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The first concept you covered honestly seemed the most like the doctor who we know and honestly sounded like a fantastic series. Too bad there was a case of too many cooks and the whole thing just got drawn out, over complicated, and strayed far too far from the source material
On paper it seems like Dr. Who should work BETTER animated. It'd let you do crazier sci-fi stuff, make the reincarnation thing easier to handle, and let you visit older characters whose actors otherwise would be too old to reprise the role.
This. I just do not understand why they just don't give the Classic Doctors an animated series when the actors are still eager to play the characters. Big Finish shows they have a lot to go yet.
@@rayvenkman2087 I heard that big finishes high prices were so the company could stay afloat so it seems like even their audio dramas are already expensive adding animation would just make them more so I think It ultimately comes down to The Chronic problem of Doctor Who money
There was a pitch for a Doctor Who the Animated Series and it would have cycled through each of the eleven Doctors, starting with the First Doctor. The idea was to use the series to fill in gaps left in the series. There was one piece of concept art showed the First Doctor with two child companions, a boy from the 1920s and a girl from modern day. The BBC requested revisions, then ultimately passed on the concept, stating that they preferred to focus on the live-action series. Found it on Doctor Who's wiki.
When I first saw this video I could only think of how bad western animation was in the 90s, but now I just remembered a very underrated gem, Phantom 2040. Peter Chung's style fits perfectly with high concept sci-fi stories.
I unironically would have probably loved this as a kid. This was such an interesting and unique topic, thank you for bringing some more exposure to this lost gem.
My dad started working for Tyco in 1994. It’s fun to know that he was only 2 years off from potentially working on Doctor Who toys. He was there through them being bought out by Mattel. His division was laid off in 2004. He was a model maker and worked on the models that a lot of radio controlled cars and Matchbox cars from the mid-90’s through early 2000’s were based on. Basically he was handed a blueprint and he carved a model by hand that they then turned into molds. The company didn’t start using computerized stuff until the tail end of his time there.
I think it would still be amazing to have a Doctor Who animated series. I would love if it could be animated versions of Big Finush audios, or even some if the novels
An Anthology series with multipart stories that don't necessarily follow on from each other, possibly animated in different styles, might be the way to go with something like Doctor Who. The wilderness years has some very good material for this sort of thing.
Yeah, I've long thought Doctor Who would work well in animation. I've done a couple of Big Finish animated scenes and I'm considering trying to do a whole story once my current project is done.
Dr. Who would actually lend itself very well to an animated format. It would give the team and writers more freedom and creativity with the locations and character designs as well as avoid the pitfall of TV Budget CGI.
That one Doctor design, with the long jacket, spiked hair and glasses, gives me SERIOUS flashbacks to the reimagined Simon Belmont from 'Captain N & The Game Masters'
They could make animated features out of the wealth of Big Finish productions since all the voice work is done. They'd just have to pay additional licensing to use the voices again
Yes. If it can't be live action, then animation is the next best thing for him. It would be cool to see adaptations of his audio works or new stories set after his movie.
The title "Doctor Who Goes Hawaiian" may have been a reference to a script written for a proposed but never made Beetlejuice sequel called "Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian" that was supposedly abandoned because Warner Brothers wanted Tim Burton to focus on making a Batman sequel.
"Such and Such goes Hawaiian" was a running gag in the entertainment industry. A bit like everything being made by "ACME" when they needed a generic name for a company in a story. (Which featured prominently in Looney Tunes cartoons, for example.) It was a way of saying "Such and Such Goes Wild and Crazy" (like a Hawaiian shirt, crazy pattern)...and had a potential of everything being -nothing- like what it was originally. Which is why Beetlejuice 2 had the proposed title... it was going to be vastly different than the first movie. Likely, as it turns out, the same reasoning would apply for that DW animated script. Today, it's usually "Such and Such Goes Wild!" like the old reality videos "Girls Gone Wild!"
This is so strange and i can’t believe this might of happened and also don’t let David Cole any where near doctor who and if he does send a dalek executioner on him he makes the timeless child ark seem like a really good story idea
That guy sounded like a moron. I don't know who he was, but I'm guessing he was friends with one of the owners of Nelvana back then. I'm totally with John De Klein saying that it was STUPID.
