Surprisingly, I agree with this sentiment. Seems like a waste of resources, particularly when the budget for these animations is already tight. Though I suppose they wanted all episodes in widescreen format and what not?
"There's No Such Thing As Macra..." Well, Now There is!
- Thread starter BritishSeaPower
- Start date
It does seem like an odd use of resources. My first reaction was that I'd rather they use the money they'd save by not animating the two existing episodes towards animating other stories. But a couple of thoughts came to mind.
Perhaps after developing the animated "sets" and characters for the story, it doesn't cost that much extra to animate two more episodes? Those fixed costs are already covered and you're just increasing the variable cost portion. At the very least animating four episodes won't be twice as expensive as animating two.
And, perhaps they have some marketing research showing that having them all in widescreen color is important to less than hard core fans? I don't mind the back forth switch and always prefer the original live-action, but maybe they've found that new and/or more casual fans do want the whole thing to be in color and widescreen.
Possibly both points convinced them to animate the entire story. Not sure!
Perhaps after developing the animated "sets" and characters for the story, it doesn't cost that much extra to animate two more episodes? Those fixed costs are already covered and you're just increasing the variable cost portion. At the very least animating four episodes won't be twice as expensive as animating two.
And, perhaps they have some marketing research showing that having them all in widescreen color is important to less than hard core fans? I don't mind the back forth switch and always prefer the original live-action, but maybe they've found that new and/or more casual fans do want the whole thing to be in color and widescreen.
Possibly both points convinced them to animate the entire story. Not sure!
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I was going to suggest that animating the existing episodes was done so that the combined "movie" version of the serial would flow seamlessly, but that falls apart when the "movie" version of Shada switched back and forth from animated and live action, so I don't know.
Well, us mere Americans finally got our copies and I just finished watching it.
It's not quite as bad as I remembered, but it doesn't reach renewed favor like Enemy of the World did. The plot is fairly straight forward with an atypical brainwashed human colony secretly operated by giant space crabs for the sheer sake of feeding off of poisonous gases. The most fun from the story is The Second Doctor and his companions working around the brainwashed colonists (aside from the one guy who is called mad for spewing the truth), although it is interesting to watch Ben become brainwashed and then slowly regain his sanity. As I recalled before, the best part of the serial is the creature design for the Macra themselves and in animated form, they look spectacular.
I was surprised to see that the animators didn't directly reanimate one of the surviving clips that showed Polly scream her poor head off while running her hands up and down Ben. Instead, the moment is rather low key with her simply screaming at the attacking Macra.
On the plus side, the animation itself is largely good and certainly better than some of the previous efforts, particularly in regards to character movements. Some of it is still a bit stilted, but I largely didn't mind.
It's not quite as bad as I remembered, but it doesn't reach renewed favor like Enemy of the World did. The plot is fairly straight forward with an atypical brainwashed human colony secretly operated by giant space crabs for the sheer sake of feeding off of poisonous gases. The most fun from the story is The Second Doctor and his companions working around the brainwashed colonists (aside from the one guy who is called mad for spewing the truth), although it is interesting to watch Ben become brainwashed and then slowly regain his sanity. As I recalled before, the best part of the serial is the creature design for the Macra themselves and in animated form, they look spectacular.
I was surprised to see that the animators didn't directly reanimate one of the surviving clips that showed Polly scream her poor head off while running her hands up and down Ben. Instead, the moment is rather low key with her simply screaming at the attacking Macra.
On the plus side, the animation itself is largely good and certainly better than some of the previous efforts, particularly in regards to character movements. Some of it is still a bit stilted, but I largely didn't mind.
Damn it. We Canadians still got to wait until next week. Which all things considered isn't that bad, but it still grates all the same.
Yeah, I hear ya. I hate these incredibly long waits North America has to endure. And don't get me started on the whole region nonsense...
I got mine yesterday and watched the first episode. I really enjoyed it. The animation is fantastic. Plus it comes with The Wheel of Space mini-episode.
Went onto the BBC America site to see if I could watch Spyfall and found this instead. Patrick Troughton is my favorite Doctor so it's always good to see new material, but this serial didn't do much for me.
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