An Animated History of Doctor Who
“Lux” saw the Doctor make like Bob Hoskins, and fight a cartoon (and as it happens, Mr
Ring-a-Ding was animated by one of the artists who worked on Who Framed Roger Rabbit.Seeing the Doctor fight a 1930s-style animated monstrosity was the kind of thing that madeyou wonder why the Doctor hadn’t done it before (it’s because of money, that’s why, it wouldhave cost way too much money).The end result was a fourth-wall breaking uber-meta adventure that saw the Doctor and
Belinda meet their own fans (which many real-world fans objected to because they wereportrayed as “liking the show” and “having friends”). However, the real highpoint of theepisode was the moment when Belinda and the Doctor themselves become cartoons.But this wasn’t the Doctor’s first time thinking with a “two-dimensional brain”…
Nelvana Doctor Who
The Doctor’s first run-in with animation was in the 1990s, or as fans call it “the dark times”. Doctor Who was, with the Seventh Doctor and Ace stuck in limbo after they’d walked off at the end of the last televised story, “Survival”. So Doctor Who fans did what they always do when there is no Doctor Who, they made more Doctor Who. This was a period that saw an explosion of books, comics, audios, some official, some fan-made, and of course, there were numerous attempts to bring the show back before Russell T Davies succeeded in 2005.
One of the first of these attempts was from a Canadian animation studio called Nelvana. Nelvana had already had success bringing sci-fi properties to animation with the Star Wars spin-offs Droids and Ewoks, so they seemed like a natural fit for the Doctor.
Their Doctor (incarnation unknown) was a white hard (or dark, spiky haired) figure in a big question-marked cyberpunk-looking trench coat, and a face that looked more or less like Tom Baker depending on the art.
Development on the show got quite a long way – there’s a lot of concept art out there, and four scripts were written. Then the story goes that another animation studio told the BBC that they could it cheaper, and the project was taken from Nelvana and never heard from again.
Nelvana, meanwhile, went on the win over a generation of school children with The Magic School Bus, a series about a mysterious, whimsical and outlandishly dressed figure who takes children on educational journeys through time and space in a travel machine that looks like an ordinary everyday object…
The Webcast Era
While a full animated Doctor Who reboot disappeared into Development Hell, the idea of animated Doctor Who just wouldn’t die. In 2001, the BBC brought Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred back, ignoring the still-recent Paul McGann TV movie to give the Seventh Doctor and Ace, and Doctor Who as a whole, a “proper” ending.
The story was essentially a radio play, with the visual elements created by crude Flash animations for the BBC “webcast” (which is what we called it because we hadn’t invented streaming yet). When this proved to be a success, the BBC tried it again, this time with Colin Baker’s Sixth Doctor while adding animations to his Big Finish audio “Real Time” in 2002.
But when the animated webcast really grabbed everyone’s attention was in 2003, Doctor Who’s 40th anniversary, with the BBC’s web team bringing back Paul McGann for his second on-screen outing since the TV Movie.
They were going remake “Shada”. Into every generation must come a remake of “Shada”. This legendary story was written by Douglas Adams for Tom Baker’s Doctor, only to grind to a halt halfway through filming because of a technicians’ strike at the BBC. Eventually the serial was abandoned, its footage eventually recycled to fill in for an absent Tom Baker during “The Five Doctors” anniversary special.
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Since then it has been released on home video with bridging narration, adapted into a novel by James Goss, and parts of the story even found their way into Douglas Adams’ own novel Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (which itself has been adapted for television twice). It has even had the missing parts animated a few times – most of which we’ll get to in a bit.
But one of the earliest attempts to bring “Shada” back to the screen was for the BBC’s Doctor Who website in 2003. You can still watch it here. It went so well, that suddenly the idea of an animated Doctor Who reboot was being talked about again…
Scream of the Shalka
“Scream of the Shalka” was another BBC webcast, but it was a real step up on what had been attempted before. Introducing a new Doctor in the form of Richard E Grant, with a script by Paul Cornell, and a robotic Master duplicate as a companion, this was not just Doctor Who, but new Doctor Who, bringing back the elements fans missed but also showing that it could tell stories for modern audiences.
