(In)animation

The other day I read that after The Abominable Snowmen there might not be any more animations of lost stories. Today I've heard that this is due to BBC America no longer part-funding them - the contract to do so having expired. The animations are very expensive and time-consuming, made more difficult by Covid restrictions in the last couple of years - which is why we get so few of them. If no other partner can be found, then it may well mark the end. If this is the case, the best we might hope for is the odd episode being animated to complete a partially lost story (The Underwater Menace, for instance).

There are three factors which come into play when deciding what stories can be animated:

1. The quality of the available off-air recorded soundtrack,

2. The number of speaking characters,

3. The number of costumes, settings etc.

All of these factors have a cost implication. This is why stories like Marco Polo or The Daleks' Master Plan were always unlikely to be animated.