Written by Dennis Spooner | Directed by Henric Hirsch | Produced by Verity Lambert | Original air date 08/29/64
One of the three formats one can watch classic Doctor Who in is in it's animated form, our first example of which occurs here. The animation quality varies throughout the run; sometimes, it's excellent, like in the two missing episodes of Patrick Troughton's "The Invasion." Other times, it's abysmal, like in... well, Patrick Troughton's "Power of the Daleks" (which is sad, for such a great story). However, it's likely the bad ones are due to the restoration/animation team not being given much of a budget - or enough time - to do the missing episodes justice. It's a tall task, too, considering the static nature of 1960s Doctor Who - there's not a ton of camera movement or, for that matter, dynamic shots. The animators do their best to liven the episodes up, a bit, with shots that you'd never see in existing episodes of 1960s Who - quick close ups of people's mouths or eyes as they deliver their lines, or extremely quick cuts between characters as they hold a conversation, sometimes at different angles. These types of things do help, honestly, but the Reign of Terror, for example, suffers from a crucial flaw - almost the entirety of every episode is close-quarters indoor shots of people talking to each other. The animators aren't given much room to make the episodes more interesting visually. The other problem is, given the constraints on the animators I mentioned before, people don't look very good unless completely still (which is a bit of a problem, really, in animation). Inanimate objects look quite good, but considering how much of this show (and this episode in particular) consists of two characters jawing at each other, it really hampers the enjoyment of the animation. Again, the characters are very recognizable while still, but they don't animate very well, and most lines are delivered by just moving the mouth, with just a little head movement (usually in close up, to try to hide the awkwardness of just how little these animated characters move).
Still - this is more watchable than recons, it must be said. I'll talk more about Power of the Daleks when we get there, but I was excited for it, even though I knew the animation was going to be sub-par. As much whinging as I did above regarding the quality of the animation, I still wish they'd animate the rest of missing Doctor Who (well, we could do without Celestial Toymaker. Best to leave that one missing as much as possible). And as far as animation goes, the two missing Reign of Terror episodes largely land in the "good" pile.
This is a bit of a strange episode. The Doctor is prevented from seeing any of his friends until the very end (in a scene I'd love to see Hartnell and Hill play, as their joy in seeing each other again seems largely visual, though the Doctor does sound extremely happy to see "his dear Barbara" again). Before that, though, he very confidently speaks with Robespierre - he seems to have no fear that he'll be found out as a fraud. And when he stays the night at the jail, he tries to escape in the early morning, but is caught by Lemaitre, who asks him if he slept well. The Doctor, clearly angry at being caught before his escape, bellows back "I did not! The bed was hard, and the draught blew through the room like the north wind!" which is just as petty as the Doctor gets, and as usual, Hartnell delivers it wonderfully (again, I'd love to see the utter indignation on Hartnell's actual face rather than the tame animation). Oh, and it turns out the only significance of the ring from the last episode's cliffhanger is that the clothier used it as evidence that he thought the Doctor was suspicious for trading it for the sash of a representative (part of me was hoping he hypnotized his dog or something with it, like the Doctor will do to Dodo in season three).
"Doctor Who" puns so far: 2 | Tomorrow: "A Bargain of Necessity"
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