The Doctor and Jamie pursue the stolen TARDIS and end up caught in the machinations of the Doctor’s oldest foes…

If there was such a thing as a holy grail of missing Doctor Who episodes, it’s likely to be this seven-parter from 1967 which signalled – at least for the next five years – the “final end” of the Daleks on Doctor Who, bar a brief cameo or two. Episode 2 is the only extant version and while it’s important for its introduction of Victoria Waterfield, it’s quite possibly not the best episode of the story (your views may vary!). The new wave of Doctor Who animations began five years ago with The Power of the Daleks, and an animated version of Evil has been highly anticipated ever since.

It’s been worth the wait.

The animation is a step forward from The Faceless Ones – which itself was a step up from its predecessors – and the extra time that the team were given on it has paid off with new versions of Patrick Troughton and Frazer Hines, and an excellent rendition of Deborah Watling as Victoria. The other characters are all brought to life well based on designs by Martin Geraghty, coloured by Adrian Salmon, and the 3D renders of the Daleks are extraordinary in their detail – even when on the big screen at the BFI.

The story throws a lot of challenges at the whole team. Not content with bringing Graham Strong’s original audios up to a high level, Mark Ayres had to contend with the rights issues over the music at the coffee bar – and as he pointed out at the BFI screening, there are different versions connected to the original broadcast and its repeat, as well as rights differences for Britain and the rest of the world. There are a lot of different locations which Rob Ritchie and Colin Howard recreate well – watch out for a terrific introductory shot for a key locale.

The Skaro sequences are designed by director AnneMarie Walsh and Geraghty, and Walsh admitted to some concern as to how they would be received. They work extremely well, and Ritchie does an admirable job recreating and reinventing the Dalek civil war sequences that Timothy Combe oversaw for the original show.

There’s a lot of humour in the story, not least from the “dizzy Daleks”, and David Whitaker’s script contains more dramatic material than you might expect from a children’s/family show from 1967.

None of the extra material was shown at the BFI so I’ll update this review with that once the discs are out, but based purely on the core animation, this is a terrific interpretation of one of Doctor Who’s classics.

Verdict: A classic tale given excellent treatment. 9/10

Paul Simpson

The Evil of the Daleks is due for release on 27 September.