Because of Doctor Who's Iplayer release I decided to check out the animations for the missing episodes, something that I would otherwise not usually be watching due to the mostly bad quality of them, regardless I thought with the 60th anniversary coming up, it would be fun to rank all the ones that I've seen at least one episode of, as that's usually enough to gauge what the animation quality is like for the rest of the serial.
A bit of context for those unaware as to why these are animated rather than live action, during the 60's, TV episodes were usually only showed once, if you needed the loo or were stuck in traffic, you'll never get to watch Feast of Steven and you'll have to live with that fact for the rest of your life because the BBC back in the days treated their old Doctor Who tapes like junk to be thrown into the furnace, or whatever they use to dispose of them, never to be seen again, well luckily they realised the error of their ways just in time and were able to recover a lot of episodes, including all of Pertwee's ones, mostly from foreign broadcasters but also private collectors and some other unexpected sources on very rare occasions, however, to this day 97 episodes remain lost to the ravages of time, with only the increasingly dwindling hope that some will be recovered; however, for all of them, the audio survives thanks to people placing their tape recorder by the TV, IIRC one individual, Graham Strong even managed to rewire his telly to plug his recorder directly into it, capturing the audio at full quality, thanks to him and everyone else who recorded the audio, we can listen to all the stories, on that note, DW has fared far better than say, The Quatermass Experiment for instance, it is thanks to this audio as well as some telesnaps, still pictures of frames from the show, that the BBC and other's can animate the stories for modern audiences to enjoy, the only issue is that a lot of these animations are not very good.
A lot of these animations are pretty bad to say the least but there's a few that are ok, so let's get the worst ones out the way first before we can get to the better ones.
I want to point out that I have not seen the Abominable Snowman animation as it's not on Iplayer and I don't fancy buying a DVD or Bluray of any of the animations I don't already have on home video so that one is excluded.
Finally I should point out that this does not refer to the quality of the story it's based on, otherwise the list would be greatly rearranged, rather it is solely related to the animation quality and the animation quality alone so without further ado.
12: The Web of Fear
Wait a minute, I was saying good things about this story not long ago, well that's because I was talking about the story itself, the one missing episode's animation however is nothing short of hideous, with that said, the use of CGI could have worked wonders if not for two things, the model quality looks like something that would be better suited to a parody of the show rather than the show itself and the animation which is clearly unpolished, an issue that will come up a lot with these but this one is CGI so there's even less of an excuse as it is far easier to animate a 3D model than it is to animate a 2D image, oh and the yeti look like they're in the wrong production, I guess that makes three things.
11: The Ice Warriors
Once I considered marking this at rock bottom but this one might actually be subject to change, I recall watching it back in 2019 when I had far less tolerance for tween based 2D animation which this one revels in, I didn't get much of a chance to rewatch it recently so I'm mostly going off my past thoughts for this one, I just remember a scene where an Ice Warrior grabs Victoria's arm and it simply looked like a lego hand slotting onto her arm on the animation, on a more recent rewatch, still a while ago, I switched to disc 2 and watched the cut down recon and just the still frame for that particular scene had more impact than the animation ever did.
10: Fury From the Deep
While a lot of these are bad, none stand so counter to the theme of the story quite as much as this one, Fury From the Deep is said to be the scariest Troughton story of them all but how can I possibly be scared when the characters look and move the way they do here, I don't usually find Doctor Who scary anyway but the audio here did indicate something that could give me the creeps if only the original episodes had survived, in any case I've only seen an episode of this just in case they actually manage to turn up the live action version, highly unlikely I know but I'd rather not have this story ruined by sub par animation.
9: Power of the Daleks
Now we get into the realm of animations that are not very good but are mostly similar in quality to each other that ranking them becomes rather difficult, Power of the Daleks' animation however, is once again sub par with the ever present issue of very few in between frames that are actually drawn, I'll admit I haven't gotten much of a chance to see the CGI Dalek's in action but I can kind of imagine that they're basically, well, CGI Daleks, now there is one thing to point out, this has been redone for the special edition release, I saw it on Iplayer so I don't know whether this is the original or updated animation but, whatever version it is, is not very good, I guess they did alright with the end part of episode 1 but other than that, it's kind of a similar situation as the next few, only without colour.