Produced by Cosgrove Hall, the animation studio behind Danger Mouse, Count Duckula and Wind in the Willows, it was a real step up in animation. It promised an exciting new age for Doctor Who… before the project was cut short because of plans a live action reboot. But the story still got a DVD release, and can still be watched on the BBC website here.
Elements of “Scream of the Shalka” still live on in Who today. Paul Cornell went on to become a fan favourite writer for the new series, with “Father’s Day” and “Human Nature/Family of Blood” still ranking high in “Best of” lists. Derek Jacobi, the voice of the Doctor’s Android Master companion, would go on to (briefly) play the live action Master in “Utopia”, as well as a series of Big Finish audios.
Even Richard E Grant, the uncanonized Ninth Doctor, would return to Who again, as the villain the Great Intelligence in “The Snowmen”, “The Bells of St John” and “The Name of the Doctor”. And in last season’s “Rogue” Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor shows someone holograms of all his previous incarnations, and Richard E Grant’s head can be seen floating around in there…
Animated Reconstructions
“Shada” was the first attempt to recreate a lost episode in animated form, but it would not be the last, especially now that Cosgrove Hall had a taste for it. The first of these reconstructions was the missing first and fourth episodes of the Patrick Troughton story “The Invasion”, in 2006. It was well received, but didn’t sell quite enough to justify further collaborations with Cosgrove Hall.
However soon other studios were getting in on the act. Studios including Planet 55, Shapeshifter Studios, Big Finish and BBC’s own BBC Studios and Qurios Entertainment collaborated to bring back Doctor Who stories from the First and Second Doctor eras, as well as a new “Shada” recreation (this time with Tom Baker back in the lead role). These animations didn’t just fill in the gaps left by missing episodes, but sometimes completely restored entire lost stories such as The Fury of the Deep.
Thanks to these reconstructions we can once more watch Patrick Troughton’s first Doctor Who story, “The Power of the Daleks”, see UNIT and the Brigadier’s first appearance in “The Web of Fear”, and see the first appearance of the Celestial Toymaker (minus the use of the N-word) after watching his return for “The Giggle”. The animated reconstructions can all be found among the classic episodes on BBC iPlayer.
The Infinite Quest
But Cosgrove Hall was not out of the running yet either. When Russell T Davies announced his triumphant return to Doctor Who, we were promised a wave of spin-offs to create a media property that could contend with the likes of the MCU. While we have yet to see that take place, the truth is Davies already achieved that last time around.
We all remember Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures, and the behind-the-scenes fun of Doctor Who Confidential, but a lesser-known footnote of the RTD1 era was Totally Doctor Who, a kids-targeted show that included competitions, behind-the-scenes glimpses, and an animated adventure starring the Tenth Doctor and Martha made by Cosgrove Hall.
This is the serial that Peter Capaldi tentatively agreed to on the condition that it wouldn’t rule him out of appearing on the live action show (but then he wasn’t available to do it so they cast Anthony Head). No longer constrained by the need to retell a traditional story, or even ape the original show, this is a great big explosive space adventure that you would never see on the live action show, full of robotic space pirates and alien treasure. It is still available on iPlayer.
Dreamland
After a strong start, with four whole series of Doctor Who in a row before a break, in 2009 the show took a short breather. Which isn’t to say there wasn’t any Doctor Who – but as Davies handed over to Steven Moffat, and David Tennant handed over to some floppy-haired unknown who was definitely far too young to play the Doctor, the release schedule slowed down a bit.
Instead of a full series, we got The Specials. Five one-offs, scattered across the year as a somewhat mopey Tenth Doctor contended with his own mortality. But as well as that, we also got a crossover with The Sarah Jane Adventures, and finally, a six part adventure (that was about the length of one full episode) that represented Doctor Who’s first, and so far only, venture in 3D animation (bar the brief Daleks miniseries it launched as part of the Time Lord Victorious event).
“Dreamland” saw the Tenth Doctor turn up at Area 51 in 1958, with an animation style not a million miles aware from the Star Wars: The Clone Wars TV series. All in all, it feels like a pretty good throwaway historical episode, and it finally has the Doctor solve the Roswell Incident, which honestly, it’s surprising it took this long.
And that is where Doctor Who’s adventures in animation end, at least until Mr Ring-A-Ding arrived on the scene. Of course, with various doomsayers predicting another hiatus for Doctor Who in the near future, we may find ourselves looking at the possibilities of an animated reboot once again…
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