Classic Ice Warriors remade. Fresh Ice Warriors revealed.
Recently, we discussed the upcoming Blu-ray release of the lost final episode of William Hartnell’s Doctor, now referred to as the First Doctor by fans. It seems that this is a larger project than previously revealed. The animation studio, Planet Studio 55 has done up several episodes featuring the First Doctor, and while those are being released, the publisher has turned to a new animation studio, Quirios Entertainment, to start on the Second Doctor’s episodes.
Nothing official has been announced to this effect, but it seems that the publisher’s plan is to replace all of the lost episodes with animated replacements, as it continues to release the classic seasons of the show in order from the beginning. For various reasons, there are more than a few episodes of the show which have been lost to time, and for which all we have is an audio recording, or perhaps a script and some set stills.
The sample illustration above is for the first such episode, The Ice Warriors, in which the titular monsters were first combated. They’ve also released, via doctorwho.tv (if you can’t tell). this finished clip from the episode:
“Doctor Who has had many different visual styles thanks to changing directors, designers and production methods. We wanted to mirror this in our choice of animation partners,” said Dan Hall, Managing Director of Pup Ltd Media Consultancy, the production studio responsible for the home market of classic Doctor Who episodes, when asked about the change in animation studio.
In related news, it was recently announced that the Ice Warriors would be back for an episode of the upcoming second half of season seven, which has already been produced. Fans have been wondering how these reimagined villains would look, as it’s become par for the current show runners to change-up the style of each Doctor Who villain each time they are used in the show.
This new poster for the upcoming half season shows us several of the villains the Doctor will have to deal with:
Here’s a better look at the portion with the Ice Warrior redesign:
The second half of season seven of Doctor Who will begin in April 2013, while filming of the 50th Anniversary special is slated to kick off in the spring so it can air after the end of the season. The first episodes of the fourth original Doctor Who season will be out on home-video soon, and will include the restored version of The Ice Warriors.