Thank you so much for posting this! I started working at Nelvana in 1991 as a layout artist on Beetlejuice. I met John De Klein and Ted Bastien and worked alongside them sometimes. I remember the Dr. Who concept drawings pinned up on the bulletin boards by Ted, and I was so interested in the possibility of that project coming to light! No one wanted to talk about it....and now I know why. Thank you also for posting that tribute to Ted at the end. He was a phenomenal artist who was never treated as well as he should have been by the executives at Nelvana. He was treated well at Guru, the studio that makes Paw Patrol though.
surprised you didn't talk about the first attempt at a Doctor Who Cartoon with Hannah Barbara's pitch which ended up being turned into a weird happy days spin-off.
@@80sDisneyFanSo someone just thought that the Happy Days Gang were the perfect choice for time traveling adventures when Doctor Who was coming off its 70s hype?
Even if it was terribly different than the Doctor we know and love, its a shame this show didn't make it off the ground. It's just so novel, I'm sure even if it was rubbish most fans would have a soft spot for it.
So much of the doctor concept art reminds me of vash the stampede from the trigun manga, especially the one at 20:53 something about the massive overcoat. Weirdly, it kind of works for the character though, they both have the sort of whimsical kind of goofy but still strong, imposing and secretly very calculating characteristics.
It's cool to hear someone raise awareness about projects like this. I always wondered what this Doctor Who show would have been like, so thanks for doing this. One minor personal critique: I know that the video is not about it, but reducing Rock & Rule to the words "Adult feature flop" is a little harsh. There were various internal reasons that sabotaged that film. It was intentionally buried by a changing of higher ups in charge of distribution that simply did not support the vision of the film's creators. Is that film perfect or even everyone's jam? No, but MGM/UA never even gave it the chance to flop, as it saw an astronomically small release and was basically DoA. So few people even know about that movie and how ambitious it was, so even just a couple sentences elaborating on its unique existence and production would be appreciated when recapping Nelvana's history as a company. Just my opinion tho.
More of Cole's suggestions: 1. K9 needs to be louder, angrier and have access to a time machine. 2. Whenever K9 isn't on screen, people should be asking "where's Awesome? ".
This show sounds *wild.* I need to see this. EDIT: The first one, not the Time Crusaders, which seems like a watered-down version, or Cole’s rewrite, which was… 🤦♂️
This is honestly fascinating. I'm glad this ended up in my recommended videos, because, otherwise, I never would've known this Doctor Who animated series almost existed
A classic case of too many cooks in the kitchen and nobody wanted to follow the recipe. It's astonishing. Dr. Who should have been easy to turn into a cartoon, what with the blue print already well laid out across 25+ seasons. Unreal.
Producers of movies and TV shows always think that the rule, "If it's not broken, don't fix it!" doesn't apply to them when adapting an already well established property. They almost always insist on "fixing" something that isn't broken.
@@plantainsame2049 It was 4 months ago, so I'm not sure. Mostly likely because I was not sure of the exact number and took an educated guess. Much like you are doing yourself.
I really like the idea of the new companions being used in a live action series. The main female companion named Raven and the Half Cyberman character but not so keen on the Alien Ape but some kind of Alien companion would make an interesting addition
Definitely feels Cole had no knowledge / respect for the original source material. Probably should have approached a UK studio like Cosgrove Hall in the first place, kept it close to the original, but with plenty of toyetic designs for tyco, and we could have had a good show with a toy-line to go with it and everyone make money.
I recall hearing about two Beetlejuice sequels back in the 90s. One was titled Beetlejuice in Love. The other sequel was titled Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian. I remember back in the 70s there were several TV shows and sitcoms that did at least one Hawaiian episode storyline. Starsky and Hutch, the Jeffersons, and most famously the Brady Bunch. It was kind of a gag to do in the 90s.
33:03 I disagree completely with your take. In my opinion, without the cashflow of a toyline, it would have been impossible to make the show. What a lot of creatives and fans fail to realize is that virtually all aspects of any creative work, regardless of medium, cost money. A lot of money. There was no chance some millionaire Whovian was going to come along and write Nelvana a blank check. Merchandizing was the only practical way for them to get the money they needed. Based on what this video tells us, what killed The New Doctor Who wasn’t Nelvana selling out, it was the BBC refusing to compromise.
It's really no wonder Nickelodeon pushed for creator driven animation. Between the corporate greed of toy companies and the lack of respect for the people actually making the damned thing, it's a wonder we ever got cartoons at all back then. It sounds like a hellscape where nobody is happy with the final product.
