I elected to watch the colour animation for my first viewing of the animated The Underwater Menace. I like to do this only the once, where original episodes exist. Up until now, subsequent viewings for me are always the B&W animations of the missing episodes, along with the broadcast episodes.
This time out, my favoured way of doing things might is made more difficult due to the considerable liberties taken with the look of the animated instalments.
I can fully understand the huge changes they made for The Macra Terror, as there were no original episodes to compare with. Quite how we are supposed to go from the animated Part One to the original Part Two when sets, costumes and characters are so different, I don't know.
Some of the changes don't benefit the story. The temple of Amdo was a dark, claustrophobic space on screen, but is turned into a big, gaudy space here. All the Atlantean characters are given grey skin (presumably because they've been living a subterranean life), and some are covered in tattoos. King Thous in particular looks nothing like the figure who appears in the two surviving episodes. The costumes worn by Ara, and later Polly, don't match the originals.
Worst of all, the Fishworkers are now based on different tropical fish, so have varying colour schemes. They no longer have the look of the TV versions, and have been given stupid white costumes.
Lack of budget resulted in the original costumes actually looking quite creepy.
If you thought the "Fishworker ballet" couldn't get any more bizarre, then just wait until you see a bunch of tropical fish in dresses incite revolution using only the power of interpretive dance...
Part Four is a real let-down. On screen - despite the low budget and cramped studio facilities - we got some indication of the destruction of Atlantis as we cut back and forth to the slowly flooding temple.
In the animation, the destruction of the city happens entirely off screen - despite the opportunities which animation affords.
There is also a really, really embarrassingly naff scene between Zaroff and his octopus after the lab has flooded...
Despite the long lead time these productions have, you can tell that not a lot of money is being spent on them, and no-one's providing the equivalent of proof-reading. We have two occasions when speech comes out of the wrong character's mouth here. It demonstrates a sad lack of care.
An obvious money-saving trick is reusing existing animation - so Gatwick's air traffic controller Meadows turns up here working for Professor Zaroff as a lab technician...
Whilst I can understand (but don't like) Zaroff's personal guards having a big letter "Z" on their belt buckle, putting two "Z"'s on each of their guns is taking things too far.
A joke about the Doctor's trousers falls flat due to the animators being unable to give him their checked pattern.
And whose idea was it to have the TARDIS outer doors look like Police Box ones when they open into the console room? It's wrong on so many levels.
The animation isn't terrible, though we do still get those awful long arms which have characterised the last few releases. It just looks cheap.
The biggest problem for me is certainly those massive differences between the animation and the original episodes, the results of which will make switching between them just too jarring. I've no intention of turning my back on actual TV episodes - such things are far too precious to ignore - in favour of relatively weak animations.
I think my future viewings will comprise the telesnap reconstructions with episodes Two and Three.
