Nelvana's Doctor Who
- Thread starter DG Valdron
- Start date
On to the adaptational raping
All right, in our timeline, Nelvana tried to do a Doctor Who television cartoon series. They put some effort into it, apart from the concept art, we don't know how much. We don't know how far they got, but ultimately, it didn't happen, we don't know why?
For purposes of this thread, we assume that the BBC gave it the green light for the North American market, and the rest is a forensic exercise in figuring out, based on the information we have and based on logical inference and deduction how it would have turned out.
As is clear, except for the concept art, we don't know much about Nelvana's project. So our guesses there are extrapolations of that art.
We do know some more about Nelvana's history as a producer of animation during this period, and the early history of the company. That might give us some clues.
And we know something of the social and economic milieu that the Doctor Who Cartoon would have found itself in, and how that would have shaped the choices for the cartoon itself.
*******************
First up, it would have been an American market oriented cartoon production. By orders of magnitude the biggest and most active market. Canada would have been part of that market. Places like Australia, would probably have seen a lot of spill over.
The British television industry was shaped very differently, even under Thatcher in the 80's, I think people were still much more protective of children. And the structure of the industry, with the dominant BBC was different. It's likely that a Doctor Who cartoon might not have even aired. Certainly it wouldn't have had the same opportunities.
A lot of the 'Britishness' would have washed away. The Doctor would still have likely been iconically English. The Police Box would have remained as a largely inscrutable archetype. The companion(s) certainly not British. Most of the supporting cast voices and depicted locations would not have been British. Britain's characters and appearances would have simply been part of Doctor Who's 'exotic foreign adventures.'
*************
Demographic - the show would have been fashioned for a targeted demographic. In this case, young science fiction fans, mostly male, between 8 and 14. The same demographic audience that Star Wars, Star Trek, Ghostbusters picked up.
These would be the kids who were already watching or ready to watch Doctor Who on PBS, who were being exposed to it through sci fi conventions and magazines, and fanzines. This was a well defined demographic, at least in terms of what the designers of products aimed at that demographic thought.
So there's no danger of the 'My Little Pony', or 'Carebears' or 'Rainbow Brite' version of Doctor Who.
There's some possibility of a Hanna Barbra style 'Scooby Doo' version of Doctor Who, maybe something analogous to Jabberjaws or Blue Falcon and Dyno-Mutt. But Hanna Barbra's style and format was struggling through the 80's. No longer an industry leader, they were behind the pack, failing to go after the upper end demographics and struggling with younger children, with series like the Smurfs, or retooling to 'A Pup Named Scooby Doo'.
The most likely model was the 'action kids' line up - Droids, Ewoks, Transformers, He-Man, She-Ra, Bravestar, Thundercats, Ninja Turtles, Ghostbusters, etc. etc.
But then this posed interesting problems for conversion. Most of these were more or less ensemble series. They struggled to recreate the family unit that was the context for most of the children watching.
So there'd be the central protagonist of course, siblings and friends, slightly remote supporting characters in vaguely parental roles, and small characters forming multiple functions younger siblings, pets, or small children's identification symbols. And of course, there was often the counter-cast of villains, the Decepticons, Cobra, Skeletor etc.. Underneath the world of fantasy and adventure, was a superstructure that the children were familiar with and understood.
Now within these templates, there was considerable room for variation. The Ghostbusters for instance, had no parental figure, unless it was Egon himself - but functioned as a band of siblings or friends. They had no counter-cast of regular enemies. On the other hand, they did have a little brother figure in the form of Slimer.
On the other hand, in Transformers, the lead character, Optimus Prime, was essentially the father figure as dominant character, with the family arrayed under him.
So the template was fluid. You'd need that fluidity when it came to Doctor Who, because he didn't conform at all to the 'faux family' structure. Wedging the Doctor's concept into that structure would require adaptations of the Doctor and of the formula.
And that's where I'll leave you, tonight.
All right, in our timeline, Nelvana tried to do a Doctor Who television cartoon series. They put some effort into it, apart from the concept art, we don't know how much. We don't know how far they got, but ultimately, it didn't happen, we don't know why?
For purposes of this thread, we assume that the BBC gave it the green light for the North American market, and the rest is a forensic exercise in figuring out, based on the information we have and based on logical inference and deduction how it would have turned out.
As is clear, except for the concept art, we don't know much about Nelvana's project. So our guesses there are extrapolations of that art.
We do know some more about Nelvana's history as a producer of animation during this period, and the early history of the company. That might give us some clues.
And we know something of the social and economic milieu that the Doctor Who Cartoon would have found itself in, and how that would have shaped the choices for the cartoon itself.
*******************
First up, it would have been an American market oriented cartoon production. By orders of magnitude the biggest and most active market. Canada would have been part of that market. Places like Australia, would probably have seen a lot of spill over.
The British television industry was shaped very differently, even under Thatcher in the 80's, I think people were still much more protective of children. And the structure of the industry, with the dominant BBC was different. It's likely that a Doctor Who cartoon might not have even aired. Certainly it wouldn't have had the same opportunities.
A lot of the 'Britishness' would have washed away. The Doctor would still have likely been iconically English. The Police Box would have remained as a largely inscrutable archetype. The companion(s) certainly not British. Most of the supporting cast voices and depicted locations would not have been British. Britain's characters and appearances would have simply been part of Doctor Who's 'exotic foreign adventures.'
*************
Demographic - the show would have been fashioned for a targeted demographic. In this case, young science fiction fans, mostly male, between 8 and 14. The same demographic audience that Star Wars, Star Trek, Ghostbusters picked up.
These would be the kids who were already watching or ready to watch Doctor Who on PBS, who were being exposed to it through sci fi conventions and magazines, and fanzines. This was a well defined demographic, at least in terms of what the designers of products aimed at that demographic thought.
So there's no danger of the 'My Little Pony', or 'Carebears' or 'Rainbow Brite' version of Doctor Who.
There's some possibility of a Hanna Barbra style 'Scooby Doo' version of Doctor Who, maybe something analogous to Jabberjaws or Blue Falcon and Dyno-Mutt. But Hanna Barbra's style and format was struggling through the 80's. No longer an industry leader, they were behind the pack, failing to go after the upper end demographics and struggling with younger children, with series like the Smurfs, or retooling to 'A Pup Named Scooby Doo'.
The most likely model was the 'action kids' line up - Droids, Ewoks, Transformers, He-Man, She-Ra, Bravestar, Thundercats, Ninja Turtles, Ghostbusters, etc. etc.
But then this posed interesting problems for conversion. Most of these were more or less ensemble series. They struggled to recreate the family unit that was the context for most of the children watching.
So there'd be the central protagonist of course, siblings and friends, slightly remote supporting characters in vaguely parental roles, and small characters forming multiple functions younger siblings, pets, or small children's identification symbols. And of course, there was often the counter-cast of villains, the Decepticons, Cobra, Skeletor etc.. Underneath the world of fantasy and adventure, was a superstructure that the children were familiar with and understood.
Now within these templates, there was considerable room for variation. The Ghostbusters for instance, had no parental figure, unless it was Egon himself - but functioned as a band of siblings or friends. They had no counter-cast of regular enemies. On the other hand, they did have a little brother figure in the form of Slimer.
On the other hand, in Transformers, the lead character, Optimus Prime, was essentially the father figure as dominant character, with the family arrayed under him.
So the template was fluid. You'd need that fluidity when it came to Doctor Who, because he didn't conform at all to the 'faux family' structure. Wedging the Doctor's concept into that structure would require adaptations of the Doctor and of the formula.
And that's where I'll leave you, tonight.
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Okay, so I always kinda figured that Pertwee would jump at doing an animated series, perhaps animated via a deal with Hanna-Barbera in the late 1970s or something since they can't get Tom Baker.
Now all I can see is that bit in The New Scooby-Doo Movies title sequence with Abbot and Costello running from that mummy only with Abbot and Costello replaced with Three and Jo!
Adaptation - Describing the Doctor
In adapting Doctor Who as a cartoon, Nelvana's first challenge was to define what visual elements from Doctor Who were going to be used.
Doctor himself was a challenge. By the time of the Nelvana cartoon, there had been seven, perhaps eight (includling Cushing) to draw from, of every appearance and brand of eccentricity. Tom Baker was the most famous, of course, due to his length of tenure and PBS showings, but there had been at least two after him.
It was unlikely that Baker, or any of the others were actually going to be used. An actor's face, even in caricature, is a property, and their likenesses cannot be used, except by permission and usually by paying a license fee. Given that all of these Actors were resident in England, some were dead, some were a bit ... difficult to deal with, that seemed an unnecessary complication. Further, using the image might involve some suggestion that the owner of the face provide the voice, and further contracts and complications. If there was some likelihood that this could be done cheaply and easily, it's possible that Nelvana would have gone down this route. But given that it's transcontinental and trans-national, it wasn't likely to be cheap or easy.
So it seems most likely that Nelvana would have gone for a completely new image of the Doctor, and used a local voice actor that they had some working relationship with. That would maximize their freedom. The only requirements for the new Doctor would be that he was British and eccentric in a charming way. None of Steve Bastien's concept drawings for the Doctor involved any clear likeness to any existing Doctor.
As we can see, there were several design options, ranging from old men to young, from an extremely English 'short coated, capped' cricketeer to the more mysterious but comic trenchcoat figure, to younger or more 'heroic' figures.
We can actually dissect the sources of inspiration - there are the Doctors of course, particularly Tom Baker and Jon Pertwee known best from PBS and by far the most influential doctors in and of themselves. But by this time, through PBS almost all the Doctors would have had some exposure. But they wouldn't have had a lot of exposure to the targeted children's demographic in America. Some of those kids might be watching PBS and be Tom Baker fans, but mostly, the were tied into American media.
But there were also local influences - the reality is that the choices and concepts of a Doctor Who Cartoon were always going to be more strongly influenced by the culture of American cartoons in the 80's than by the series. Like it or not, He Man or Ghostbusters or their ilk were going to be more influential than Tom Baker. Doc Brown from Back to the Future - the model for the elderly eccentric, inventor, time traveller in his own right. The other was Egon from Ghostbusters, the younger more active version of the science hero. As much as the British Doctors, these two examples provided the poles, the two extreme visions that Nelvana had to choose between.