I did not know about this! Thank you very much for making this video! You really did an amazing job explaining the history of a possible animated series! 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
I keep learning about these failed animated series, the other day I discovered that there was a Spaceballs cartoon released in 2008, Mel Brooks produced it so I thought I’d give it a watch, much to my chagrin I now understand why it was only 13 episodes long
Way back in Tom Barker era, In Key to Time stories didn't Doctor install randomizer circuitry which made it impossible for them decision exactly choice time period?
Imagine the look on Dave Filoni’s face if he wanted to introduce a Wookiee character nicknamed Fran, but was told by one of the REALLY nerdy interns that Square-Enix already created a similar character!
Great video, dude. All I knew of this project was some bits of concept art, so was really interesting to learn about that whole pre-production process. Would be great to see more of this style of video from you in the future!
I tried to watch the original series chronologically but some of the episodes were like burnt in a fire and lost forever or something and the amount of other series and episode felt too daunting.
I usually just watch what I can and just fill in the gaps later as the BBC does whatever they can to restore some once lost events. This is probably the only known exception to my iron willed rule of never skipping canon events of any series. I know alot of episodes are never more and most likely never to be restored but that never stops my love for the ever eccentric doctor and crew.
The original taped missing episodes of Dr Who were originally wiped by the BBC so that they could reuse the tapes for other projects and cut down on storage space. Some of the 'lost' stories have been found and restored while others have been reproduced in an animation form. Which although they're not quite like the originals. Can still give you a good idea of what they were like back in the day. Although some have been lost forever. So animation is the only way forward for them but If you can get past the missing episodes and try to follow the series. You'll find a wealth of amazing science fiction stories. Which although clunky at times. Improve as the series progresses.
Even worse than an accident, the BBC recycled the tapes DELIBERATELY. Much of what remains from the first two Doctors has come from copies sold overseas and later sent back to the BBC
I originally thought this was going to be related to an animated pitch I recall seeing in the late 1990s at a Chicago Visions convention. It was one of the few times I’ve been in a room full of strangers that all looked at each other and thought ‘This isn’t happening’.
That was the Karen McCoy pitch. The latest issue of Vworp! Vworp! (from which the information and images in this video comes) also covers the full Karen McCoy story as well as photographs from that slide show of images put on at Visions.
I find it interesting that the perspective on the UK side is that the toy production is to blame for the failure of this show to launch, whereas, from the North American perspective, pretty much no cartoon show would be able to get launched at all during this time period without profits from such toy deals xD I think that really goes to show the divergence in strategies between the two areas on how children's media is addressed at the time, and the general distance of corporate sponsorship in UK vs embrace of it in North America.
I didn't even know there was a cartoon series in the works. It's a shame it never to fruition but perhaps that's a blessing in disguise because as you say, it may have prevented the live action relaunch we ended up getting. I just hope Dr who doesn't get grinded down to the ground like it was in the 80s.
Yeah i don’t want to live in a timeline where it didn’t come back in the 2000’s and David Tentant became my favourite of the few guys I’ve seen (I keep forgetting the 9th doctor’s name 😅)
You made a good point at the end... Nelvana really dodged a bullet for being responsible for an animated project that destroyed the quality, visual legacy, and appeal of a British television franchise just in the name of corporate deals, executive meddling, and selling toys. ***cough-cough*** Thomas & Friends: All Engines Go ***cough-cough***
Another funny/sad thing I noticed that you didn't mention explitcitly is how all the scripts/bibles had Raven/Rowan as the main companion... and yet she is nowhere in the toy list you show. Classic toy company thinking.
Funny how the first treatment was actually the doctor we all know and love. Yet people who obviously aren't fans or know anything about the source material were writers.
Well, I think it's safe to say David Cole was probably one of the main factors of why this show never happened. The original script and ideas by John De Klein are leagues ahead of what David Cole did. Especially because John actually knows the backstory of Doctor Who.
And I thought we were lucky dodging what the 8th Doctor's Americanized version series would have devolved down to. (Research it. It was filled with appalling plans.) These were a cartoons, we should all be appreciative, that were erased...
Man. This really makes me wish I could go back in time and pitch them MY Doctor Who treatment! I wrote and drew the concept years ago, and I daresay it puts some of these premises to shame. But maybe that's just my pride. ...Uh, anyone interested? I do love to talk.
This whole progression sounds likeva classic children's game "telephone," where one child starts a phrase and it progresses through a ring of children one by one until the last child loudly offers the final version of the phrase. The whole game is a "degradation of signal" exercise. Much like the disastrous animation attempt's many forms on its way to never happening. ... And I thought the 96 relaunch was bad. Yikes.
