Friday 15 September 2023

The Art of... Galaxy 4


The strikingly colourful cover for the novelisation of this story - using the alternate "Four" instead of the numeral - was the work of artist Andrew Skilleter. It was written by the story's original author, and published in 1985 in hardback, with the paperback following in 1986.
Skilleter elects to depict just a pair of Drahvin soldiers in a rather cartoonish fashion, with presumably the doomed planet behind them. No Rills or - considering how prominent they were in the publicity - Chumblies. And they would have been so easy to paint as well. 


The script book was published by Titan Books in July 1994. John McElroy edited, as he did with all of this short-lived range. (This was the penultimate release). The cover, by Alister Pearson, features nice portraits of the Doctor and of Maaga, and a Rill also gets a look-in - and still no Chumbley.


As a missing story, Galaxy 4 never got a VHS release, though it did feature on The Aztecs Special Edition DVD in 2013. It was on the second disc - the rediscovered Airlock episode coupled with the six minutes from the first instalment, with the remainder covered by a telesnap / CGI reconstruction courtesy of Loose Canon. This was a slightly condensed version of the story.
In November 2021, the story was released on DVD and Blu-ray in fully animated form - the only fully missing Hartnell story to be animated to date. The Doctor is flanked by a Chumbley (at last) and Maaga, with the planet once again forming the backdrop. 
Despite the reasonable portrait of the Doctor on the cover, the likeness on the actual episodes themselves is appallingly bad. The Drahvins are given blue uniforms for no apparent reason. We know they were green, so why change them?
The steelbook release had a wrap-around cover which featured the Doctor from the back (mercifully), spying on the Drahvins and a Chumbley surrounding the TARDIS. The colour scheme for the planet seems to have been inspired by the original Target book cover. The whole thing is so colourful that you might want to stick to the B&W version of the episodes when you watch this.


The story formed part of the missing adventures audio range, with the soundtrack released on CD in 2000. With the usual photomontage cover, it was narrated by Peter Purves. The cover designer has elected to depict the Drahvins as identical clones, apparently copies of Maaga as she is there to the left of the group with the same features. The face of each has been edited to make them look more "evil". The uniforms are the right colour but, when it comes to these audio release covers, this might just be coincidence.


The Purves narrated soundtrack was reissued on vinyl from Demon Records in April 2019, for Record Store Day. A striking purple cover, it features two of the gun-toting Drahvins and a Chumbley.


Finally, the movie database site (moviedb) has used an original photomontage to illustrate this story, in the absence of a commercial DVD release. The monochrome images have been coloured and - hooray - Maaga's uniform is green. Pity the Drahvin soldiers were given blue ones...

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