Posted in: BBC, Doctor Who, TV | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , ,

Doctor Who "The Web of Fear" Lost Episode 3 Set to be Animated

Published
by
|
Last updated
|
Comments

"'Doctor Who' Day" saw all kinds of special activities to celebrate the anniversary of the premiere of Doctor Who on November 23, 1963, including Emily Cook producing a new 57th-anniversary credit sequence. What might be a slightly bigger deal is the announcement that the lost 3rd episode of the Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton) story "The Web of Fear" is getting animated.

Doctor Who:
"Doctor Who: The Web of Fear" animated teaser still, BBC

"The Web of Fear" is one of the most important stories in the Doctor Who canon. It introduced U.N.I.T. and Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney) for the first time. It featured Yetis stalking the London Underground. By today's standards, they're more cuddly than scary and it's a wonder there weren't cuddly Yeti toys sold. "Yetis on the London Underground" is probably one of the goofiest and most fun high concept mash-ups anywhere.

The serial was originally lost when the BBC erased the original tapes for reuse, as they did with many episodes of Doctor Who. Only the first episode survived in the BBC Archives. Then in 2013, episodes 2 to 6 were found in Nigeria and returned to the BBC. Under mysterious circumstances, episode 3 was stolen and remains missing to this day. The BBC remastered the remaining episodes and released them on VOD in late 2013 and DVD in 2014 with only the audio and telesnap stills of episode 3 in the release.

Here's the original trailer for the restored version of the serial from 2013:

 

Now the missing 3rd episode is going to be animated, as the new teaser below says. They animated the original teaser that featured Patrick Troughton as the 2nd Doctor. Presumably, the original film of the teaser is lost too and only the audio remains intact. It looks like a new studio is doing the animation, with full motion capture and actual body language rather than the usual flash-based animation that felt like stiff 2D cartoons reminiscent of an episode of Archer only without any jokes. The newly-animated episode is expecected to be included in future DVD and Blu-Ray releases.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!

Adi TantimedhAbout Adi Tantimedh

Adi Tantimedh is a filmmaker, screenwriter and novelist who just likes to writer. He wrote radio plays for the BBC Radio, “JLA: Age of Wonder” for DC Comics, “Blackshirt” for Moonstone Books, and “La Muse” for Big Head Press. Most recently, he wrote “Her Nightly Embrace”, “Her Beautiful Monster” and “Her Fugitive Heart”, a trilogy of novels featuring a British-Indian private eye published by Atria Books, a division Simon & Schuster.
twitter
Comments will load 20 seconds after page. Click here to load them now.