8:08 I’m sorry but saying the Doctors aren’t silly is like saying the Daleks don’t exterminate, it’s just plain incorrect. I know it’s not always the exact word you would use, but I don’t think there’s a single doctor without their silly moments
Some of this concept art actually looks pretty cool, though the character designs for the Doctor himself looked like they were struggling a bit. Not fond of the sort of "Ralph Fiennes version of John Steed" one. Some of the others looked like the Real Ghostbusters version of Egon Spengler in a trenchcoat.
10:30 As a part of my producing class in film school it was recommended that you compare your project to one or two pre-existing productions. Seems to be industry standard.
This was a really fascinating watch! :) Quick question: who did the art for the blonde bowler hat Doctor, the Master, the Rani etc etc? I can't find it anywhere else?
An animated show would make regeneration pointless because they can just keep the same Doctor forever. They can even change his voice actor without having to regenerate him.
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This video was very tough to make, so I'd really, really appreciate your support on Patreon so I can make more higher-quality stuff like this!
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The first concept you covered honestly seemed the most like the doctor who we know and honestly sounded like a fantastic series.
Too bad there was a case of too many cooks and the whole thing just got drawn out, over complicated, and strayed far too far from the source material
So like Dr. who.
So many cooks. SO MANY COOKS!
It happens all too often.
On paper it seems like Dr. Who should work BETTER animated. It'd let you do crazier sci-fi stuff, make the reincarnation thing easier to handle, and let you visit older characters whose actors otherwise would be too old to reprise the role.
This. I just do not understand why they just don't give the Classic Doctors an animated series when the actors are still eager to play the characters. Big Finish shows they have a lot to go yet.
@@rayvenkman2087 I heard that big finishes high prices were so the company could stay afloat so it seems like even their audio dramas are already expensive adding animation would just make them more so I think It ultimately comes down to The Chronic problem of Doctor Who money
There was a pitch for a Doctor Who the Animated Series and it would have cycled through each of the eleven Doctors, starting with the First Doctor. The idea was to use the series to fill in gaps left in the series. There was one piece of concept art showed the First Doctor with two child companions, a boy from the 1920s and a girl from modern day. The BBC requested revisions, then ultimately passed on the concept, stating that they preferred to focus on the live-action series. Found it on Doctor Who's wiki.
When I first saw this video I could only think of how bad western animation was in the 90s, but now I just remembered a very underrated gem, Phantom 2040. Peter Chung's style fits perfectly with high concept sci-fi stories.
I unironically would have probably loved this as a kid. This was such an interesting and unique topic, thank you for bringing some more exposure to this lost gem.
I absolutely love the Mobius inspired designs for the show. Absolutely brilliant. A shame those late-stage re-writes screwed everything up.
I forget Dreamland is a thing every time until someone mentions it, it deletes itself from my brain
lmao it’s a silent
Wish I had this skill
Sorry, what were we talking about?
@@Grayvorn DREAMLAND! IF I HAVE TO REMEMBER IT SO DO YOU!!!!!
@@brewster_4 weirdly enough I love it actually. Although that is partly because two valued friends worked on it.
My dad started working for Tyco in 1994. It’s fun to know that he was only 2 years off from potentially working on Doctor Who toys. He was there through them being bought out by Mattel. His division was laid off in 2004. He was a model maker and worked on the models that a lot of radio controlled cars and Matchbox cars from the mid-90’s through early 2000’s were based on. Basically he was handed a blueprint and he carved a model by hand that they then turned into molds. The company didn’t start using computerized stuff until the tail end of his time there.
I think it would still be amazing to have a Doctor Who animated series. I would love if it could be animated versions of Big Finush audios, or even some if the novels
An Anthology series with multipart stories that don't necessarily follow on from each other, possibly animated in different styles, might be the way to go with something like Doctor Who. The wilderness years has some very good material for this sort of thing.
@@FunnyClementinelike Star Wars Visions
Yeah, I've long thought Doctor Who would work well in animation. I've done a couple of Big Finish animated scenes and I'm considering trying to do a whole story once my current project is done.
Someone has recently animated The Genocide Machine.
Animated versions of Big Finish audios could be possible for an animated series.
We do have animations of lost serial chapters in Classic Doctor Who
Dr. Who would actually lend itself very well to an animated format.