Which way would they go? It's like sifting tea leaves. We have the concept drawings, but we don't know who in Nelvana was involved, or which way they were going. Without anything better, I'd say, probably towards Egon.
There wasn't a lot of 'clever old men' in Saturday morning cartoons at this time. For the target demographic, it was 'Boys adventure' - He Man, GI Joe, Transformers, etc. An Old Man was a father surrogate, which definitely wouldn't be the Doctor. A quirky eccentric 'non-fatherly' old man as a hero would be hard for the 8 to 14 year old boys who were going to be the audience to engage with.
And if you went with the old guy, you'd have to have a young person to do the actual heroic stuff - Doc Brown had his Marty McFly. This had been true for the Doctor himself, Hartell had had Ian, and Troughton had had Jamie. Even as recently as the Tom Baker era, Harry Sullivan had been brought in as a companion before they'd chosen Baker, because they weren't sure what Doctor they were going to get and they thought they might need a young strong man to do the action sequences.
So the older versions were out. The demands of the series mechanics would have pushed them towards the younger, robust version.
As to the visual elements - the trenchcoat and scaff were clearly in. Lots of room for pockets in the trenchoat. We could see the Doctor often pulling strange objects from his pockets, it could become a running gag - any number of improbable or useful items could be hanging about in there.
The fob watch was a very handy symbol of time. Time references could be made constantly through it. It would have probably taken the place of the sonic screwdriver as a versatile tool - communicator, hypnosis tool, badge, flashlight or searchlight, speaker, recorder, handheld computer, tardis control, etc.
The watch chain would have allowed it to be used like Indiana Jones whip, or a cowboy's lasso, the length of fine chain could be as long as it needed to be. It was certainly handier and less bulky than Egon's backpack.
However, that doesn't mean that the elderly Doctor concept was set aside. The Doctor was a time traveller after all, and in the British series, he'd met himself several times, in fact, he'd met several versions of himself more than once. So the older Doctor was tucked away, possibly to make a guest appearance late in the series.
In adapting Doctor Who as a cartoon, Nelvana's first challenge was to define what visual elements from Doctor Who were going to be used.
Doctor himself was a challenge. By the time of the Nelvana cartoon, there had been seven, perhaps eight (includling Cushing) to draw from, of every appearance and brand of eccentricity. Tom Baker was the most famous, of course, due to his length of tenure and PBS showings, but there had been at least two after him.
It was unlikely that Baker, or any of the others were actually going to be used. An actor's face, even in caricature, is a property, and their likenesses cannot be used, except by permission and usually by paying a license fee. Given that all of these Actors were resident in England, some were dead, some were a bit ... difficult to deal with, that seemed an unnecessary complication. Further, using the image might involve some suggestion that the owner of the face provide the voice, and further contracts and complications. If there was some likelihood that this could be done cheaply and easily, it's possible that Nelvana would have gone down this route. But given that it's transcontinental and trans-national, it wasn't likely to be cheap or easy.
So it seems most likely that Nelvana would have gone for a completely new image of the Doctor, and used a local voice actor that they had some working relationship with. That would maximize their freedom. The only requirements for the new Doctor would be that he was British and eccentric in a charming way. None of Steve Bastien's concept drawings for the Doctor involved any clear likeness to any existing Doctor.
As we can see, there were several design options, ranging from old men to young, from an extremely English 'short coated, capped' cricketeer to the more mysterious but comic trenchcoat figure, to younger or more 'heroic' figures.
We can actually dissect the sources of inspiration - there are the Doctors of course, particularly Tom Baker and Jon Pertwee known best from PBS and by far the most influential doctors in and of themselves. But by this time, through PBS almost all the Doctors would have had some exposure. But they wouldn't have had a lot of exposure to the targeted children's demographic in America. Some of those kids might be watching PBS and be Tom Baker fans, but mostly, the were tied into American media.
But there were also local influences - the reality is that the choices and concepts of a Doctor Who Cartoon were always going to be more strongly influenced by the culture of American cartoons in the 80's than by the series. Like it or not, He Man or Ghostbusters or their ilk were going to be more influential than Tom Baker. Doc Brown from Back to the Future - the model for the elderly eccentric, inventor, time traveller in his own right. The other was Egon from Ghostbusters, the younger more active version of the science hero. As much as the British Doctors, these two examples provided the poles, the two extreme visions that Nelvana had to choose between.
Which way would they go? It's like sifting tea leaves. We have the concept drawings, but we don't know who in Nelvana was involved, or which way they were going. Without anything better, I'd say, probably towards Egon.
There wasn't a lot of 'clever old men' in Saturday morning cartoons at this time. For the target demographic, it was 'Boys adventure' - He Man, GI Joe, Transformers, etc. An Old Man was a father surrogate, which definitely wouldn't be the Doctor. A quirky eccentric 'non-fatherly' old man as a hero would be hard for the 8 to 14 year old boys who were going to be the audience to engage with.
And if you went with the old guy, you'd have to have a young person to do the actual heroic stuff - Doc Brown had his Marty McFly. This had been true for the Doctor himself, Hartell had had Ian, and Troughton had had Jamie. Even as recently as the Tom Baker era, Harry Sullivan had been brought in as a companion before they'd chosen Baker, because they weren't sure what Doctor they were going to get and they thought they might need a young strong man to do the action sequences.
So the older versions were out. The demands of the series mechanics would have pushed them towards the younger, robust version.
As to the visual elements - the trenchcoat and scaff were clearly in. Lots of room for pockets in the trenchoat. We could see the Doctor often pulling strange objects from his pockets, it could become a running gag - any number of improbable or useful items could be hanging about in there.
The fob watch was a very handy symbol of time. Time references could be made constantly through it. It would have probably taken the place of the sonic screwdriver as a versatile tool - communicator, hypnosis tool, badge, flashlight or searchlight, speaker, recorder, handheld computer, tardis control, etc.
The watch chain would have allowed it to be used like Indiana Jones whip, or a cowboy's lasso, the length of fine chain could be as long as it needed to be. It was certainly handier and less bulky than Egon's backpack.
However, that doesn't mean that the elderly Doctor concept was set aside. The Doctor was a time traveller after all, and in the British series, he'd met himself several times, in fact, he'd met several versions of himself more than once. So the older Doctor was tucked away, possibly to make a guest appearance late in the series.
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Okay, so I always kinda figured that Pertwee would jump at doing an animated series, perhaps animated via a deal with Hanna-Barbera in the late 1970s or something since they can't get Tom Baker.
Now all I can see is that bit in The New Scooby-Doo Movies title sequence with Abbot and Costello running from that mummy only with Abbot and Costello replaced with Three and Jo!
Would he? Hard to say. I think after Doctor Who, Pertwee got very busy with Worzel Gummidge and left the Doctor behind for a little while. Indications were that he'd gotten tired of the role. He needed some time away to recharge enthusiasm.
I'm no expert on Hanna Barbra, but my recollection is that in the 1970's, they were still dominant in Animation and focused entirely on their in-house stable. Fred Flintstone, the Jetsons, Yogi Bear and Scooby Doo were their flagships, followed along. The few properties they did license - the Harlem Globetrotters, Jackson 5 or the Fantastic Four were already popular in the American markets.
I don't believe that Doctor Who had had its American breakthrough with PBS in the 70's, though obviously, I can stand to be corrected on that. It's extremely unlikely that they'd have sought out or licensed a British product, unknown in the USA, and as quirky as it was. It's not an obvious connect.
I'm not as familiar with British animation, so I couldn't tell you if there was a British company following in Hanna Barbera's footsteps. My impression of British production was that it was dominated by Jerry Anderson and Roberta Leigh's joint and competing puppet shows.
Nelvana's Doctor Who, Episode 2, The Cyberman Conspiracy.
Night. A man is running down the street. In panic, he runs up to a policeman, but when the police officer turns, his face is metal with glowing red eyes. Terrified he runs down the street, but an immense street cleaning machine, all gears and pistons appears. He runs into an automated factory, past rows of shadowy machines, industrial robots assembling more machines. He takes a crowbar and begins smashing the machinery. Reaching the end of the hall, he finds an emergency phone. He dials hastily. He announces "They are coming, the metal men are coming to take us all." He turns back and freezes. Shdowed metal faces with glowing red eyes close in on him. He screams....
The Doctor is showing Casey Jones how to surf/snowboard among the floating icebergs of a gas giant. The background sky is green. Pale yellow icebergs float in the atmosphere. The camera zooms in and out. Casey laughs and asks what happens if they fall. The Doctor answers ‘nothing’ - as a gas giant, it has no surface, just different layers of atmosphere.
The Doctor’s watch goes off. He pulls it from his coat and opens it. A star wars type hologram is projected of the old robed man we saw at the end of the pilot episode. He advises the Doctor that the Cybermen are active on Earth again. Despite the Doctor’s protests, he tells the Doctor that he must return and deal with it, and flicks off. Casey Jones ask who the old man was, he tells her that the man is named Magnar and he is a Guardian of the Time Lords.
Annoyed, the Doctor takes the Tardis back to the Time stream, trying to locate the Cybermen in their next plot. Again, there is an establishing shot of the Tardis floating in the time vortex. A Roman statue floats past, along with the Wright brothers plane, Mount Rushmore and the Mona Lisa and Washington crossing the Delaware. A pterodactyl flies by, and an Anik Communication satellite can be seen in the background.
Inside the Tardis, the Doctor is at his console, using it to scan - as shown with pictures on the view screen, complaining that the Cybermen should have gone into power-down when their power source was destroyed. They should not be active. Casey asks what is it that they want.
Cut away to an image of blue skinned people on an alien world. In voice over, Doctor tells her that Cybermen used to be humans, who traded in flesh and blood for metal bodies. There are shots of the people going into factories, of mechanical arms and legs, and of rows of cybermen marching out. Soon the entire world is filled with marching Cybermen. Spaceships begin to leave the planet.
Casey asks if the Cybermen want to conquer the universe. The Doctor explains that the Cybermen do not see themselves as conquerers but missionaries, their mission was to convert everyone to metal like themselves. The trouble is that they lose their souls in the process, the world of cybermen is a world without suffering, but it is also a world without love, or compassion, laughter or happiness. Casey says that is unpleasant.
