact that you can choose to watch in color or the original black and white. The audio commentary is quite good, too, featuring Frazer Hines (Jamie), Terrence Lodge (Medok), Maureen Lane (one of the majorettes in the dance scenes), Anthony Gardner (Alvis) and the director John Davies. Frazer reveals that his and Michael Craze’s uniforms were actually orange and not blueish (as they were here), with tight Bermuda shorts. He also did a quite funny impersonation of Patrick Troughton during a scene or two featuring the Doctor and Polly. Terrence Lodge shared some interesting info on the motivation for his portrayal of Medok, namely that he’d done some pretty high-brow theater earlier on and so made Medok overly dramatic at times.
There are two photo galleries: One with set photos and photos of the guest cast taken during production of the serial; and the other an animation gallery showing character sketches and pictures of various scenes from start to finish. There’s a little film called Animatics, basically showing how the animation came together. The “behind the scenes” film is a little “Follow that Dalek” type silent production made circa 1967 that’s basically a tour of various props from different Doctor Who stories, including the Macra, with some more recent narration. The surviving footage which had been previously included on the “Lost in Time” DVD set is included here as well, featuring cuts that had been made for Australian TV broadcasts from Episodes 2 and 3 (of note, Ben and Polly grappling with the Macra, and Jamie encountering the Macra down in the mines).
Finally, there’s the “mini episode” from The Wheel in Space. It’s basically about 11 minute’s worth of Episode 1 of this story, featuring the Doctor and Jamie. I thought this was very well done, although the animation (especially the look of the characters) is a bit rough and rudimentary compared with that of The Macra Terror. I’m assuming they fine-tuned it a bit for the latter. If something similar were to come of this if they ever decide to animate the missing episodes of The Wheel in Space, I’m all for it.
All in all, it’s a good set. I found it very interesting how they tried to recreate this missing story from just the soundtrack, production photos, short deleted scenes and the telesnaps. I think they did a very good job. Now we’ve got The Faceless Ones and Fury from the Deep to look forward to. Hopefully the treatment they receive will be just as good as this one.
Junkyard Bluebox 