The Savages

"We've reached an age of peace and prosperity."

Writer: Ian Stuart Black

Format: TV (Animation)

Released: March 2025

Season: 3.09

Featuring: First Doctor, Steven, Dodo

Synopsis

The Doctor and his travelling companions Steven and Dodo arrive on an unnamed planet where they encounter two distinct people – the Elders and the Savages. They soon discover the Elders are the evil ones, draining the primitive Savages for their life source to remain young and powerful forever.

Verdict

The Savages was a very strong animation of the sadly completely missing First Doctor serial! I’ve been really excited for this one ever since it was announced and part of that is because of how niche it feels. I don’t feel like this is a story that fans were screaming out for to receive the animation treatment but I’m so happy that it has been done. I’ve had this on pre-order and read the preview in Doctor Who Magazine along with listening to the Power of 3 podcast preview too. I’ve been very excited and thankfully it didn’t disappoint! I’ve caught up on the animations in my last month or so of blogging and whilst this one perhaps was a little more traditional and aimed to stay true to the original - something I’m completely on board with - it didn’t make it any less entertaining. Perhaps the best description would be that it was less ambitious than some of the more recent ones. One thing I didn’t notice by choosing to watch the colourised animation version is that the setting is actually quite mundane. There’s not a lot of moving around and I almost feel like I would have benefitted more from watching the black and white version. There just wasn’t an awful lot of stuff to provide colour for! That’s not the animation’s problem though and I thought they did a fine job in bringing the story to life. I must say, the animation for Dodo in particular was outrageously good. Her likeness was captured absolutely perfectly! I was so impressed with that. I’m surprised this story doesn’t have the strongest of reputations amongst fandom because it sees the departure of Steven as companion, but in watching again that never feels like it’s going to be the case until the last five minutes. I like the suspension in part one before we learn how the Elders sustain themselves with such a powerful supply of life force, and having blogged this story twice already in different versions I feel like I can appreciate that more in hindsight. I know the answer so drip feeding it to the Doctor and his companions is great. I love the idea of the Elders having charted the Doctor’s travels through time and space and they were honoured by his arrival to visit them. He was instantly bestowed as an Elder himself and that’s just a figure or figurine variant waiting to happen! I am a big fan of the way the story develops and we learn that the titular savages are actually not the enemies of the piece. There’s something far more disturbing at hand. I was impressed with the animation in capturing the after effects of the transference on the savages, and this definitely came across better on them rather than the Doctor. The use of subtle mannerisms though to show that Jano had essences of the Doctor within him after solely taking his life energy was glorious. I would love to see if that happened in the original version and hopefully one day the original tapes show up! It does feel like we’re never going to get any missing material returned now which is a massive shame, but these animations are wonderful in filling the gaps. I thought the light guns came across really strongly in the animation and would definitely be an improvement on the prop we would have seen on screen. There were also vibes of An Unearthly Child for me in how the savages were depicted and that went nicely with Dodo thinking they weren’t actually in the far future at all but more like the time of the first man in the Iron Age. The vaporising smoke was also captured really well in the animation and was definitely a benefit of having colour, especially when the guns were fired into it. Also, just one thing that I adore about these early animations is the colour of that first TARDIS console. It’s always glorious and it’s a shame we don’t get to see more of it! I think the destruction of the Elders’ machines and basically their entire society was done brilliantly and the direction for Steven’s departure afterwards was emotional. He just saunters off by himself to become a king of an entirely new society that will require a great deal of fixing! Big Finish have explored that wonderfully but the images here are really strong. Dodo’s crying really sells how much of a departure this is and it does feel like a bit occasion. As it should do! Overall, the story itself is very solid if not a tad slow in parts, but the animation feels true to how things would have played out in 1966. Hopefully one day we’ll be able to compare, but until then this is an excellent replacement. I can’t wait for the next announcement!

Rating: 8/10