The Doctor tells her that there are only a few cybermen on Earth and billions of humans, they can never succeed. Casey suggests that maybe they are only converting a few specific people. The Doctor tells her that the question is who? World leaders are obvious, but would be spotted too easily. They need to convert people without being noticed.
K9 asks if it can accompany the Doctor this time. It will utilize its disguise mode. To demonstrate, it turns into a toaster, a ghetto blaster, a blender and a vase with flowers.
Finally, the Doctor expresses satisfaction - Here we go. The Tardis console beeps. The frenzied cries of the man in the prologue. On the screen we see his contorted face, and the red LED eyes closing in....
The Tardis materializes at the factory, where clean up is under way. The fat Detective, Monty Burns, is overseeing the investigation. The Doctor walks up with Casey. The Detective notices him, and asks why he has a toaster on a leash. The Doctor says he likes toast. The Doctor then asks about the kidnapping.
The Detective replies that there is no kidnapping. A disgruntled engineer broke into this factory and wrecked it. The person is not missing, he is avoiding the law. Just then, the factory owner, a tall, very fat man with big hair, comes over to ask why nothing is being done about these vandals, and demands to know who the Doctor is.
They are escorted out of the building. But the Doctor is cheerful. Certainly, there has been a kidnapping, he tells Casey, more than one, the police just don’t know it. Casey asks what do they do next? The Doctor asks what Cybermen want more than anything? Casey responds to make more Cybermen. And what do they need to make Cybermen? A factory.
So the thing to do, is to look for more missing people connected to factories. They disappear into the Tardis.
Cut to a scene of another factory floor, this one very busy. The Doctor and Casey are standing above the factory. The Detective appears, quite upset. He demands to know what this report is of a missing person here. And why the Doctor has a vase of flowers on a leash. The Doctor replies that he likes flowers, and that the factory owner has gone missing.
The factory owner comes up behind the Detective, another very large, very tall man with big hair. Just as I expected, says the Doctor. He announces that he is the factory owner, he is not missing, and he demands that these trespassers be arrested.
The Doctor introduces himself and offers to shake hands. The factory owner refuses. The Doctor reaches in and pulls a pillow from under the factory owner’s shirt, handing it to an astonished Detective. He then starts to pull more pillows, cushions, teddy bears, stuffed toys, throw rugs, all manner of things.
Suddenly, the factory owner is revealed as a cyberman, wearing a mask and wig, who has been using pillows to conceal his gaunt metal skeleton. The Cybermen have been quietly taking over factories so that they can start building new Cybermen, the Doctor announces triumphantly, kidnapping key people in the process, and replacing them with Cybermen in disguise.
What do we do now, Casey asks. We run! The Doctor tells her. The trio flee, pursued by cybermen. The Doctor assures them that there is nothing to worry about. The Cybermen have a limited power source, and it takes a lot of energy to convert new Cybermen. All they have to do is outrun the Cybermen until their batteries run down. They turn a corner, and find themselves faced by Cybermen.
Surrounded, they flee down a hallway, to the end where they lock themselves behind a steel door. They’re perfectly safe, the Doctor assures them, the Cybermen don’t have the power to get through the door, just as a steel fist crashes through it.
In the next scene, the Doctor, Casey and the Detective are prisoners of the Cybermen, being taken back to their hidden base. Casey is very cross with the Doctor, but he couldn’t be more pleased. Arriving at the base, they are brought to the Cyber-Leader who asks why the Doctor has a kitchen blender on a leash. The Doctor says he likes smoothies. The Cyber-Leader orders the blender to be put in the recycling bin for parts. The Doctor and his companions are sentenced to the conversion chambers.
Arriving at the Conversion chambers, they find all the other kidnapped men, to the Doctor’s pleasure and satisfaction. The Cybermen don’t yet have the facilities for large scale conversions, that’s what they needed the factories. He knew if they let themselves be captured, they’d be taken to where they could find the rest of the victims and rescue everyone. Casey points out that rescuing everyone is going to be difficult since they are captured.
The Doctor replies not at all. He throws his pocket watch at the cyberman guarding them, using its long chain to loop around its legs and trip it. As it falls, he presses the release lever, setting all the prisoners free. He snaps open the watch and tells K9 it is time. K9 morphs back into its robot dog form, and comes sailing down the corridors.
The Cybermen break into the conversion chamber to find the Doctor ready to greet them, along with Casey, the Detective and a mob of angry freed humans. The Doctor tells the Cybermen that there’s no need for a fight, they’ll just be leaving. The Cybermen say that they will not allow this. The Doctor tells them they should leave too, since he has activated the self destruct. The Cybermen inform him that the self destruct cannot be activated from the Conversion station, but only from the bridge by the Cyber-Leader. At that moment, the voice of the Cyber-Leader announces count-down to self destruct. K9 has come through, the Doctor says. The Cybermen back down.
Afterwards, Casey and the Doctor are back in the Tardis. The Doctor is happy with how the adventure turned out. The kidnap victims are all rescued, the authorities are on the alert for this scheme and the cybermen cannot try it again. And the Cybermen self destructed? Casey asks. The Doctor replies, ‘goodness no,’ that would be murder. Even if the Cybermen have replaced their bodies with metal, they were still people. Besides, there was no way for K9 to get to the Bridge, they would have stopped him.
Then what? K9 turns into a ghetto blaster and speaks with the voice of the Cyber-leader. The Doctor tells her that his robot dog is quite a ventriloquist, and can tap into the bases public address system. He didn’t need to blow them up, only make them think that.
Night. A man is running down the street. In panic, he runs up to a policeman, but when the police officer turns, his face is metal with glowing red eyes. Terrified he runs down the street, but an immense street cleaning machine, all gears and pistons appears. He runs into an automated factory, past rows of shadowy machines, industrial robots assembling more machines. He takes a crowbar and begins smashing the machinery. Reaching the end of the hall, he finds an emergency phone. He dials hastily. He announces "They are coming, the metal men are coming to take us all." He turns back and freezes. Shdowed metal faces with glowing red eyes close in on him. He screams....
The Doctor is showing Casey Jones how to surf/snowboard among the floating icebergs of a gas giant. The background sky is green. Pale yellow icebergs float in the atmosphere. The camera zooms in and out. Casey laughs and asks what happens if they fall. The Doctor answers ‘nothing’ - as a gas giant, it has no surface, just different layers of atmosphere.
The Doctor’s watch goes off. He pulls it from his coat and opens it. A star wars type hologram is projected of the old robed man we saw at the end of the pilot episode. He advises the Doctor that the Cybermen are active on Earth again. Despite the Doctor’s protests, he tells the Doctor that he must return and deal with it, and flicks off. Casey Jones ask who the old man was, he tells her that the man is named Magnar and he is a Guardian of the Time Lords.
Annoyed, the Doctor takes the Tardis back to the Time stream, trying to locate the Cybermen in their next plot. Again, there is an establishing shot of the Tardis floating in the time vortex. A Roman statue floats past, along with the Wright brothers plane, Mount Rushmore and the Mona Lisa and Washington crossing the Delaware. A pterodactyl flies by, and an Anik Communication satellite can be seen in the background.
Inside the Tardis, the Doctor is at his console, using it to scan - as shown with pictures on the view screen, complaining that the Cybermen should have gone into power-down when their power source was destroyed. They should not be active. Casey asks what is it that they want.
Cut away to an image of blue skinned people on an alien world. In voice over, Doctor tells her that Cybermen used to be humans, who traded in flesh and blood for metal bodies. There are shots of the people going into factories, of mechanical arms and legs, and of rows of cybermen marching out. Soon the entire world is filled with marching Cybermen. Spaceships begin to leave the planet.
Casey asks if the Cybermen want to conquer the universe. The Doctor explains that the Cybermen do not see themselves as conquerers but missionaries, their mission was to convert everyone to metal like themselves. The trouble is that they lose their souls in the process, the world of cybermen is a world without suffering, but it is also a world without love, or compassion, laughter or happiness. Casey says that is unpleasant.
The Doctor tells her that there are only a few cybermen on Earth and billions of humans, they can never succeed. Casey suggests that maybe they are only converting a few specific people. The Doctor tells her that the question is who? World leaders are obvious, but would be spotted too easily. They need to convert people without being noticed.
K9 asks if it can accompany the Doctor this time. It will utilize its disguise mode. To demonstrate, it turns into a toaster, a ghetto blaster, a blender and a vase with flowers.
Finally, the Doctor expresses satisfaction - Here we go. The Tardis console beeps. The frenzied cries of the man in the prologue. On the screen we see his contorted face, and the red LED eyes closing in....
The Tardis materializes at the factory, where clean up is under way. The fat Detective, Monty Burns, is overseeing the investigation. The Doctor walks up with Casey. The Detective notices him, and asks why he has a toaster on a leash. The Doctor says he likes toast. The Doctor then asks about the kidnapping.
The Detective replies that there is no kidnapping. A disgruntled engineer broke into this factory and wrecked it. The person is not missing, he is avoiding the law. Just then, the factory owner, a tall, very fat man with big hair, comes over to ask why nothing is being done about these vandals, and demands to know who the Doctor is.
They are escorted out of the building. But the Doctor is cheerful. Certainly, there has been a kidnapping, he tells Casey, more than one, the police just don’t know it. Casey asks what do they do next? The Doctor asks what Cybermen want more than anything? Casey responds to make more Cybermen. And what do they need to make Cybermen? A factory.
So the thing to do, is to look for more missing people connected to factories. They disappear into the Tardis.
Cut to a scene of another factory floor, this one very busy. The Doctor and Casey are standing above the factory. The Detective appears, quite upset. He demands to know what this report is of a missing person here. And why the Doctor has a vase of flowers on a leash. The Doctor replies that he likes flowers, and that the factory owner has gone missing.
The factory owner comes up behind the Detective, another very large, very tall man with big hair. Just as I expected, says the Doctor. He announces that he is the factory owner, he is not missing, and he demands that these trespassers be arrested.
The Doctor introduces himself and offers to shake hands. The factory owner refuses. The Doctor reaches in and pulls a pillow from under the factory owner’s shirt, handing it to an astonished Detective. He then starts to pull more pillows, cushions, teddy bears, stuffed toys, throw rugs, all manner of things.
Suddenly, the factory owner is revealed as a cyberman, wearing a mask and wig, who has been using pillows to conceal his gaunt metal skeleton. The Cybermen have been quietly taking over factories so that they can start building new Cybermen, the Doctor announces triumphantly, kidnapping key people in the process, and replacing them with Cybermen in disguise.
