Next year, Doctor Who fans have a new animated story to look forward to. "The Savages", the penultimate story of Season 3, sees the Doctor (William Hartnell), Steven (Peter Purves) and Dodo (Jackie Lane) arrive on a world with two groups of people: the Elders and the Savages. On the surface, the Elders seem to be highly intelligent with an advanced civilization. But are they exactly what they seem?
Fans can look forward to a new 3-disc release, which will include the newly animated story in both color and black-and-white. Very little has been revealed about the special features, but based on previous releases, we can probably expect a photo reconstruction of the story included as well.
Over the past few years, the missing stories in Doctor Who's archive have been slowly but steadily completed via animation. While these animations usually don't exactly have the highest budget, and not all stories are guaranteed to receive this treatment, it's still a great way of bringing these lost classics to life.
For a while, there was a strong focus on animating many of Patrick Troughton's lost stories. Over the past five years, stories such as "The Evil of the Daleks", "The Abominable Snowmen", and "Fury from the Deep" have finally been completed via animation.
First Doctor animations
By comparison, there have been surprisingly few of William Hartnell's stories that have been given the same treatment. This may be due to how many missing stories are historicals and how much more expensive they would be to animate.
For example, when Season 2 was released on Blu-ray in Dec 2022, there were only two missing episodes, both from the historical serial "The Crusade". Both of these episodes were completed via photo reconstruction rather than animation. It's very likely that when seasons 1 and 3 are released on Blu-ray, stories like "Marco Polo" and "The Massacre" will receive the same treatment.
Having said that, we have been seeing more First Doctor animations in recent years. In Nov 2021, "Galaxy 4" was released on Blu-ray and DVD. Just this year, "The Celestial Toymaker" was also released. Considering the titular villain's return in "The Giggle" last year, it wasn't surprising to see his first appearance chosen for animation not long after.
Next animation?
Why has "The Savages" been chosen as the next story to be animated? Perhaps it's because that chronologically, it's the next story that's missing from the archive after "Toymaker". ("The Gunfighters" still exists in full between the two.)
After "The Savages" has been released, could "The Smugglers" be the next animated First Doctor story? It would be satisfying to see, as it would leave a nice little run of stories that fans can watch either in their original versions or in animated form. There would still be a few noticeable gaps, particularly in the first half of the same season, but it's still exciting to see these gaps being completed in some shape or form.
"The Savages" is due to be released in the UK in Spring 2025, on DVD, Blu-ray, and limited edition steelbook. You can pre-order any of these options from Amazon.co.uk.