I know a lot of you are having problems with the BBC's animated DOCTOR WHO adventure currently playing on BBC's interactive services, DREAMLAND. The animation is of a fairly low standard - someone in the production clearly took the decision to make it look as much like Gerry Anderson's supermarionation as possible, probably because Lucasfilm have made no secret of its influence upon the THE CLONE WARS series currently stinking up the airwaves. This has left the movement of the characters looking clunky, and seemingly unable to emote to some great performances by the voice cast. As such, you may want to squint through it - watch an establishing shot, then zone out and treat it like a radio play with fancy graphics.
It has some other stuff going for it - such as Phil Ford's script, which is pure WHO by a writer who has a firm grip of aiming the show in this direction, having written most of the best episodes of SARAH JANE ADVENTURES (Ford may even have been influential upon the Anderson-esque animation direction, being one of the main writers on NEW CAPTAIN SCARLET).
But the main thing of interest for readers of Bad Comedian may be the presence of our old hand and 2000AD/JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE semi-regular Tiernen Trevallion as the conceptual artist on the show. In fact, it's great to see the credits roll by to the best damned theme tune TV has ever produced and see the name of a pal of the blog. Tiernen has sent along a crop of production drawings for your perusal, along with a few notes of his own.
First up, the initial design for the waitress, Cassie Rice, played by WHO royalty Georgia Moffett. Tiernen says: "They decided Cassie was a bit too 'mature' or something... It's the Betty Page hair, and the pointy 50's boobs I guess".
Next, here's Jimmy Stalkingwolf. He seems relatively unchanged from this drawing (great attitude coming from it, too):
Here's two drawings Tiernen did of The Doctor, noting "At this stage we were going for a more stylized Doctor, but the beeb pulled it back to a more realistic feel".
Finally, here's an early take on the villainous alien race of the piece, The Viperox. Tiernen writes: "The Viperox started out a bit nastier, again we had to pull the design back so it didn't scare anyone. pfft. I wanted to do something a bit like the thing out of the Tom Baker story 'THE BRAIN OF MORBIUS', complete genius. Initially they wanted something 50's B-movie-ish, but they wouldn't be able to handle the cheese!". The leader of the Viperox, Lord Azlok, is being voiced by that great old British thesp, David Warner.
Damned fine stuff, sir.