What do we do now, Casey asks. We run! The Doctor tells her. The trio flee, pursued by cybermen. The Doctor assures them that there is nothing to worry about. The Cybermen have a limited power source, and it takes a lot of energy to convert new Cybermen. All they have to do is outrun the Cybermen until their batteries run down. They turn a corner, and find themselves faced by Cybermen.
Surrounded, they flee down a hallway, to the end where they lock themselves behind a steel door. They’re perfectly safe, the Doctor assures them, the Cybermen don’t have the power to get through the door, just as a steel fist crashes through it.
In the next scene, the Doctor, Casey and the Detective are prisoners of the Cybermen, being taken back to their hidden base. Casey is very cross with the Doctor, but he couldn’t be more pleased. Arriving at the base, they are brought to the Cyber-Leader who asks why the Doctor has a kitchen blender on a leash. The Doctor says he likes smoothies. The Cyber-Leader orders the blender to be put in the recycling bin for parts. The Doctor and his companions are sentenced to the conversion chambers.
Arriving at the Conversion chambers, they find all the other kidnapped men, to the Doctor’s pleasure and satisfaction. The Cybermen don’t yet have the facilities for large scale conversions, that’s what they needed the factories. He knew if they let themselves be captured, they’d be taken to where they could find the rest of the victims and rescue everyone. Casey points out that rescuing everyone is going to be difficult since they are captured.
The Doctor replies not at all. He throws his pocket watch at the cyberman guarding them, using its long chain to loop around its legs and trip it. As it falls, he presses the release lever, setting all the prisoners free. He snaps open the watch and tells K9 it is time. K9 morphs back into its robot dog form, and comes sailing down the corridors.
The Cybermen break into the conversion chamber to find the Doctor ready to greet them, along with Casey, the Detective and a mob of angry freed humans. The Doctor tells the Cybermen that there’s no need for a fight, they’ll just be leaving. The Cybermen say that they will not allow this. The Doctor tells them they should leave too, since he has activated the self destruct. The Cybermen inform him that the self destruct cannot be activated from the Conversion station, but only from the bridge by the Cyber-Leader. At that moment, the voice of the Cyber-Leader announces count-down to self destruct. K9 has come through, the Doctor says. The Cybermen back down.
Afterwards, Casey and the Doctor are back in the Tardis. The Doctor is happy with how the adventure turned out. The kidnap victims are all rescued, the authorities are on the alert for this scheme and the cybermen cannot try it again. And the Cybermen self destructed? Casey asks. The Doctor replies, ‘goodness no,’ that would be murder. Even if the Cybermen have replaced their bodies with metal, they were still people. Besides, there was no way for K9 to get to the Bridge, they would have stopped him.
Then what? K9 turns into a ghetto blaster and speaks with the voice of the Cyber-leader. The Doctor tells her that his robot dog is quite a ventriloquist, and can tap into the bases public address system. He didn’t need to blow them up, only make them think that.
Translating to cartoons...
In the conversion from live action television to Saturday morning cartoon, the easiest component was the Tardis itself.
After all, no one knew what a time machine was really supposed to look like. It could be a bubble, or a delorean, a stately Victorian conglomerate of brass wheels and crystal levers. So why not a blue box. A blue box the size of a telephone booth was perfectly fine.
American children in the 80's had no idea what a British police box was. Of course, by the 80's, British children didn't either. But that was okay. What was important for the show, and for children, was that it had 'Police' written on it. Kids would get the idea that the Doctor was some kind of time-police, and for purposes of the show, that was more than good enough.
In the conversion from live action television to Saturday morning cartoon, the easiest component was the Tardis itself.
After all, no one knew what a time machine was really supposed to look like. It could be a bubble, or a delorean, a stately Victorian conglomerate of brass wheels and crystal levers. So why not a blue box. A blue box the size of a telephone booth was perfectly fine.
American children in the 80's had no idea what a British police box was. Of course, by the 80's, British children didn't either. But that was okay. What was important for the show, and for children, was that it had 'Police' written on it. Kids would get the idea that the Doctor was some kind of time-police, and for purposes of the show, that was more than good enough.
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The K-9 Konundrum
For the prospective series, K9 offered both problems and opportunities to Nelvana.
The problems came with the BBC's peculiar ownership structure with regards to Doctor Who. In short, the BBC owned the Doctor, the Tardis, and a handful of basic elements for the series, time travel, regenerations, etc.
But outside writers were writing for the series, and they owned their characters and creations. Thus, the rights to the Daleks were held by Terry Nation. Kit Pedlar owned the Cybermen. Malcom Hulke had the rights to the Silurians and Sea Devils, while Robert Holmes held the Sontarans, and so forth... The Great Intelligence and the Yeti, the Master, the Draconians, the Rani, were all privately held. And so was K9.
So if Nelvana wanted to use any of these, it couldn't just pick them up and use them. Rather, they'd have to go back to the rights holders in England and make another deal with them. In a sense, Nelvana having bought rights to Doctor Who would have to go out and buy them again... and again... and again.... That wasn't appealing. And definitely not appealing for a one shot episode appearance.
But K9 created by Bob Baker and Dave Martin was special.
The thing with K9 was that K9 was child friendly. In the television series, with Tom Baker, it had been the children's favourite part of the show, the amiable little robot dog with amazing powers, a childlike figure in itself, and a projection of children's fantasies and appeal.
In the cartoon world, there were a lot of characters filling an almost identical role. For instance, Slimer the ghost mascot in Ghostbusters, Orko the tiny floating wizard in He Man, Snarf in the Thundercats, Scrappy Doo in Scooby Doo and so forth.
K9 fit the mold very well, he could be used for comic relief, an identification figure for younger children and an effective plot device.
And animation offered k9 opportunities that he'd never had. As live action, K9 was an immobile and difficult to work prop, with a limited ability to travel or be dragged over level ground, waggle its head and rotate its ears. The rest of it was voice work, and Tom Baker and Lalla Ward acting up a storm around it.
But as a cartoon? There were no restrictions at all. K9 could come into full bloom as a fully expressive character. No animatronics, no wiring, no wrestling with the prop - K9 was as live or lively as they could make him.
So, there's almost no question that K9 was going to appear in the series. Nelvana, if they had to buy those rights separately, I think that they would have. This is apparent in the proof of concept sketches. K9 appears no less than three times, which shows the conceptual significance of a character of this sort to a children's animation.
There's the rather clever production sketch up top, of course, which depicts k9 as a 'morphing' robot - sometimes with legs, sometimes without, a computer screen for a head, the ability to transform or reshape itself into a computer.
The notion of K9 being able to fold up and masquerade as a doctor's bag is actually quite clever. I suspect that this would have been incorporated into the show, as would a more 'morphy' k9 capable of changing its shape or extruding a variety of tools and instruments.
A more normal version of K9 appears here, you can see it right in the foreground looking up at the Doctor's foot....
What might be two versions of k9 appear here down at the bottom - one is a fairly realistic robotic dog, the other partially visible, appears to be the Doctor's Bag version.
One comment - although animation would allow K9 to be and do things that he could never manage in live action, it wasn't an unlimited opportunity. There was a limit to the resolution of colour television in the 80's, hi-definition was a long way away. And when you were committing to 40,000 drawings for a half hour cartoon... you didn't want to make things too complicated and stylized. A lot of fine detail, rivets, seams, cogs and sprockets, that was fine for a concept drawing. Not much fun for animation, and even if you bothered to make the effort, it wouldn't actually give you much on broadcast. So any cartoon K9 was likely to be much more stylized and simplified than the concept drawing.
For the prospective series, K9 offered both problems and opportunities to Nelvana.
The problems came with the BBC's peculiar ownership structure with regards to Doctor Who. In short, the BBC owned the Doctor, the Tardis, and a handful of basic elements for the series, time travel, regenerations, etc.
But outside writers were writing for the series, and they owned their characters and creations. Thus, the rights to the Daleks were held by Terry Nation. Kit Pedlar owned the Cybermen. Malcom Hulke had the rights to the Silurians and Sea Devils, while Robert Holmes held the Sontarans, and so forth... The Great Intelligence and the Yeti, the Master, the Draconians, the Rani, were all privately held. And so was K9.
So if Nelvana wanted to use any of these, it couldn't just pick them up and use them. Rather, they'd have to go back to the rights holders in England and make another deal with them. In a sense, Nelvana having bought rights to Doctor Who would have to go out and buy them again... and again... and again.... That wasn't appealing. And definitely not appealing for a one shot episode appearance.
But K9 created by Bob Baker and Dave Martin was special.
The thing with K9 was that K9 was child friendly. In the television series, with Tom Baker, it had been the children's favourite part of the show, the amiable little robot dog with amazing powers, a childlike figure in itself, and a projection of children's fantasies and appeal.
In the cartoon world, there were a lot of characters filling an almost identical role. For instance, Slimer the ghost mascot in Ghostbusters, Orko the tiny floating wizard in He Man, Snarf in the Thundercats, Scrappy Doo in Scooby Doo and so forth.
K9 fit the mold very well, he could be used for comic relief, an identification figure for younger children and an effective plot device.
And animation offered k9 opportunities that he'd never had. As live action, K9 was an immobile and difficult to work prop, with a limited ability to travel or be dragged over level ground, waggle its head and rotate its ears. The rest of it was voice work, and Tom Baker and Lalla Ward acting up a storm around it.
But as a cartoon? There were no restrictions at all. K9 could come into full bloom as a fully expressive character. No animatronics, no wiring, no wrestling with the prop - K9 was as live or lively as they could make him.
So, there's almost no question that K9 was going to appear in the series. Nelvana, if they had to buy those rights separately, I think that they would have. This is apparent in the proof of concept sketches. K9 appears no less than three times, which shows the conceptual significance of a character of this sort to a children's animation.
There's the rather clever production sketch up top, of course, which depicts k9 as a 'morphing' robot - sometimes with legs, sometimes without, a computer screen for a head, the ability to transform or reshape itself into a computer.
The notion of K9 being able to fold up and masquerade as a doctor's bag is actually quite clever. I suspect that this would have been incorporated into the show, as would a more 'morphy' k9 capable of changing its shape or extruding a variety of tools and instruments.
