15 January, 2023

How can there be Macra Terror...

...when there is no such thing as Macra! Macra do not exist! There are no Macra!

It seems that about all of one minute of this story survives so it is wholly animated.

Because I am hardcore, I watched the black & white version and not the color one, although the latter looks really hoopy. Sadly, Polly is reduced to doing a lot of screaming here and holds fast to the nearest man. Speaking of whom, did I miss something in The Underwater Menace? Her hair is much shorter here. Ben is turned into the Macraian Candidate here via some vile brainwashing. Jamie is a real go-getter as he escapes the mines and holds his own against the titular terrors. The Doctor doesn't bust out the recorder here until the end but he is in fine form in his Loki trickster guise. And he does not don women's clothing.

The animated head of Security, Ola, looked a bit like Brian Blessed but that vague resemblance is even vaguer in real life. Ola had this indignant Arjen Rudd vibe for me so I wonder if there is as deleted scene somewhere like this:

Doctor: You will pay for what you did to your fellow colonists!

Ola: Dip-lo-mat-ic immunity.

The animators did a nice job of giving this story a cinematic look and feel. It's in widescreen, for one thing. Another was that the Macra are larger than they are on TV and, not being cheesy costumes, they are more menacing. It also seemed that the ruins of the city where Polly and Ben encounter the Macra is made out to be much roomier than the set used for TV. Overhead shots, exterior establishing shots, a really nice one of Ben looking out from a window being pummeled with rain drops - just a lot of nice touches such as these.

Perhaps not the best story but I get the feeling that this is where the Second Doctor's character gels.

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