It would give the team and writers more freedom and creativity with the locations and character designs as well as avoid the pitfall of TV Budget CGI.
A shame the Doctor Who animated series never happened. Raven would have been an awesome character.
That art style in the thumbnail is _peak_ 90s 😯
Peter o'toole in drag sounds 100% like a doctor to me
That one Doctor design, with the long jacket, spiked hair and glasses, gives me SERIOUS flashbacks to the reimagined Simon Belmont from 'Captain N & The Game Masters'
I'd love to see an animated series of Paul McGanns adventures.
They could make animated features out of the wealth of Big Finish productions since all the voice work is done. They'd just have to pay additional licensing to use the voices again
FR
Yes. If it can't be live action, then animation is the next best thing for him. It would be cool to see adaptations of his audio works or new stories set after his movie.
Find me a Tardis and take me to the timelines where we have Dr. Who video games developed by golden age Konami and Capcom.
The title "Doctor Who Goes Hawaiian" may have been a reference to a script written for a proposed but never made Beetlejuice sequel called "Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian" that was supposedly abandoned because Warner Brothers wanted Tim Burton to focus on making a Batman sequel.
"Such and Such goes Hawaiian" was a running gag in the entertainment industry. A bit like everything being made by "ACME" when they needed a generic name for a company in a story. (Which featured prominently in Looney Tunes cartoons, for example.) It was a way of saying "Such and Such Goes Wild and Crazy" (like a Hawaiian shirt, crazy pattern)...and had a potential of everything being -nothing- like what it was originally. Which is why Beetlejuice 2 had the proposed title... it was going to be vastly different than the first movie. Likely, as it turns out, the same reasoning would apply for that DW animated script. Today, it's usually "Such and Such Goes Wild!" like the old reality videos "Girls Gone Wild!"
It's funny seeing this pick up more Americanisation, when the revival stuck to proper doctor who spirit and became a global juggernaut
The 2005 one that's clearly inspired heavily by Buffy and the 1996 American TVM's style?
This is so strange and i can’t believe this might of happened and also don’t let David Cole any where near doctor who and if he does send a dalek executioner on him he makes the timeless child ark seem like a really good story idea
"arc" 😂
That guy sounded like a moron. I don't know who he was, but I'm guessing he was friends with one of the owners of Nelvana back then. I'm totally with John De Klein saying that it was STUPID.
@@ShamrockParticle?
Thank you so much for posting this! I started working at Nelvana in 1991 as a layout artist on Beetlejuice. I met John De Klein and Ted Bastien and worked alongside them sometimes. I remember the Dr. Who concept drawings pinned up on the bulletin boards by Ted, and I was so interested in the possibility of that project coming to light! No one wanted to talk about it....and now I know why. Thank you also for posting that tribute to Ted at the end. He was a phenomenal artist who was never treated as well as he should have been by the executives at Nelvana. He was treated well at Guru, the studio that makes Paw Patrol though.
surprised you didn't talk about the first attempt at a Doctor Who Cartoon with Hannah Barbara's pitch which ended up being turned into a weird happy days spin-off.
That story is fake actually.
@@80sDisneyFanSo someone just thought that the Happy Days Gang were the perfect choice for time traveling adventures when Doctor Who was coming off its 70s hype?
@@KingRandor82 Idk man it was the 80's. There were other weird animated spin-offs of live-action stuff.
Even if it was terribly different than the Doctor we know and love, its a shame this show didn't make it off the ground. It's just so novel, I'm sure even if it was rubbish most fans would have a soft spot for it.
So much of the doctor concept art reminds me of vash the stampede from the trigun manga, especially the one at 20:53 something about the massive overcoat. Weirdly, it kind of works for the character though, they both have the sort of whimsical kind of goofy but still strong, imposing and secretly very calculating characteristics.
I am in favor of the modern Dr. Who writers bringing back the Master's metal-bird henchman. Name him B3-AK or something.
It's cool to hear someone raise awareness about projects like this. I always wondered what this Doctor Who show would have been like, so thanks for doing this.
One minor personal critique: I know that the video is not about it, but reducing Rock & Rule to the words "Adult feature flop" is a little harsh. There were various internal reasons that sabotaged that film. It was intentionally buried by a changing of higher ups in charge of distribution that simply did not support the vision of the film's creators. Is that film perfect or even everyone's jam? No, but MGM/UA never even gave it the chance to flop, as it saw an astronomically small release and was basically DoA. So few people even know about that movie and how ambitious it was, so even just a couple sentences elaborating on its unique existence and production would be appreciated when recapping Nelvana's history as a company. Just my opinion tho.