A more normal version of K9 appears here, you can see it right in the foreground looking up at the Doctor's foot....
What might be two versions of k9 appear here down at the bottom - one is a fairly realistic robotic dog, the other partially visible, appears to be the Doctor's Bag version.
One comment - although animation would allow K9 to be and do things that he could never manage in live action, it wasn't an unlimited opportunity. There was a limit to the resolution of colour television in the 80's, hi-definition was a long way away. And when you were committing to 40,000 drawings for a half hour cartoon... you didn't want to make things too complicated and stylized. A lot of fine detail, rivets, seams, cogs and sprockets, that was fine for a concept drawing. Not much fun for animation, and even if you bothered to make the effort, it wouldn't actually give you much on broadcast. So any cartoon K9 was likely to be much more stylized and simplified than the concept drawing.
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How's it going so far?
You know, this feels less like an alt history than a forensic reconstruction. Finding the skull of a lost project, and then working our way backwards, adding muscle and then skin and hair in order to recreate the face.
Without knowing much much more about Nelvana's experience, I can't really do much with them. So what I'm doing instead is using the concept drawings and the economics, production and culture of 80's animation to sort of reconscruct the logical steps that the cartoon would have taken.
In the end, it's just one option. I think it's the most logical option, or perhaps phrased more accurately, it's the most 'path of least resistance' option - the easiest and most commonly taken, the one that hewed most closely to the mainstream.
It's not impossible or unlikely that they could have gone in a different direction. Something clownish and slapstick with an older Doctor, although my impression is that sort of slapstick cartoonishness really had peaked in the late seventies. It seems unlikely and atypical, for the company given what Nelvana had done with Droids and Ewoks, or with Rock and Rule.
There's a chance that Nelvana might have even struck out on its own and taken some genuine risks, as they had with Rock and Rule, to give us a funky, surreal Doctor that didn't fit any specific mold. But then, Rock and Rule had nearly taken them down, I see them as a bit risk averse at this stage of their corporate career.
Anyway, I plan to 'reconstruct' a total of thirteen episodes of the Nelvana cartoon series = two down so far. I'm thinking one more Cybermen episode, perhaps one featuring a meeting with the older Doctor, three or four encounters with Daleks, a renegade Time lord and a few odds and ends, and hopefully capture the 'fun' feel.
You know, this feels less like an alt history than a forensic reconstruction. Finding the skull of a lost project, and then working our way backwards, adding muscle and then skin and hair in order to recreate the face.
Without knowing much much more about Nelvana's experience, I can't really do much with them. So what I'm doing instead is using the concept drawings and the economics, production and culture of 80's animation to sort of reconscruct the logical steps that the cartoon would have taken.
In the end, it's just one option. I think it's the most logical option, or perhaps phrased more accurately, it's the most 'path of least resistance' option - the easiest and most commonly taken, the one that hewed most closely to the mainstream.
It's not impossible or unlikely that they could have gone in a different direction. Something clownish and slapstick with an older Doctor, although my impression is that sort of slapstick cartoonishness really had peaked in the late seventies. It seems unlikely and atypical, for the company given what Nelvana had done with Droids and Ewoks, or with Rock and Rule.
There's a chance that Nelvana might have even struck out on its own and taken some genuine risks, as they had with Rock and Rule, to give us a funky, surreal Doctor that didn't fit any specific mold. But then, Rock and Rule had nearly taken them down, I see them as a bit risk averse at this stage of their corporate career.
Anyway, I plan to 'reconstruct' a total of thirteen episodes of the Nelvana cartoon series = two down so far. I'm thinking one more Cybermen episode, perhaps one featuring a meeting with the older Doctor, three or four encounters with Daleks, a renegade Time lord and a few odds and ends, and hopefully capture the 'fun' feel.
Well, how the Cybermen disguised themselves was amusing, but seems a bit out of character for them.
Nothing wrong with that, I suppose.
You're doing more or less what I would have done, really.
Just imagine an animated Rani voiced by Tress MacNeille verbally sparring with the Doctor.
Other notes: You're highly unlikely to get ahold of the Yeti after their creators' little falling out with the Doctor Who office over The Dominators.
If there's a second series, the Silurians and Sea Devils could be recurring species, of sorts. You could purchase the rights for a single episode in series one, then the next series could see them in force. I suspect the Master would be good for a two-parter, and the Sontaran/Rutan War could be an over-arching theme for the third series.
Adaptational rape. yay.
Oddly enough, that's exactly what the Cybermen did in their first appearance in the 10th planet. Disguised themselves as regular humans in order to infiltrate, I mean.
The interpretation of Cybermen in the cartoon is almost benign. They're more a religious movement than a conquering race. They just see their way of life as superior, and they want to share it with everyone. They'd much rather have voluntary converts, and they don't really understand why everyone wouldn't want to join up. They're quite a bit nastier in the live action series.
Nelvana would have been unlikely to seek out any licenses for the Yeti or the Great Intelligence. For that matter, Nelvana would have been unlikely to seek out any other licenses for alien monsters, beyond the Cybermen and Daleks.
They'd be much more likely to invent in house menaces, ones that they wouldn't have to pay an additional license fee to use.
Nelvana wouldn't want to blow its budgets on secondary licenses. They're likely to go for a license for K9 because it fits so well within the Cartoon format. Either that, or they'd invent a cute little alien sidekick, some 'Slimer(Ghostbusters) /Urko (He-Man)' analogue. They're likely to pick up Daleks and Cybermen for compelling reasons that I'll get into - both showed up in the production sketches, the Daleks multiple times.
I don't think I'll bother with a second series. It takes a certain amount of creative energy to generate a detailed synopsis for a half hour television episode sufficient to give the reader a basic visualization. Thirteen episodes will be enough.
In OTL, even with the backing of the Star Wars juggernaut, Nelvana's droids managed a single season, and Ewoks barely more than that. It's hard to imagine Doctor Who doing better.
There were something like 300 Eighties cartoons, which speaks to an outburst of creativity and production, but it also speaks to a ferocious attrition rate. For every Transformers or Ghostbusters, there were a couple of dozen one season wonders.
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This leads us to the question, what final additional elements from the series would Nelvana be most likely to adopt?
Going by the production sketches - these would be Cybermen and Daleks, probably the two most popular, iconic and visually distinctive Doctor Who creations.
There's a very good production sketch of a Cyberman which is almost a metallic skeleton with glowing red eyes and a handlebar head. It's possibly influenced by the metal skeleton version of Cameron's terminator. What's fascinating about it is that it's a vision of the Cybermen that you couldn't pull off with live action - it's just too thin, too skeletal, too creepy.
The Cybermen were the creation of Doctor Who's science consultant, Kit Pedlar. They'd been introduced at the end of the Hartnell Era in the Tenth Planet, had bedeviled the Troughton Doctor four times in three years. The Pertwee era had taken a pass, but they'd reappeared for single adventures with Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy, and additionally had featured in the Five Doctors. They'd never inspired the wave of mania and merchandising that Daleks had, but they were a good solid adversary, reliable and distinctive, and in all probability, relatively cheap, and Nelvana could have a relatively free hand with them.
The Daleks were a different proposition, likely more expensive, more complicated, with much less freedom, but with reasons to pursue it anyway. We'll touch on that in an upcoming post.
But for the rest, the balance of the Cartoon Doctor Who was going to be Nelvana's invention - the companion or companions, the cast of characters around the Doctor, new aliens and villains.
Going by the production sketches - these would be Cybermen and Daleks, probably the two most popular, iconic and visually distinctive Doctor Who creations.
There's a very good production sketch of a Cyberman which is almost a metallic skeleton with glowing red eyes and a handlebar head. It's possibly influenced by the metal skeleton version of Cameron's terminator. What's fascinating about it is that it's a vision of the Cybermen that you couldn't pull off with live action - it's just too thin, too skeletal, too creepy.
The Cybermen were the creation of Doctor Who's science consultant, Kit Pedlar. They'd been introduced at the end of the Hartnell Era in the Tenth Planet, had bedeviled the Troughton Doctor four times in three years. The Pertwee era had taken a pass, but they'd reappeared for single adventures with Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy, and additionally had featured in the Five Doctors. They'd never inspired the wave of mania and merchandising that Daleks had, but they were a good solid adversary, reliable and distinctive, and in all probability, relatively cheap, and Nelvana could have a relatively free hand with them.
The Daleks were a different proposition, likely more expensive, more complicated, with much less freedom, but with reasons to pursue it anyway. We'll touch on that in an upcoming post.
But for the rest, the balance of the Cartoon Doctor Who was going to be Nelvana's invention - the companion or companions, the cast of characters around the Doctor, new aliens and villains.
The reason they'd not appeared with the Third Doctor is Terrance Dicks hated them! They only made it into The Five Doctors because Eric Saward insisted. Even then, you'll note that every single one is destroyed, either slaughtered by the Raston Warrior Robot (which, I'll note, would be easy to animate and get the rights for, and make an interesting recurring enemy under a greater "Raston Imperium" race or something) or the pi test in the Tower of Rassilon.
Also, it's Pedler, not Pedlar.
Uh uh. You got to look at it from the point of view of Nelvana, looking at their target audience.
Their target audience is 8 to 14 year old children, predominantly male, on Saturday afternoons, competing with a multitutde of similar shows. Their target demographic are not primarily Doctor Who fans. At best, some of them have had exposure through PBS, but most of them will not even have heard of the show.
So what's the percentage of licensing extra or minor characters, particularly some throwaway character from some mid range adventure? It's not like the demographic audience will be excessively familiar or will respond strongly.
It actually makes more sense for Nelvana to invent the rest of its supporting cast, alien invaders and mad scientists. That way, it owns the rights, doesn't pay any more license fees, can do what it wants without restriction, and if any of it ever makes it back to the live show, they get their nickel.
Also, it's Pedler, not Pedlar.
I reserve the write to mangal the English langwage howsever I likes.
Nelvana's Doctor Who, Episode 3, Big Giant Monsters
The Doctor and Casey are enjoying a spot of fishing at a beach house at an isolated lake. The Tardis is sitting on the porch of the House.
A giant blazing meteor streaks across the sky, crashing in the woods beyond. Casey looks at the Doctor. ‘You knew this was going to happen,’ she accuses. ‘I drive a time machine,’ he shrugs. Then he goes back to fishing.
