Why The Crusade might not ever get animated.

 

When reading online discussions about the animation and The Collection ranges, one of the most common wishes from individual fans is for the BBC to animate the two missing episodes for The Crusade.  Just by animating those 2 episodes it would complete the 4 part story and the whole Season 2, enabling a complete watchable run from An Unearthly Child through to Mission to the Unknown (if you count the cut-down recons on DVD of Marco Polo and Galaxy 4 plus the brilliant UCLAN recreation of Mission to the Unknown).

But sadly, it is not as simple as that.

Back in the days of the DVD range, the general rule for animation was if a story requires two or less missing episodes then it might be feasible.  This rule led to the animation of missing episodes from The Reign of Terror, The Tenth Planet, The Moonbase, The Ice Warriors and The Invasion plus the animation for The Underwater Menace which was never completed.

When it comes to The Crusade, the biggest problem with the serial is the sheer number of characters. There are 31 credited in the story. To put that into perspective, The Crusade has roughly the same number of characters as Galaxy 4, The Evil of the Daleks and The Abominable Snowmen combined!

For The Crusade each character would need all the elements hand drawn at different angles before rigging and then animating can take place. This process would need to be repeated for every costume change for which there are a high number of in this story. The TARDIS crew have multiple outfits with Ian having five alone and a lot of the guest cast also have multiple costumes. Plus, all the extras also need their own separate character drawings too. I am sure if they were to attempt to animate the story, costume changes would have to be either ignored or minimalised with perhaps a few scenes cut like with the “Rough and Tumble Machine” in The Macra Terror to make this story even remotely doable.  

All 5 costume combinations worn by William Russell in The Crusade.

The only story with a higher number of characters is The Daleks’ Master Plan which has 42 and an episode count of 12. However, if all episodes receive the animation treatment (as is the standard practice now), the high episode count could work to the story advantage with the possible option of splitting the story into two 6-part releases which would help spread out the workload and budget. The 7^th episode “The Feast of Steven” could be left out as it was never broadcast outside the UK and is not necessary for following the plot of the entire story.  This would reduce the character count by 15 bringing it to a much more manageable number of 27. (Although anyone from BBC Studios is reading this, if you can animate The Feast of Steven please do).

I am not saying The Crusade will never get animated. I would have said the same for The Power of the Daleks five years ago!  But I do wonder in 7 or 8 years’ time if there are only a few stories left that require animation and the releases continue to be profitable if we could see BBC Studios bite the bullet in order to have a complete version of Doctor Who from William Hartnell right the way through to the current Doctor. It could make a lot of sense commercially, especially from the streaming angle.

But I do not think The Collection - Season 2 should be held off for this slim possibility. Sadly, time is moving on and the value-added material needs to be considered.  I doubt some of the extras will be doable in 5 years’ time. I believe it would be the right decision not waiting and releasing Season 2 sooner rather than later.  There will still be 37 episodes on the set, and I am confident there will be a reconstruction plus the William Russell VHS links offering alternative methods of viewing the story at the very least.  Then if it does get animated one day, a new disc can be produced which can be slotted into The Collection. Yes, it will cost us more money, but I believe that it is the best option to make sure we get the best possible outcome. I personally would not like the prospect of waiting 6 years just to get the first Hartnell era set.