17:40 I think you'll find "Yes, we know who you are" is a perfectly normal thing for a Dalek to say.
Only to Harriet Jones, former prime minister
@@powpenguin7483Yes, we know who she is :P
"Your identity is known to us" is more Dalek
This blond Doctor looks like if Danny Kaye were alive and in his prime, cast in the role, and then turned into a cartoon character.
More of Cole's suggestions:
1. K9 needs to be louder, angrier and have access to a time machine.
2. Whenever K9 isn't on screen, people should be asking "where's Awesome? ".
And look sad when they ask
This show sounds *wild.* I need to see this.
EDIT: The first one, not the Time Crusaders, which seems like a watered-down version, or Cole’s rewrite, which was… 🤦♂️
They took "change the Doctor design." and just ran with it, right? Wild.
This is honestly fascinating. I'm glad this ended up in my recommended videos, because, otherwise, I never would've known this Doctor Who animated series almost existed
I liked the initial pitch with the design of The Doctor with the long coat looking like Egon Spengler from The Real Ghostbusters 😊
What a brilliant mini documentary of what could have been
Oh what I would have given to see this show come to fruition
A classic case of too many cooks in the kitchen and nobody wanted to follow the recipe. It's astonishing. Dr. Who should have been easy to turn into a cartoon, what with the blue print already well laid out across 25+ seasons. Unreal.
Producers of movies and TV shows always think that the rule, "If it's not broken, don't fix it!" doesn't apply to them when adapting an already well established property. They almost always insist on "fixing" something that isn't broken.
@WyldstaarStudios More so in Hollywood and the current day hacks who smugly thinks they know better.
Why do you say 25 + why not just say 26 which is how many seasons it was at the time currently it's closer to 30 +
Actually it might be closer to 40
@@plantainsame2049 It was 4 months ago, so I'm not sure. Mostly likely because I was not sure of the exact number and took an educated guess. Much like you are doing yourself.
@@harlandmct classic had 26 and new is going onto its 14
So 40
Not included are the specials the other specials or the movie
Man a Doctor Who animated show would be great now
I am suprised none BBC producers never thought use anime to remake lost or incomplete episodes of Dr Who until after 2019
I really like the idea of the new companions being used in a live action series. The main female companion named Raven and the Half Cyberman character but not so keen on the Alien Ape but some kind of Alien companion would make an interesting addition
Definitely feels Cole had no knowledge / respect for the original source material. Probably should have approached a UK studio like Cosgrove Hall in the first place, kept it close to the original, but with plenty of toyetic designs for tyco, and we could have had a good show with a toy-line to go with it and everyone make money.
Mmm yeah doctor who is British and if you remove that it’s a bit awkward 😅
I recall hearing about two Beetlejuice sequels back in the 90s. One was titled Beetlejuice in Love. The other sequel was titled Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian.
I remember back in the 70s there were several TV shows and sitcoms that did at least one Hawaiian episode storyline.
Starsky and Hutch, the Jeffersons, and most famously the Brady Bunch. It was kind of a gag to do in the 90s.
33:03 I disagree completely with your take. In my opinion, without the cashflow of a toyline, it would have been impossible to make the show. What a lot of creatives and fans fail to realize is that virtually all aspects of any creative work, regardless of medium, cost money. A lot of money. There was no chance some millionaire Whovian was going to come along and write Nelvana a blank check. Merchandizing was the only practical way for them to get the money they needed. Based on what this video tells us, what killed The New Doctor Who wasn’t Nelvana selling out, it was the BBC refusing to compromise.
This!, man. So much beloved media really only existed because it was not-so-secretly a toy commercial.
"Harriet Jones. Former Prime Minister"
17:40 "Yes yes, I know who you are"
It's really no wonder Nickelodeon pushed for creator driven animation. Between the corporate greed of toy companies and the lack of respect for the people actually making the damned thing, it's a wonder we ever got cartoons at all back then. It sounds like a hellscape where nobody is happy with the final product.
I did not know about this! Thank you very much for making this video! You really did an amazing job explaining the history of a possible animated series! 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
I keep learning about these failed animated series, the other day I discovered that there was a Spaceballs cartoon released in 2008, Mel Brooks produced it so I thought I’d give it a watch, much to my chagrin I now understand why it was only 13 episodes long
Wow. I didn't even know that there was a space balls animated series. It was obviously that bad it got buried then.