Cut to a huge gouge in the countryside, a vast smoking crater. Approaching it in a pickup is a local sheriff, a tall skinny man. In the vehicle with him is the fat police detective, dressed in civilian clothes. The sheriff is welcoming his cousin out to the countryside, and telling him that except for a few grass fires, like up ahead, nothing ever happens out here. The detective talks about needing a quiet vacation.
Just then, a Giant monster, with rough, pebbly, red hide skin lumbers past roaring. The monster is fifty feet tall, with a barrel body, no neck, and short stumpy limbs sticking out of its sides. Seeing the pickup truck, it grabs it, shakes it, swings it around wildly, and then throws it away. The truck lands in the branches of a tree.
The Sheriff and his cousin just look at each other. They watch the roaring monster rumble away, frantically tearing up and flinging trees. Eventually, the Detective asks ‘You going to do something about that?’ ‘Eventually.’ They nod.
Another roaring monster comes into view - this one identical, except that its green. The two monsters rush up screaming in each other’s faces, and then they turn around and run in opposite directions, tearing up the countryside. A third monster shows up, this one blue, howling incessantly. They face each other... And then the three of them trundle off towards the small town.
One of them accidentally knocks over the beach house that the Doctor and Casey are fishing from. The Doctor signs, throws away his fishing reel, and rolls up his sleeves.
The monsters reach the town. One of them waves around a set of train cars like a flail. Two others play a game of softball, using a mobile home as a bat, and an RV as a ball. The knock over buildings with abandon.
The Detective and his cousin the Sheriff make it down out of the tree and find the Doctor. The Detective is upset to see the Doctor once again, and accuses him of being at the bottom of things somehow.
The Doctor explains that they’re Grogniks, gigantic aliens, nearly indestructible, and of immense physical strength. Other races steer clear of them. But, they’re pretty reasonable, once you get their attention.
The Doctor throws back his head and roars. The three Grogniks stop motionless and turn towards the Doctor. Then they begin to advance. As the long shadows of the giants grow over the Doctor and Casey, she suggests that they retreat.
They roar at the Doctor. He roars back. An animated conversation ensues. The Grogniks wave their arms excitedly and run in circles. The Doctor explains - they were children, and they had taken their parents spaceship out and accidentally crashed it. They were so upset, they were throwing temper tantrums. It’s going to be all right.
The Doctor roars some more. The Grogniks grow very still. They turn to each other, rumbling. The Doctor roars again. This time, the Grogniks grow hostile. The Doctor turns to his companions and tells them to run.
His big mistake? He told them he would just call their parents to come and get them. They weren’t quite ready for that. Fear of punishment is greater than the need to be rescued.
As the Doctor, Casey and the Sheriff and Detective run, cars, trees, pieces of houses and other small objects are flying past them. So what do we do now? Casey asks.
No problem at all the Doctor replies. The Tardis goes flying past, another piece of debris thrown by the Grogniks. The Doctor lassos it with the chain from his watch. All he has to do is nip over to their crashed spaceship, send out the distress call to their parents, and they’ll nip right along to pick them up. Simple. All he needs Casey and the others to do is keep them occupied and entertained for a little while.
The Doctor retreats to the Tardis. Just as it vanishes, K9 steps out and advises he is ready to serve. An alien foot squashes it into the ground.
Quick cuts of the monsters pausing and clapping as the Sheriff and the Detective set off the fourth of July fireworks, cut short when one of the monsters eats the fireworks, and the others jump up and down with delight as the fireworks explode in its mouth.
The Doctor is in the crashed alien ship, re-wiring a burnt control panel and pressing puttons. Suddenly, gravity reverses. Crossed a wire there!
Cut to whack a mole as the monsters try to smash the humans in an auto junk yard.
The Doctor is completely tangled up in wires in the space ship, his eyes look up as the ship announces ‘self destruct in ten seconds.’
Finally, there are clips of Casey teaching the monsters to play hopscotch, and using K9's Laser to play tic tac toe with the monsters on a cliff face. She uses the robot dog's laser to draw the lines and make X. The monsters punch holes in the cliff for the ‘O’.
Suddenly, the Grogniks become upset. Roaring, they smash the cliff and then advance on Casey and her companions.
The Tardis appears and the Doctor steps out. Trouble? Casey says they’re upset at losing a game of Tic Tac Toe. The Doctor says that she should have let them win. Casey says that she was trying to do that, but it’s harder than it looks. The Doctor nods, Grogniks aren’t known for their brains. The monsters loom over them, fists raised hi. Casey begs the Doctor to do something. He replies ‘I did.’
Even vaster shadows loom over the monsters. The adult Grogniks, in all their immensity have arrived. They scoop up the squalling monsters, now revealed as infants, and march them off.
The Doctor hands Casey a slip of paper. What’s this? It’s the Grognik’s parents. They were very impressed with how you handled their children. They were wondering if you’d be available for regular babysitting.
The Army appears, belatedly. As the Detective and Sheriff begin to demand answers, the Doctor tells Casey it's time to leave. The two, together with K9, depart to the Tardis, which disappears.
The Doctor and Casey are enjoying a spot of fishing at a beach house at an isolated lake. The Tardis is sitting on the porch of the House.
A giant blazing meteor streaks across the sky, crashing in the woods beyond. Casey looks at the Doctor. ‘You knew this was going to happen,’ she accuses. ‘I drive a time machine,’ he shrugs. Then he goes back to fishing.
Cut to a huge gouge in the countryside, a vast smoking crater. Approaching it in a pickup is a local sheriff, a tall skinny man. In the vehicle with him is the fat police detective, dressed in civilian clothes. The sheriff is welcoming his cousin out to the countryside, and telling him that except for a few grass fires, like up ahead, nothing ever happens out here. The detective talks about needing a quiet vacation.
Just then, a Giant monster, with rough, pebbly, red hide skin lumbers past roaring. The monster is fifty feet tall, with a barrel body, no neck, and short stumpy limbs sticking out of its sides. Seeing the pickup truck, it grabs it, shakes it, swings it around wildly, and then throws it away. The truck lands in the branches of a tree.
The Sheriff and his cousin just look at each other. They watch the roaring monster rumble away, frantically tearing up and flinging trees. Eventually, the Detective asks ‘You going to do something about that?’ ‘Eventually.’ They nod.
Another roaring monster comes into view - this one identical, except that its green. The two monsters rush up screaming in each other’s faces, and then they turn around and run in opposite directions, tearing up the countryside. A third monster shows up, this one blue, howling incessantly. They face each other... And then the three of them trundle off towards the small town.
One of them accidentally knocks over the beach house that the Doctor and Casey are fishing from. The Doctor signs, throws away his fishing reel, and rolls up his sleeves.
The monsters reach the town. One of them waves around a set of train cars like a flail. Two others play a game of softball, using a mobile home as a bat, and an RV as a ball. The knock over buildings with abandon.
The Detective and his cousin the Sheriff make it down out of the tree and find the Doctor. The Detective is upset to see the Doctor once again, and accuses him of being at the bottom of things somehow.
The Doctor explains that they’re Grogniks, gigantic aliens, nearly indestructible, and of immense physical strength. Other races steer clear of them. But, they’re pretty reasonable, once you get their attention.
The Doctor throws back his head and roars. The three Grogniks stop motionless and turn towards the Doctor. Then they begin to advance. As the long shadows of the giants grow over the Doctor and Casey, she suggests that they retreat.
They roar at the Doctor. He roars back. An animated conversation ensues. The Grogniks wave their arms excitedly and run in circles. The Doctor explains - they were children, and they had taken their parents spaceship out and accidentally crashed it. They were so upset, they were throwing temper tantrums. It’s going to be all right.
The Doctor roars some more. The Grogniks grow very still. They turn to each other, rumbling. The Doctor roars again. This time, the Grogniks grow hostile. The Doctor turns to his companions and tells them to run.
His big mistake? He told them he would just call their parents to come and get them. They weren’t quite ready for that. Fear of punishment is greater than the need to be rescued.
As the Doctor, Casey and the Sheriff and Detective run, cars, trees, pieces of houses and other small objects are flying past them. So what do we do now? Casey asks.
No problem at all the Doctor replies. The Tardis goes flying past, another piece of debris thrown by the Grogniks. The Doctor lassos it with the chain from his watch. All he has to do is nip over to their crashed spaceship, send out the distress call to their parents, and they’ll nip right along to pick them up. Simple. All he needs Casey and the others to do is keep them occupied and entertained for a little while.
The Doctor retreats to the Tardis. Just as it vanishes, K9 steps out and advises he is ready to serve. An alien foot squashes it into the ground.
Quick cuts of the monsters pausing and clapping as the Sheriff and the Detective set off the fourth of July fireworks, cut short when one of the monsters eats the fireworks, and the others jump up and down with delight as the fireworks explode in its mouth.
The Doctor is in the crashed alien ship, re-wiring a burnt control panel and pressing puttons. Suddenly, gravity reverses. Crossed a wire there!
Cut to whack a mole as the monsters try to smash the humans in an auto junk yard.
The Doctor is completely tangled up in wires in the space ship, his eyes look up as the ship announces ‘self destruct in ten seconds.’
Finally, there are clips of Casey teaching the monsters to play hopscotch, and using K9's Laser to play tic tac toe with the monsters on a cliff face. She uses the robot dog's laser to draw the lines and make X. The monsters punch holes in the cliff for the ‘O’.
Suddenly, the Grogniks become upset. Roaring, they smash the cliff and then advance on Casey and her companions.
The Tardis appears and the Doctor steps out. Trouble? Casey says they’re upset at losing a game of Tic Tac Toe. The Doctor says that she should have let them win. Casey says that she was trying to do that, but it’s harder than it looks. The Doctor nods, Grogniks aren’t known for their brains. The monsters loom over them, fists raised hi. Casey begs the Doctor to do something. He replies ‘I did.’
Even vaster shadows loom over the monsters. The adult Grogniks, in all their immensity have arrived. They scoop up the squalling monsters, now revealed as infants, and march them off.
The Doctor hands Casey a slip of paper. What’s this? It’s the Grognik’s parents. They were very impressed with how you handled their children. They were wondering if you’d be available for regular babysitting.
The Army appears, belatedly. As the Detective and Sheriff begin to demand answers, the Doctor tells Casey it's time to leave. The two, together with K9, depart to the Tardis, which disappears.
