Very soon, Doctor Who fans will get to watch a new animated take on the lost First Doctor story “The Savages". Of course, there are many other First Doctor stories out there that we hope will be given the same treatment. Some – such as the incredibly ambitious and epic “Marco Polo” – might be difficult, for cost reasons. But there are others that should be simple to adapt to animation in the meantime.
One such story is “The Smugglers”. In the opening story of Season Four, the First Doctor and his brand-new companions Ben (Michael Craze) and Polly (Anneke Wills) face pirates and smugglers on the coast of seventeenth-century Cornwall. It sounds like a great historical story to watch, and unsurprisingly, Anneke Wills herself has stated that she would love to see the missing serial animated.
Of course, since this is the internet, quotes can often be taken out of context, and rumors have spread that Wills has stated that the story is being animated already. Sadly, this is not the case, as stated in a recent Facebook post.
"Anneke has heard on the grapevine that there are rumours that she said that Doctor Who - The Smugglers was being animated. Anneke says that is *not* what she said; The Smugglers is her favourite story and she hopes it will be animated but has no idea if it will be! So don't believe everything you read on the internet!"Anneke Wills Official Facebook account
A likely animation?
While the news is slightly disappointing, I wouldn’t rule out an animation of “The Smugglers” just yet. In fact, in our personal ranking of the ten remaining stories likeliest to be animated next, we ranked it at number 2 in our list.
Admittedly, our list is purely subjective, but we placed it that highly with good reason. For one thing, it should be a relatively simple historical to animate. At the very least, I doubt it’d be as difficult or expensive as animating “Marco Polo” or “The Crusades”.
But another reason it was placed so highly was the order of recent animations for the First Doctor. Last year saw the release of “The Celestial Toymaker”. The next story missing from Season Three is “The Savages” – this year’s animated story. It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to imagine “The Smugglers” chosen as the next animated release for the very same reason. This wouldn’t be the first time lost stories had been animated in order, either: from 2019 to 2021, sequential stories “The Macra Terror”, “The Faceless Ones” and “The Evil of the Daleks” were animated in the same order.
As I mentioned, nothing has been officially announced, and even if the BBC were working on animating “The Smugglers”, it’ll likely be a long time before anything official was announced. But, just like Anneke Wills, we can certainly hope to see it animated soon.