Galaxy Four
daveyboy7472
Posts: 16,409 Forum Member
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As with the majority of missing stories, it's really hard to make an accurate assessment of a story without seeing it. A lot of stories in Season Three have telesnaps but have yet to watch them.
With Galaxy Four, it's a bit of a mishmash as you have telesnaps, the odd clip, a few surviving scenes intact and off course the recently discovered missing episode, which hasn't been released yet, I think????
So I can only go on the audio recording and all I can say about Galaxy Four is that it comes across as slow moving story but albeit entertaining nonetheless. As with several stories from this Season, there seems to be a moral lesson to be learned.
Maarga is actually quite unique for this period when female villains weren't really the norm. As such I thought she was a good and her frustration at her troops and her circumstances are quite interesting to watch.
Aside from that, I don't really think there is much more about this story to commend it, really. It's not one of my favourites from the Hartnell Era. I am intending to watch the telesnap version and see if I can improve my opinion on it though!
With Galaxy Four, it's a bit of a mishmash as you have telesnaps, the odd clip, a few surviving scenes intact and off course the recently discovered missing episode, which hasn't been released yet, I think????
So I can only go on the audio recording and all I can say about Galaxy Four is that it comes across as slow moving story but albeit entertaining nonetheless. As with several stories from this Season, there seems to be a moral lesson to be learned.
In this case, it's Beauty Is Only Skin Deep. I love the twist that the Drahvins are the baddies whilst the Rills are the goodies. It was very cleverly done.
Maarga is actually quite unique for this period when female villains weren't really the norm. As such I thought she was a good and her frustration at her troops and her circumstances are quite interesting to watch.
Aside from that, I don't really think there is much more about this story to commend it, really. It's not one of my favourites from the Hartnell Era. I am intending to watch the telesnap version and see if I can improve my opinion on it though!
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Someone will, won't they? It's unavoidable. If it doesn't appear on there, it'll turn up elsewhere on the Internet. :rolleyes:
But the characterisations in this story must have been the product of some haste because it had been originally drafted as a Barbara/Ian/Vicki story and most of Barbara and Ian's lines had to be rewritten for Steven. Perhaps Vicki got some of Ian's dialogue along the way. Peter Purves would complain that his character wasn't right in Galaxy 4 because most of his lines had been written with Barbara in mind.
One of these days we are gonna have a mutual consensus on Vicki!
Hi Daveyboy agree with your comments about listening to the audio for this story. It a bit like when I listened to The Macra Terror. It is really frustrating as you don’t really get any sense of the Drahvins facial expressions and body movements and with the Chumblies their charm is in actually seeing them with all the noises they make.
Although I did watch the Loose Cannon recon there isn’t any substitute for watching the proper existing footage ( episode 3 and 5 minutes from episode 1 ) and I did like what I saw. Not a classic but an interesting adventure none the less.
I enjoyed the moral message too but there was a part of me thinking the Rills came across as slightly too goody goody and it would have been nice to see a bit more light and shade in both races. Maarga’s beauty isn’t even skin deep. She is narrow minded and fixed on her goal to escape but I found her interesting character none the less. I would have liked to have seen the scene when she was telling off the clones and they were being all meek.
I did enjoy it as despite being four episodes it seems to jog along most of the time.
Hello CoalHill I don’t mind Vicki that much . She is generally less annoying than Susan and Maureen is a better actress to be honest !
I found a clip of Peter Purves complaining about his characterisation in Galaxy Four which seems a tad ungallant of him because I don’t think he did that badly to be honest.
There was a great scene with the Drahvin clones where he was trying to get them to question how they were treated unequally and for them to get Maarga’s gun and the failed escape where he tried to outwit the Drahvins .
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x18o3tw_doctor-who-3x00-galaxy-four-introduction_shortfilms
Watch from about 1.30 in.
Definitely cute aliens
Maybe they didn't see the marketing opportunities back then but Chumblies are miles cuter than the Adipose who were lets face it just CGI
Have you watched the Rediscovered Episode yet LOT? I think it certainly made the story come alive a lot more watching it. As it's such a slow moving story it suffers a lot listening to it via audio and even the telesnaps don't really help that much.
Hi Daveyboy I've watched Episode 3 if that's what you mean but if there is a link to something else new then please post here thank you 😊 I did like the episode especially with the cliffhanger with Steven and to see the Chumblies and the Rills space ship. Can't fault the production teams ambitions.
Since when has this story been animated?!!! And why over yonder and not over here?!
I would love to see that. As I said previously, I don't think the soundtrack does this story that much justice and the missing episode certainly gave it more oomph. Would be interesting to see how the animation adds to the viewing experience!
I'm sure it will be released Stateside as well at some point.
Aussie/ NZ ("region 4") have had Doctor Who releases around a month or 2 after the UK for a number of years now. Maybe the delay in the States is so a story can run on BBC America first prior to a DVD release(?)
It's quite an enjoyable little story and yeah as others have said -very 60's sci-fi -think Lost in Space or some of the episodes from Star Trek (which is a positive in my books), probably more so than any other Doctor Who story.
I can see why they decided to release this 1st Doctor story on DVD. I didn't really appreciate that there is almost 1.5 episodes to watch of a four parter here, and its great it has been completed (as best as possible) with both animation and the telesnaps/ commentary.
Only one story now to go! (boohoo