The interesting thing is that Nelvana was not the first lot to try this. Remember that idiocy "Fonz and the Happy Days Gang" where they traveled through time? Hanna-Barbera started out trying to get the rights to the Doctor and when that went zippadeedoodah, they re-tooled it and swapped the Doctor with Fonzie......
You saw bizarre hybrids like that all the time. A related series was 'Laverne and Shirley in the Army." And I think that at one time, Mr. T was a travelling gymnastics instructor.
"Fonz and the Happy Days Gang' ran from November 8, 1980 to November 18, 1981. The premise as set out in the credits is that a broken time machine, resembling a small stylized flying saucer ends up in the parking lot at Arnold's. The pilot is a teenage girl named 'Cupcake' who is either an alien, or from the future, it's indeterminate, but who has erratic magical powers that never work right.
The Fonz tries to fix the time ship, but instead the Fonz and the gang end up bouncing uncontrollably through time for 24 episodes. For some reason, this intro is narrated by Wolfman Jack. Oh, and the Fonz is given a cute anthropomorphic dog to hang out with, which actually managed to follow him into the Laverne and Shirley animated series.
The borrowing from Doctor Who, particularly the early years, doesn't stop with the concept. The time machine's control station looks a lot like a version of the Tardis' central time console rotor controls... so much so it's hard to put it down to coincidence. The first episode featured Fonz and the Gang regressed back to the caveman era where they get involved in Caveman politics, much like 'Unearthly Child.' The second episode feature Fonz and the gang leaping into Earth's future in 2057 where they encounter an alien invasion. When you realize that 'Cupcake' is potentially an avatar of Susan, then this really does seem like a distaff version of Doctor Who - albeit one with the serial numbers filed off, and the character of the Doctor and the big blue box jettisoned.
That second episode was something of an anomaly, that owed a lot more to Star Wars than Doctor Who. The cartoon as a whole steered away from Science Fiction settings, and remained entirely within the framework of historical, or historic/fictional settings on Earth. As such it seems to have been rooted in the Hartnell era, when they were doing historical serials. Those sorts of historical only serials almost entirely vanished at the end of the Hartnell era (Troughton's Highlanders and Davison's Black Orchid being the only exceptiosn that come to mind). Thereafter, the series was entirely routed in sci fi, and visits to the past, as in Davison's Visitation or Baker's Mask of Mandragora featured alien monsters. So if they were trying to borrow Doctor Who, their concept of the series was twenty years out of date. Which makes a bit of ironic sense - an out of date animation studio, borrowing from the out of date premises of old Who, but doesn't seem to hold up on examination.
Although Happy Days was an odd choice for a time travel series, you have to remember that the series was, by nature, intensely retro. This was a 1980's series set in 1957, so in a sense, it was already displaced in time, and part of the cachet was the modern 80's audience reacting to the incongruity of the 50's setting. So, you could see them taking the next step as to being time jumpers. Mostly, the time machine simply dropped them off at different locations and times to have adventures without affecting history.
I suppose that brings into question the 'Doctor Who' connection. They might well have evolved their premise independently. Malfunctioning time machines are nothing new in fiction or cartoons, and the Fonz hooking up with a teen girl time traveller is par for the course. Doctor Who would still have been somewhat obscure. It hadn't begun airing on PBS until 1978, and this appears to be just before it really got popular in 1981/1982.
In contrast, Happy Days aired from 1974 to 1984, and was at the top of the ratings game in the United States. So it's likely that the Fonz and not the Doctor was driving the cartoon concept. They were looking for a Happy Days vehicle to capitalize on the live action show, rather than looking for an obscure cult item from Britain. So the entire thing might have begun with .... 'What can we do with a happy days cartoon that they can't do live action?'
Of course, when you've got a similar product to something else out there... particularly something similar that was there first, you would want to secure the rights, so even if it was a conceptually independent production, they'd have tried to get Doctor Who sewn up.
So it's anyone's guess - did they steal outright from Doctor Who when they couldn't buy it? Or did they come up with their own idea and then try and buy to close off a possible lawsuit. The most persuasive element might be the time rotor console, but even there, it might have emerged from the concept of the rounded flying saucer with windows all around the exterior - if its a round room with no obvious front or back and windows all around, then a central console might be the logical design.
Still, it certainly shows almost exactly what Hanna Barbera would have done with the concept, had they ever actually gotten Doctor Who.
For their part - the BBC would have been riding at its highest around 1979-1980 when Hanna Barbera would have shown upon their door. Tom Baker was just finishing his incredibly successful run, they had an established star in Peter Davison as the new Doctor, the series was finally starting to catch momentum through PBS in the United States. I can see them being completely uninterested in any licensing proposals at this time.
By the way, there are several episodes of this series on Youtube for those who are interested. Hanna Barbera had begun moving towards international animation, so it wasn't quite as bad as the earlier stuff where everything was immobile figures doing limited motion cycles. But it wasn't that far off. Hanna Barbera had perfected hyper-limited animation, and even with Asian animation resources, they kept on doing it that way. It was a far far cry from the quality of later eighties animations.
"Fonz and the Happy Days Gang' ran from November 8, 1980 to November 18, 1981. The premise as set out in the credits is that a broken time machine, resembling a small stylized flying saucer ends up in the parking lot at Arnold's. The pilot is a teenage girl named 'Cupcake' who is either an alien, or from the future, it's indeterminate, but who has erratic magical powers that never work right.
The Fonz tries to fix the time ship, but instead the Fonz and the gang end up bouncing uncontrollably through time for 24 episodes. For some reason, this intro is narrated by Wolfman Jack. Oh, and the Fonz is given a cute anthropomorphic dog to hang out with, which actually managed to follow him into the Laverne and Shirley animated series.
The borrowing from Doctor Who, particularly the early years, doesn't stop with the concept. The time machine's control station looks a lot like a version of the Tardis' central time console rotor controls... so much so it's hard to put it down to coincidence. The first episode featured Fonz and the Gang regressed back to the caveman era where they get involved in Caveman politics, much like 'Unearthly Child.' The second episode feature Fonz and the gang leaping into Earth's future in 2057 where they encounter an alien invasion. When you realize that 'Cupcake' is potentially an avatar of Susan, then this really does seem like a distaff version of Doctor Who - albeit one with the serial numbers filed off, and the character of the Doctor and the big blue box jettisoned.
That second episode was something of an anomaly, that owed a lot more to Star Wars than Doctor Who. The cartoon as a whole steered away from Science Fiction settings, and remained entirely within the framework of historical, or historic/fictional settings on Earth. As such it seems to have been rooted in the Hartnell era, when they were doing historical serials. Those sorts of historical only serials almost entirely vanished at the end of the Hartnell era (Troughton's Highlanders and Davison's Black Orchid being the only exceptiosn that come to mind). Thereafter, the series was entirely routed in sci fi, and visits to the past, as in Davison's Visitation or Baker's Mask of Mandragora featured alien monsters. So if they were trying to borrow Doctor Who, their concept of the series was twenty years out of date. Which makes a bit of ironic sense - an out of date animation studio, borrowing from the out of date premises of old Who, but doesn't seem to hold up on examination.
Although Happy Days was an odd choice for a time travel series, you have to remember that the series was, by nature, intensely retro. This was a 1980's series set in 1957, so in a sense, it was already displaced in time, and part of the cachet was the modern 80's audience reacting to the incongruity of the 50's setting. So, you could see them taking the next step as to being time jumpers. Mostly, the time machine simply dropped them off at different locations and times to have adventures without affecting history.
I suppose that brings into question the 'Doctor Who' connection. They might well have evolved their premise independently. Malfunctioning time machines are nothing new in fiction or cartoons, and the Fonz hooking up with a teen girl time traveller is par for the course. Doctor Who would still have been somewhat obscure. It hadn't begun airing on PBS until 1978, and this appears to be just before it really got popular in 1981/1982.
In contrast, Happy Days aired from 1974 to 1984, and was at the top of the ratings game in the United States. So it's likely that the Fonz and not the Doctor was driving the cartoon concept. They were looking for a Happy Days vehicle to capitalize on the live action show, rather than looking for an obscure cult item from Britain. So the entire thing might have begun with .... 'What can we do with a happy days cartoon that they can't do live action?'
Of course, when you've got a similar product to something else out there... particularly something similar that was there first, you would want to secure the rights, so even if it was a conceptually independent production, they'd have tried to get Doctor Who sewn up.
So it's anyone's guess - did they steal outright from Doctor Who when they couldn't buy it? Or did they come up with their own idea and then try and buy to close off a possible lawsuit. The most persuasive element might be the time rotor console, but even there, it might have emerged from the concept of the rounded flying saucer with windows all around the exterior - if its a round room with no obvious front or back and windows all around, then a central console might be the logical design.
Still, it certainly shows almost exactly what Hanna Barbera would have done with the concept, had they ever actually gotten Doctor Who.
For their part - the BBC would have been riding at its highest around 1979-1980 when Hanna Barbera would have shown upon their door. Tom Baker was just finishing his incredibly successful run, they had an established star in Peter Davison as the new Doctor, the series was finally starting to catch momentum through PBS in the United States. I can see them being completely uninterested in any licensing proposals at this time.
By the way, there are several episodes of this series on Youtube for those who are interested. Hanna Barbera had begun moving towards international animation, so it wasn't quite as bad as the earlier stuff where everything was immobile figures doing limited motion cycles. But it wasn't that far off. Hanna Barbera had perfected hyper-limited animation, and even with Asian animation resources, they kept on doing it that way. It was a far far cry from the quality of later eighties animations.
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Someone like Frobisher?
Caveat: I have not read or listened to any of the stories he appears in, I only know that he exists. And has a worryingly high "Scooby Doo replacement potential" for obvious reasons.
I'm not all that familiar with Frobisher myself.
What I do know is that there's an active 'parallel' Doctor Who in the comic strips, beginning with the original Doctor having a pair of grand children named John and Gillian and fighting robotic menaces called Trods.
The comic strip Doctor kept shifting along with the television incarnation, with occasional hiccups - notably Troughton's 'Season 6B' where after the War Games, the Troughton Doctor was exiled to earth, living in a hotel, and having adventures right up until scarecrows kidnap him and force him to regenerate.
