Doctor Who animation team hope to “accelerate” release of more missing stories

However, with tapes of audio recordings have survived for every episode, a large number of these 'missing' adventures have been released with new animated visuals.

The next release is The Savages, starring William Hartnell as the First Doctor and aired in its original form in 1966.

Speaking at a screening of the new animation at the BFI Southbank, executive producer Paul Hembury revealed that while the team behind these projects has traditionally worked on one story at a time, he is "very hopeful" of striking up a new agreement with BBC Studios that would allow them to be animating multiple missing stories simultaneously.

"Rather than one at a time, what we want to do is actually to accelerate the rate at which we make them," said Hembury.

"What we want to do – and I believe at this stage we will do – is to get the next one started reasonably soon, but before completing that one, we start the one after that... that's the goal.

"Things are coming together quite well. We don't have a signed agreement, but we're very hopeful of being able to do more."

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Hembury added, however, that the team are not working on any new stories just yet. "Not quite, but we're very close," he said, adding that we are at least a year away "from completion of [another story]".

Until now, missing stories have been issued as individual releases on DVD and Blu-ray.

Quizzed at the BFI panel as to whether future animations could instead form part of a season boxset – allowing for more Blu-ray set releases of early William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton seasons – Hembury said: "That's exactly the approach that we're taking."

Back in 2006, The Invasion (1968) became the first classic Doctor Who story to be revived in this fashion, with its two missing episodes recreated in black-and-white animation to complete a DVD release. This proved successful, leading to further animated reconstructions over the years.

Most recently, The Underwater Menace, a serial from 1967, was fully animated and released in November 2023 and The Celestial Toymaker, originally aired in 1966, likewise received a full animation treatment and was released on DVD and Blu-ray in 2024.

Doctor Who: The Savages will be released as an animation on DVD and Blu-ray on Monday, 24th March – pre-order now.

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