8: The Faceless Ones
The Faceless Ones' animation is your bog standard run of the mill BBC animated story, you've got constant tweening to try and pretend the characters are moving but it just looks unnatural, honestly I'd rather they just skipped animating the surviving episodes and used the time and budget saved from that to polish these animations because they are sorely in need of it.
7: The Evil of the Daleks
Basically like the Faceless Ones but a bit better, it's use of colour is pretty good I guess but as far as animating the characters go, it's the same story, one example to point out is that in the surviving episode 2, the beginning scene where that one guy get's exterminated, naturally we see him fall down to the ground normally in the live action but how does the animation capture that moment? one millisecond he's standing up, next, he's on the ground with no in between frames to bridge the gap.
6: Galaxy 4
I've got some good news, this is it for the bad ones, Galaxy 4's animation treads the line between being watchable and not so much, there's more actual frame by frame work here which is good but still a fair amount of tweening, it's like the last two listings but better I guess; still gonna stick with live action Air Lock though.
5: The Reign of Terror
A lot of people do not like this one, I can understand why, it does keep cutting away from the actually well animated stuff to show some CGI face close up's which, are not too bad as far as the models are concerned, especially compared to Web of Fear 3, but certainly not great, with that said I personally like it enough as far as being a bridging the gap kind of episode, it's not suitable for a full story but it's watchable enough, though it is easily Planet 55's worst one.
4: The Macra Terror
Something strange has happened... back in 2019 I bought the Blu-Ray of this one, hoping against hope that I might be able to tolerate the animation and enjoy the story aaannndd I hated the animation, I couldn't stand how the characters were dependent on tweening to move and I also remembered a badly animated can can scene, even though that was only there for just a second or so but I decided to rewatch this one just the other night and blimey, my thoughts have flipped like a pancake on this one, yes there is tweening but it's actually effectively used here, the character movement is more natural than I remembered and it's certainly not much different to the animation of say, Aggretsuko, yeah the can can scene is still absolute cringe but it's very brief, other than that, this one's actually not half bad and definitely the best in house animation.
3: The Invasion
So, the Invasion's animation uses tweening once again and not in a good way like The Macra Terror, there are not that many hand drawn frames and yet, despite that, I've ranked it very high, the reason for that is the aesthetic of this animation and how it blends flawlessly with the story, it kind of reminds me of the cutscenes of Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker which is perfect for this story, giving it an almost noir comic like aesthetic, also the background art is some of the best in these animations, even rivaling the next two.
2: The Tenth Planet
The first animation that I actually liked, technically I saw the Invasion's animation before but it took a rewatch or two to warm to it, regarding this one however, Planet 55's animations are among the best we've gotten for these missing stories, there's actual real quality to the character sprites, kind of resembling anime levels of quality, there are a lot of frame by frame scenes, though there are still a few tween based, can't have it all perfect I suppose, with that said the animation quality here is mostly great with a good number of really well animated shots, overall while it is frustrating that the first regeneration story's climax is missing, at least those who animated it are actually really good at animation for a change, which brings me to.
1: The Moonbase
This is it, the pinnacle of Doctor Who's missing episode animation, basically Tenth Planet's quality but even better, the amount of frame by frame shots are plentiful and the tweening is minimal, it's not gonna make Redline or One Piece Film Z be shaking in their boots but by the standard of the missing episode animations, it is top tier, I was able to happily watch this one even back in 2019 before I came to appreciate non anime animation, in fact, the animation here is so good that I wouldn't be too fussed if they never found the original version of this story, don't get me wrong it'll be great if they do but there are so many other stories out there that need the original print found far more than this because my first thought when I saw this animation is that it makes it feel like nothing is lost.