Following on that, particularly when the series went on hiatus, the comic strip Doctors had some divergence - notably a new set of companions mixed in with the television companions. This included various aliens and a robot T-rex. Frobisher, a shapeshifting alien stuck in (or preferring) the form of a penguin is only the most peculiar.
Frobisher and other comic strip companions went on to feature in Big Finish Audio productions.
I've never heard or seen much of the character, but yes, the Scooby Doo potential is quite terrifying.
What I do know is that there's an active 'parallel' Doctor Who in the comic strips, beginning with the original Doctor having a pair of grand children named John and Gillian and fighting robotic menaces called Trods.
The comic strip Doctor kept shifting along with the television incarnation, with occasional hiccups - notably Troughton's 'Season 6B' where after the War Games, the Troughton Doctor was exiled to earth, living in a hotel, and having adventures right up until scarecrows kidnap him and force him to regenerate.
Following on that, particularly when the series went on hiatus, the comic strip Doctors had some divergence - notably a new set of companions mixed in with the television companions. This included various aliens and a robot T-rex. Frobisher, a shapeshifting alien stuck in (or preferring) the form of a penguin is only the most peculiar.
Frobisher and other comic strip companions went on to feature in Big Finish Audio productions.
I've never heard or seen much of the character, but yes, the Scooby Doo potential is quite terrifying.
DALEKS!!!
http://www.google.ca/url?sa=i&rct=j...qR0RxKqUZi4_XWPeyX7g23-w&ust=1395160707657186
The live action series had controversies, particularly in the late seventies and eighties with violent content. For Saturday afternoons, it was a whole new playing field. You simply couldn’t show violence or harm to people or living beings.
Machines, inanimate objects, and oddly enough, robots, were fair game. It might be verboten to show people, or even living aliens coming to harm. But robots could be smashed with impunity. It was natural, even inevitable, then that the Nelvana Doctor’s principal adversaries would be races of alien robots.
At one point, Nelvana’s creative team even looked at creating their own race of humanoid robots. But any race of humanoid robots were going to be so similar to Cybermen that BBC licensing issues were going to be inevitable. So Nelvana ponied up and adapted the Cybermen.
The Daleks were a slightly more complicated issue. Again, they were a race of malign alien robots. Technically, they and the cybermen were cyborgs, but that was a fine point that simply didn’t register for the creators or the audience of a program aimed at ages 8 to 14.
There were a few reasons. Apart from the Doctor and his TARDIS, the Daleks were probably the single most recognizable element in the Doctor Who serials. Their first appearances had probably saved the series from cancellation, had created a national wave of Dalekmania, and had redefined Doctor Who as a sci fi rather than historical adventure series. They’d starred in the two Cushing movies, and featured or at least appeared in sixteen serials, including multiple appearances with the first four Doctors. In England, the Daleks were huge.
In particular, in England, the Daleks were a huge merchandising item. At their peak, around 1967, there’d been over 130 Dalek merchandise items. They’d remained a strong selling toy line continuously in England over twenty five years by that time. Of course, this was England. In North America, the Daleks had made no impression at all as a toy line...
Unfortunately, the BBC couldn’t license the Daleks as part of Doctor Who. Due to a quirk of the BBC’s copyright policies, the Daleks were actually owned by Terry Nation. Nation had rocketed to success with the Daleks and Doctor Who. He’d gone on to create the British cult series ‘Survivors’ and ‘Blake’s 7'. But his efforts in the sixties to spin off a Dalek TV series for the American market had gone nowhere.
But in 1980, Terry Nation had left England and moved to Hollywood... Where he went on to do... Nothing much, according to the IMDB he was involved in the McGuyver series in 1985, producing a half dozen episodes and credited with writing two. Presumably, he attended a lot of meetings, had projects in development and turnaround, took lunches and lived the life. During this period, Nation seems to have lived off the merchandising revenue from the Daleks.
The Nelvana project offered a second chance for the Daleks in North America, and for Dalek merchandising. The English success at least suggested some potential for toy lines here. Production designs, kits, accessories were all available as ‘on the shelf’ for adapting to North American merchandising. This was not an insignificant point, given how much and how intensely a lot of Saturday afternoon cartoons were pushing toy sets. Nation was motivated to license the Daleks, and to use whatever contacts he had left in the BBC to push for the approval of a Doctor Who cartoon deal with Nelvana.
The Daleks were the most complicated negotiations in the Doctor Who deal. Unlike the Cybermen who had changed dramatically over the series history, the Daleks look and personalities had been iconic from day one. Over the years, Nation had been touchy about how they were used, trying to preserve their status as genuinely threatening menaces. In the end, the Daleks were to feature or at least appear in at least five of the thirteen episodes.
The Dalek design would be largely unchanged. A compromise of sorts was reached with the proposal for Dalek ‘accessories’ - One of the existing Dalek toys was a ‘hoverabout’ a sort of platform or carriage that the Daleks could ride to fly around. From that, Nelvana proposed a series of Dalek machines, tank treads or flying platforms that the Dalek could mount or merge onto, much like R2D2 plugging into Luke Skywalker’s spaceship. That offered some flexibility with the use of Daleks, and some additional toy opportunities. On this basis, Nelvana was able to negotiate a small share of hypothetical North American merchandising.
Dalek’s characters were also untouchable. They were a race of genocidal conquerers and Terry Nation insisted on them staying that way. They would not be played for comedy, no light touches, no reinterpretation. These were troubling constraints for Nelvana.
One thing that Terry Nation pushed for that didn’t make it in was Davros, the creator of the Daleks. Nation felt that Davros gave the Dalek’s more ‘personality’, a sort of focus for the otherwise identical and one note metal monsters. However, Nelvana, probably correctly felt that having a physically disabled, elderly, palsied man in what was effectively a wheelchair probably wouldn’t go over well with children.... some of whom had physically disabled, elderly, palsied relatives or grandparents in wheelchairs themselves.
http://www.google.ca/url?sa=i&rct=j...qR0RxKqUZi4_XWPeyX7g23-w&ust=1395160707657186
The live action series had controversies, particularly in the late seventies and eighties with violent content. For Saturday afternoons, it was a whole new playing field. You simply couldn’t show violence or harm to people or living beings.
Machines, inanimate objects, and oddly enough, robots, were fair game. It might be verboten to show people, or even living aliens coming to harm. But robots could be smashed with impunity. It was natural, even inevitable, then that the Nelvana Doctor’s principal adversaries would be races of alien robots.
At one point, Nelvana’s creative team even looked at creating their own race of humanoid robots. But any race of humanoid robots were going to be so similar to Cybermen that BBC licensing issues were going to be inevitable. So Nelvana ponied up and adapted the Cybermen.
The Daleks were a slightly more complicated issue. Again, they were a race of malign alien robots. Technically, they and the cybermen were cyborgs, but that was a fine point that simply didn’t register for the creators or the audience of a program aimed at ages 8 to 14.
There were a few reasons. Apart from the Doctor and his TARDIS, the Daleks were probably the single most recognizable element in the Doctor Who serials. Their first appearances had probably saved the series from cancellation, had created a national wave of Dalekmania, and had redefined Doctor Who as a sci fi rather than historical adventure series. They’d starred in the two Cushing movies, and featured or at least appeared in sixteen serials, including multiple appearances with the first four Doctors. In England, the Daleks were huge.
In particular, in England, the Daleks were a huge merchandising item. At their peak, around 1967, there’d been over 130 Dalek merchandise items. They’d remained a strong selling toy line continuously in England over twenty five years by that time. Of course, this was England. In North America, the Daleks had made no impression at all as a toy line...
Unfortunately, the BBC couldn’t license the Daleks as part of Doctor Who. Due to a quirk of the BBC’s copyright policies, the Daleks were actually owned by Terry Nation. Nation had rocketed to success with the Daleks and Doctor Who. He’d gone on to create the British cult series ‘Survivors’ and ‘Blake’s 7'. But his efforts in the sixties to spin off a Dalek TV series for the American market had gone nowhere.
But in 1980, Terry Nation had left England and moved to Hollywood... Where he went on to do... Nothing much, according to the IMDB he was involved in the McGuyver series in 1985, producing a half dozen episodes and credited with writing two. Presumably, he attended a lot of meetings, had projects in development and turnaround, took lunches and lived the life. During this period, Nation seems to have lived off the merchandising revenue from the Daleks.
The Nelvana project offered a second chance for the Daleks in North America, and for Dalek merchandising. The English success at least suggested some potential for toy lines here. Production designs, kits, accessories were all available as ‘on the shelf’ for adapting to North American merchandising. This was not an insignificant point, given how much and how intensely a lot of Saturday afternoon cartoons were pushing toy sets. Nation was motivated to license the Daleks, and to use whatever contacts he had left in the BBC to push for the approval of a Doctor Who cartoon deal with Nelvana.
The Daleks were the most complicated negotiations in the Doctor Who deal. Unlike the Cybermen who had changed dramatically over the series history, the Daleks look and personalities had been iconic from day one. Over the years, Nation had been touchy about how they were used, trying to preserve their status as genuinely threatening menaces. In the end, the Daleks were to feature or at least appear in at least five of the thirteen episodes.
The Dalek design would be largely unchanged. A compromise of sorts was reached with the proposal for Dalek ‘accessories’ - One of the existing Dalek toys was a ‘hoverabout’ a sort of platform or carriage that the Daleks could ride to fly around. From that, Nelvana proposed a series of Dalek machines, tank treads or flying platforms that the Dalek could mount or merge onto, much like R2D2 plugging into Luke Skywalker’s spaceship. That offered some flexibility with the use of Daleks, and some additional toy opportunities. On this basis, Nelvana was able to negotiate a small share of hypothetical North American merchandising.
Dalek’s characters were also untouchable. They were a race of genocidal conquerers and Terry Nation insisted on them staying that way. They would not be played for comedy, no light touches, no reinterpretation. These were troubling constraints for Nelvana.
One thing that Terry Nation pushed for that didn’t make it in was Davros, the creator of the Daleks. Nation felt that Davros gave the Dalek’s more ‘personality’, a sort of focus for the otherwise identical and one note metal monsters. However, Nelvana, probably correctly felt that having a physically disabled, elderly, palsied man in what was effectively a wheelchair probably wouldn’t go over well with children.... some of whom had physically disabled, elderly, palsied relatives or grandparents in wheelchairs themselves.
