Due 11 March with The Aztecs SE. As the first 'new' classic series episode able to be reviewed since "Day of Armageddon" came out in 2004. Lets hear what people think
I've seen it - mentioned it in the Classic Who watch thread. It's nice to have another episode back in the archives but it's a decent episode rather than outstanding. It's a pretty simple story which is well directed, with nice performances from the regulars & Stephanie Bidmead. I suppose the problem is there is just not much to this story - if we had all 4 episodes then it would probably get a bit ignored like Planet Of The Giants or The Sensorites. Having it back is probably the most interesting thing about it.
Well, if they'd done a full animated recon it'd have been an instabuy, but since they didn't I'll wait till it goes under a tenner
They don't have the budget for it. Each DVD gets around £140,000, and it takes roughly £50,000 to animate an episode. The Aztecs SE would have included enhanced restoration of the main story, plus animating THREE episodes rather than the standard two would've blown the budget out completely. It's highly unlikely the BBC will commit to animating anything beyond The Crusade, The Underwater Menace and The Moonbase, as they are the only stories that have two episodes left to animate...
My copy finally arrived this morning. I’ve been looking forward to this since they announced the recovery over a year ago (it has been a ridiculously long wait). The reconstruction worked well, it was good that the extended clip from Episode 1 was worked in. There were a couple points however the captions on the stills were oddly patronising. “Steven reaches for the rock”- I kind of got that impression from the outstretched hand; “The Doctor and Steven exchange glances”- yes I can see they are looking at each other! It would have been good if they had an option to view the episode in isolation of the reconstruction, but I glad they didn’t integrate the whole thing as an omnibus as I thought they were going to from reading the description. It maybe was not the most scintillating Doctor Who but still cool to see something from a story thought lost for good.
I thought it was a pretty average sci-fi story of the era, the ugly aliens are the good ones and the pretty ones are evil. Still I am glad I bought it.
The CGI made the story look alittle odd and it was kind of nice to have a shortened version of the story. But it kind of misses the point that the Dravhins were meant to be beautiful but evil and the Rills were the opposite, still for the most part towards the end the point does come across more or less.