Review of The Macra Terror (#34)
Original Air Date: 11 Mar – 01 Apr 1967
Doctors/Companions: Two, Jamie McCrimmon, Ben Jackson, Polly Wright
Stars: Patrick Troughton, Frazer Hines, Michael Craze, Anneke Wills
Preceding Story: The Moonbase (Two, Jamie, Ben, Polly)
Succeeding Story: The Faceless Ones (Two, Jamie, Ben, Polly)
Welcome to the first DVD review of 2022! Before I get into the actual review, I’d like to talk about themes.
For the past several years, I’ve had an overarching theme of sorts for these monthly reviews (Highs & Lows, Hidden Gems, Bad Reputation…), and so I wanted another such theme for this year. As I looked over my list of remaining stories to review, though, I realized two key things: (1) there are 17 adventures left for me to review from the Classic era (an awkward prime number at best), and (2) there is no real underlying connection among them.
My eventual conclusion was that my theme could be nothing but a catch-all. Like the final room of a museum from a favorite childhood book, I would label them “Everything Else.” And since they don’t fit nicely into a whole number of years, I’ll simply keep going until they run out.
That takes us midway through 2023. I’ve said before that I don’t know how much longer I’m likely to continue blogging here; Confessions of a Neowhovian is getting pretty long in the tooth as it begins its twelfth year. But with Classic stories still to cover through mid-2023, and a 60th anniversary special to come that November, I think I can safely commit to continuing the blog through its 13th year.
So that’s the plan. In case you want to watch along with me, here is the review schedule for the final seventeen Classic Who adventures.
| Everything Else | ||
|---|---|---|
| January 2022: | The Macra Terror (io9 #206) | Second Doctor |
| February 2022: | Warriors of the Deep (io9 #179) | Fifth Doctor |
| March 2022: | Full Circle (io9 #140) | Fourth Doctor |
| April 2022: | The Sea Devils (io9 #196) | Third Doctor |
| May 2022: | State of Decay (io9 #178) | Fourth Doctor |
| June 2022: | The Chase (io9 #148) | First Doctor |
| July 2022: | Image of the Fendahl (io9 #185) | Fourth Doctor |
| August 2022: | The Two Doctors (io9 #183) | Sixth Doctor |
| September 2022: | The Time Warrior (io9 #33) | Third Doctor |
| October 2022: | The Seeds of Death (io9 #144) | Second Doctor |
| November 2022: | Battlefield (io9 #184) | Seventh Doctor |
| December 2022: | Planet of Evil (io9 #154) | Fourth Doctor |
| January 2023: | The Dalek Invasion of Earth (io9 #41) | First Doctor |
| February 2023: | Enlightenment (io9 #135) | Fifth Doctor |
| March 2023: | The Invasion of Time (io9 #143) | Fourth Doctor |
| April 2023: | Frontier in Space (io9 #176) | Third Doctor |
| May 2023: | The Pirate Planet (io9 #43) | Fourth Doctor |
Now let’s talk about this month’s entry. Although this animated version of the lost adventure Terror of the Macra has been in my collection for over two years now, I hadn’t ever felt the urge to check it out, and it was still in its plastic wrapper. I’ve watched reconstructions of the story before, but it has been literal years—perhaps even close to a decade—since I last did so.
Aside from the eponymous creatures, I didn’t remember much. Further, that memory was somewhat diluted by my stronger memory of the Macra’s more recent appearance in Gridlock, where they had “devolved” into mere monsters, rather than the sentient beings they are here, with at least one of them eerily speaking with a human voice coming out of a crustacean face. I have to say, though, that the Macra themselves ended up being the biggest surprise—and the biggest delight—for me.
Especially in the black-and-white era of the First and Second Doctors, Doctor Who was known for its incredibly sparse budget. The few surviving stills and film clips from The Macra Terror show the usual mismatch between the idea of the Macra and their realization on screen. The animated version, therefore, may well hold the rare honor of being superior to the original, as it allows the Macra to exceed their original design and become a truly frightening threat.
The rest of the story is not bad overall, though I can’t say I think it’s among the best of Troughton’s era. Ben, Polly, and Jamie have some interesting parts to play counter to each other as well as in support of the Doctor, making better use of a crowded TARDIS than many stories do, and the mind-control dystopia plot feels like it fits right in the Doctor Who wheelhouse.
Although the animation style itself is not particularly to my taste, it’s better than that for some other serials we’ve seen. I didn’t find myself distracted by it in the way I have in other adventures. The animated Macra alone—perhaps for the first time truly deserving the moniker “terrifying”—make this version a worthy addition to your watch list and/or DVD collection.