Doctor Who, season 3 continues …

The Savages is a 4-part early Doctor Who adventure that no longer exists in the BBC archives.

In order to watch the serial, I’ve discovered the “Loose Cannon” reconstructed version.  This version employs the audio of the story matched against telesnap (still images), descriptive text captions, existing footage where available, and sometimes a little added pieces of CGI/animation.

The telesnaps are combined with little pieces of animation (smoke, flame candles, bubbling liquids, etc), together with some motion stills – occasional snippets of the characters moving as in the original version, often during crucial scenes (such as Steven’s departure).

For me, the Loose Cannon method of story-telling is more immersive than the modern CGI stuff I’ve been watching recently.

The CGI is commendable, but Loose Cannon gives you a real feel of the episode as it was originally broadcast.  People look like the characters they’re supposed to be, the scenery and equipment fits right in, and the snippets of motion are as close to live action as we’re ever going to get.  I enjoyed the story much better, despite it being telesnaps, because it felt more like a real episode.

The story itself nips along at quite a good pace, even though we pretty much know the “secret” of the Elders long before we learn it.  From then on, the story has some clever twists and turns to keep everything lively.

The ending sees the departure of Steven and, to be honest, they could have done more with this – perhaps by giving Steven a larger role in the story.  He does impress the Savages with his bravery, but he doesn’t come across as the person both sides would vote to lead them through the integration of both sides of society.

Still, the Doctor’s encouraging words and Steven’s own doubts are enough to see us through this.  Given that Peter Purves is still with us today, it would be quite fantastic to see an elderly Steven still as some kind of figurehead.

It’s rather a pity that modern Doctor Who has no interest in this kind of thing.

I think I shall hunt out Big Finish to see if there’s a sequel story to see what might have happened after the Doctor left.

The Savages gets a “thumbs up” from me.  The story isn’t ground-breaking but, as an adventure, it’s a lot better than some that we’ve had recently.

Such as shame it’s missing, but well done to Loose Cannon for giving us as close as we could hope to the real thing

Next time … The War Machines