In the charming ‘making of’ feature accompanying this new fully-animated ‘missing’ Doctor Who serial (the first full reconstruction from the early William Hartnell years), superfan comedian/actor Toby Hadoke evinces the opinion that Galaxy 4 is a bit inconsequential and isn’t regarded with much affection by Doctor Who fans. He ain’t wrong. Sadly, this rather tepid new animated release really isn’t likely to change most people’s opinions of an extremely simplistic, stagey runaround that succeeds only in confirming many people’s preconceptions that some early Doctor Who is not only too clunky for its own good but also a tough watch for modern audiences – and possibly even those who remembered the serial from its original transmission who will find that memory does, indeed, cheat occasionally.
Episode 3 of Galaxy 4 was returned to the BBC in 2011 (a nicely scrubbed-up version is available on this new set) and, along with a couple of random clips already retained by the Corporation, already suggested that this wasn’t likely to be one of the show’s classics. To their credit, animation producers Big Finish have tried to give the serial a bit of life by broadening its visual scope and making it appear slightly less studio-bound; the planet-scape looks more cinematic, spaceship interiors are infinitely bigger than the pokey sets seen on TV and, presented here in colour (a monochrome version is also included), the story looks bright and flashy and dynamic. Unfortunately the script – the only contribution to the series by William Emms – has little to recommend it apart from its ‘twist’ that the beautiful Drahvins are the baddies and the ugly, repulsive Rills are the good guys. The animation is bigger and bolder than the TV version but it clearly doesn’t properly represent the TV serial and is really more of a ‘reimagining’ than we’ve ever seen before from the Doctor Who animation series. It’s also a significant step down in quality from the vibrant and atmospheric animation of Evil of the Daleks but then it’s hard to imagine exactly what could have turned this story into anything other than a slightly tedious time-filler.
The Doctor and his friends Steven (Peter Purves) and Vicki (Maureen O’Brien) land on what appears to be a desolate planet. But when they are approached by curious little robots that Vicki quickly dubs ‘Chumblies’ because of their peculiar mode of locomotion, they discover a struggle between two stranded species, the warlike cloned Drahvins (basically Sontarans in skirts) and the walrus-like Rills. They have both crashed on the planet after an encounter in space (animated here quite unexcitingly). It’s refreshing to see Doctor Who presenting strong female characters this early in its life and the ‘twist’ is mildly and briefly diverting but otherwise, Galaxy 4 is four interminably dull episodes involving much to-ing and fro-ing between spaceships, simplistic and unsophisticated dialogue and the Chumblies, clearly designed to be rivals to the Daleks but doomed to failure because they are rubbish. The discovery that the planet is due to explode for some unexplained reason (but sadly not soon enough) should give the narrative a bit of an imperative but it’s all so hokily written and blandly strung out it’s really hard to give much more than the most perfunctory of damns.
Half-hearted animation, ropey script, lifeless performances (apart from Stephanie Bidmead as Drahvin leader Maaga who manages to imbue her character with a bit of pseudo-Shakespearean gravitas) make Galaxy 4 a watch-once experience, a DVD/BluRay/Steelbook likely to be left on the shelf to gather dusk. Fortunately, the set also includes some decent special features with Hadoke’s ‘making of’ (which also includes a rare appearance from Maureen O’Brien) joined by a feature exploring how the episode was recovered and returned, commentaries and photo recons. More Galaxy Bore than Galaxy 4.
