The Savages - an animated review

With the house move last week I have only just gotten round this weekend to watching the latest of the animated missing stories - The Savages.

With no memorable monsters or surviving material beyond some very brief off-air 8mm clips, it is one of the series' most obscure stories, so it was a surprise that they opted to animate this in front of some other better known adventures.

However, the plan is to animate all the missing episodes - so that they can be included in future Season Collection boxsets - so they would have gotten round to it eventually, and Season 3 is the one with the least material available.

I've already reviewed the story both as a whole and as individual episodes, so I'll concentrate purely on the animation and extras here.

One of the things we do have from the original broadcast is the telesnaps, and these show some very atmospheric filming from director Christopher Barry for the cave-bound scenes. Unfortunately, despite achieving great things with darkness and light on The Macra Terror, this story comes across as the equivalent of one of those over-lit studio productions of the 1980's. The cave sequences come over as very flat and totally lacking in atmosphere.

Some likenesses such as Jano are good, though Steven often looks nothing like Peter Purves. They continue to have problems getting Hartnell right, though the model being used here is an improvement on Galaxy 4.

Neither Tor nor Chal resemble the original actors who played the roles. I'd say landscapes are a little too basic, though indoor settings are great, and they can obviously show more aspects of the Elder city.

Onto the extras, and these are of very high quality for such an obscure little story. In fact, I'd say these were the sort of things you might expect from the Blu-ray boxsets. 

There are three items of particular note - a documentary about The Savages itself, which runs to 90 minutes; a  biography of producer Innes Lloyd; and an interesting BBC training film which, though with only a tentative link with the story itself through their director, illustrates how a half hour TV drama was produced back in the day.

Taking this last item first, we get to see the production of an episode of police drama Z-Cars. The director is Christopher Barry and his PA is future Doctor Who director David Maloney. The piece is presented by Shaun Sutton, who was Innes Lloyd's superior and one of the key people responsible for casting figures such as Tom Baker and Frazer Hines in the series.

We get to see the whole process from start to finish, and well worth watching for anyone interested in the behind the scenes aspects of any BBC TV series of the '60's / '70's.

The Innes Lloyd doc I found of particular interest as it looks at the entire canon of his work, including his early outside broadcast work covering big state occasions such as the funeral of Winston Churchill, through Doctor Who, to his highly acclaimed drama series of the 1980's such as his collaborations with Alan Bennett and Michael Palin. Of the latter, who would have thought that they would ever hear certain intimate body parts being mentioned on a Doctor Who DVD extra...? 

Lloyd himself only features in one small clip from a Barry Norman Film 91 episode, as he rarely gave interviews on camera, but his personal archive of notes plus fanzine interviews are used throughout, so we get to hear his voice through them. It's all fascinating stuff and well worth watching. This also runs to a good hour and a half.

As for the actual story documentary? If you are wondering how they could fill 90 minutes it's because Toby Hadoke takes us on a few detours along the way, looking at writer Ian Stuart Black's other works as well as the general state of the series and its socio-political context in 1966. The most interesting stuff for me involved Patrick Godfrey, who played Tor, who is seen at home with his wife (who just happened to play the elderly Ruby in 73 Yards) and Peter Purves' recollections of the time. Kay Patrick (Flower) is interviewed, as is Robert Sidaway (Avon), not long before he passed away, and there's archive material from Christopher Barry.

The general consensus from those interviewed is that The Savages is a neglected gem, and one in need of series re-evaluation. A shame we have to wait until 2033 for the next story poll to find out...

Considering that there is no written archive material for the story - junked like the episodes themselves - it's a credit to Hadoke and his researchers that they found enough to fill this piece without it going too off topic.

Overall, I'd say that this is one of the better efforts from the animation and VAM teams.