I have NEVER heard of this! Thank you for the video and the very well-done research.
Sounds like David Cole was a "closed system" and figuratively "fed off himself", like an Ouroboros but more phallic
Way back in Tom Barker era, In Key to Time stories didn't Doctor install randomizer circuitry which made it impossible for them decision exactly choice time period?
Amazing. I'm 52 and Dr Who was still the most important thing in my life back in the 90's, but I don't remember this at all.
It's weird that their Chewbacca homage was named Fran, because FFXII's Chewbacca homage was also named Fran
Imagine the look on Dave Filoni’s face if he wanted to introduce a Wookiee character nicknamed Fran, but was told by one of the REALLY nerdy interns that Square-Enix already created a similar character!
Great video, dude. All I knew of this project was some bits of concept art, so was really interesting to learn about that whole pre-production process. Would be great to see more of this style of video from you in the future!
I tried to watch the original series chronologically but some of the episodes were like burnt in a fire and lost forever or something and the amount of other series and episode felt too daunting.
I usually just watch what I can and just fill in the gaps later as the BBC does whatever they can to restore some once lost events. This is probably the only known exception to my iron willed rule of never skipping canon events of any series. I know alot of episodes are never more and most likely never to be restored but that never stops my love for the ever eccentric doctor and crew.
The original taped missing episodes of Dr Who were originally wiped by the BBC so that they could reuse the tapes for other projects and cut down on storage space. Some of the 'lost' stories have been found and restored while others have been reproduced in an animation form. Which although they're not quite like the originals. Can still give you a good idea of what they were like back in the day. Although some have been lost forever. So animation is the only way forward for them but If you can get past the missing episodes and try to follow the series. You'll find a wealth of amazing science fiction stories. Which although clunky at times. Improve as the series progresses.
Even worse than an accident, the BBC recycled the tapes DELIBERATELY.
Much of what remains from the first two Doctors has come from copies sold overseas and later sent back to the BBC
I originally thought this was going to be related to an animated pitch I recall seeing in the late 1990s at a Chicago Visions convention. It was one of the few times I’ve been in a room full of strangers that all looked at each other and thought ‘This isn’t happening’.
That was the Karen McCoy pitch. The latest issue of Vworp! Vworp! (from which the information and images in this video comes) also covers the full Karen McCoy story as well as photographs from that slide show of images put on at Visions.
I find it interesting that the perspective on the UK side is that the toy production is to blame for the failure of this show to launch, whereas, from the North American perspective, pretty much no cartoon show would be able to get launched at all during this time period without profits from such toy deals xD
I think that really goes to show the divergence in strategies between the two areas on how children's media is addressed at the time, and the general distance of corporate sponsorship in UK vs embrace of it in North America.
I didn't even know there was a cartoon series in the works. It's a shame it never to fruition but perhaps that's a blessing in disguise because as you say, it may have prevented the live action relaunch we ended up getting. I just hope Dr who doesn't get grinded down to the ground like it was in the 80s.
Yeah i don’t want to live in a timeline where it didn’t come back in the 2000’s and David Tentant became my favourite of the few guys I’ve seen (I keep forgetting the 9th doctor’s name 😅)
@@gracekim25 Christopher Eccleston
You made a good point at the end... Nelvana really dodged a bullet for being responsible for an animated project that destroyed the quality, visual legacy, and appeal of a British television franchise just in the name of corporate deals, executive meddling, and selling toys. ***cough-cough*** Thomas & Friends: All Engines Go ***cough-cough***
So glad this series did not happen! Thank you for your work on this, never knew this was an actual thing! 😂
Another funny/sad thing I noticed that you didn't mention explitcitly is how all the scripts/bibles had Raven/Rowan as the main companion... and yet she is nowhere in the toy list you show. Classic toy company thinking.
"We don't need no stinkin' girl toys"
Funny how the first treatment was actually the doctor we all know and love. Yet people who obviously aren't fans or know anything about the source material were writers.
Always been a fan as you're arguably the best DW youtuber out there but this informative video finally convinced me to subscribe in full.
It doesn’t hurt that Nelvana’s cartoons were heavily featured on CBBC at the time. Raccoons was amazing
The Raccoons wasn't made by Nelvana.
Well, I think it's safe to say David Cole was probably one of the main factors of why this show never happened.
The original script and ideas by John De Klein are leagues ahead of what David Cole did. Especially because John actually knows the backstory of Doctor Who.
