Doctor Who fans and completionists will soon be able to fill in another gap in their library, as the BBC has announced the upcoming release of Doctor Who: Galaxy 4, an animated recreation of the mostly-missing 1965 serial starring William Hartnell as the First Doctor.
Originally airing weekly between September 11th and October 2nd 1965, Galaxy 4 was lost from the BBC archive shortly after its original transmission, with only the third episode and five minutes of footage from episode one surviving. However, audio recordings of all four episodes remained, and have been used as the basis for this new fully-animated presentation of the serial in its entirety.
“After a gap of many years, it is very exciting to bring the era of the First Doctor back into the animation world,” said executive producer Gary Russell of Big Finish Creative. “Galaxy 4 is one of the most traditional adventures of 1960s Doctor Who and it’s been a real honour to work on this alternative version which hopefully reflects those technicolour thrills that sci-fi moves of the ’60s had but which Doctor Who’s monochrome TV limitations couldn’t yet achieve.”
The Doctor (William Hartnell) stars alongside his travel companions Vicki (Maureen O’Brien) and Steven (Peter Purves) which sees the TARDIS landing on a planet on the verge of total annihilation as it drifts too close to the three suns which it orbits. Trapped on the planet with them are the Drahvins, a race of warrior women, and the reptilian Rills. The Drahvins want to steal the Rill spaceship to escape the planet’s death throes, and enlist the Doctor’s help, which he is forced to give when Maaga, the cunning Drahvin leader, keeps first Vicki and then later Steven as her hostage. Even though the Doctor is determined to broker a peace deal between the two sides in this conflict and help everyone escape safely, Maaga doesn’t trust him, or the Rills…
The two-disc release will feature the four animated episodes, both in colour and black and white, along with the following special features:
- Remastered Surviving Original Episode 3
- Remastered Surviving Clip from Episode 1
- Telesnap Reconstructions of Episodes 1,2 and 4.
- Audio Commentaries
- Making Of Documentary
- Finding Galaxy 4 Documentary
- Photo Gallery
- Production Subtitles
Doctor Who: Galaxy 4 will release on Blu-ray and DVD on November 15th.