And I thought we were lucky dodging what the 8th Doctor's Americanized version series would have devolved down to. (Research it. It was filled with appalling plans.)
These were a cartoons, we should all be appreciative, that were erased...
Man. This really makes me wish I could go back in time and pitch them MY Doctor Who treatment! I wrote and drew the concept years ago, and I daresay it puts some of these premises to shame. But maybe that's just my pride.
...Uh, anyone interested? I do love to talk.
This whole progression sounds likeva classic children's game "telephone," where one child starts a phrase and it progresses through a ring of children one by one until the last child loudly offers the final version of the phrase.
The whole game is a "degradation of signal" exercise.
Much like the disastrous animation attempt's many forms on its way to never happening.
...
And I thought the 96 relaunch was bad.
Yikes.
31:12
"These Ninja Turtles are amazing, I wouldn't be surprised if they made toys of them one day..."
- some hack at the BBC, probably
8:08 I’m sorry but saying the Doctors aren’t silly is like saying the Daleks don’t exterminate, it’s just plain incorrect. I know it’s not always the exact word you would use, but I don’t think there’s a single doctor without their silly moments
Some of this concept art actually looks pretty cool, though the character designs for the Doctor himself looked like they were struggling a bit. Not fond of the sort of "Ralph Fiennes version of John Steed" one. Some of the others looked like the Real Ghostbusters version of Egon Spengler in a trenchcoat.
That second pitch sounds perfectly promising, why did they feel the need to change it?
Copyright is a real nightmare in the UK.
The Doctor, Egon Spengler.
I would have loved to see this show! The original concept is the best one by far I'd say.
Thank you for talking about this! I wish they actually made the cartoon with John De Kliens vision :)
10:30
As a part of my producing class in film school it was recommended that you compare your project to one or two pre-existing productions. Seems to be industry standard.
In 6:05 I Ilke this design she looks pretty cute.
So after De Kline left the project, the project went into decline?
There was a long part of this were I was gong "Not as bad as the 13th Doctor yet...', then there was a 'And there we are, we've got past the pale' >.>
This was a really fascinating watch! :) Quick question: who did the art for the blonde bowler hat Doctor, the Master, the Rani etc etc? I can't find it anywhere else?
1:30 *actually starts what you collect to see*
An animated show would make regeneration pointless because they can just keep the same Doctor forever. They can even change his voice actor without having to regenerate him.
The Doctor looks like Egon from the official Ghostbuster cartoon.
I am convinced the failure of this show to come to fruition is where our modern timeline went wrong.
Yep. We get this show and the world unites and the World Trade Centre attack never happens
You would think anything English with “crusader” in the title would be a nonstarter.
Really interesting video, but man it was plagued by ads.
The Master looks exactly like Dr. X from Hasbro’s 1990-2000’s Action Man.
Such an interesting and well made watch, I hade no idea any of this even happened, so Thankyou!
I like that Dalek transformation picture👍🏿👍🏿👍🏿
Ur-ur-ur-ur-UT!
Some of these feel more like Farscape than Dr Who.
If this show *had* come out and The Doctor's VA wasn't Maurice LeMarche reprising his Egon voice, I would have been disappointed.
i would’ve loved a full on doctor who animated series…just as long as it didn’t look like dreamland or that web of fear part three animation…
2:50 to 2:55 Off topic, but I never knew there was an 80s cartoon for Clifford - I thought the 2000 version was the first cartoon.
yeah same
Part of me really wishes this was made. It would have been a cool new take on the show.
Daleks with articulated robot arms would be interesting.
A Canadian Created The Doctor!😮
🥰AWESOME I NEVER KNEW THAT
I am still waiting for an actual Doctor Who anime tv show.
thank you for the rock and rule reference!! im a big fan of it despite it flopping
When Nelvana was great they are awesome, but when they were bad they were the worst.
Background MugGann Spotted
Still regretting that Michael Jackson did not make his Doctor Who musical.
Not because I think it would be great but rather it would be fun.
I really enjoyed this upload, well done fella 👍
The Doctor wearing the trench coat looks a little bit like Egon from The Real Ghostbusters cartoon.
It's not encouraging when they refer to The Doctor in the series bible as Doctor Who. Written by a supposed fan 🙄
I kinda like the toolbox design, maybe not for k 9 though
Wow some of these concept art i have never seen, where have you found it?
he looks like vash the stampede from trigun