Shada (Doctor Who): Difference between revisions

Shada is an unaired serial of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was intended as the final serial of the 1979–80 season (season 17) but was never completed, owing to strike action at the BBC during filming.

The BBC released a completed version of Shada in 2017, with missing dialogue newly recorded by the original cast, using the same audio equipment employed in the initial shoot, and animated by the team that undertook the animated version of the 1966 serial The Power of the Daleks.^[2][3]

Previous attempts to present the story include a narrated reconstruction for BBC Video; a re-imagined audio play by Big Finish Productions, also offered with basic Flash imagery on BBCi and the BBC Doctor Who website; and a novelisation by Gareth Roberts, based on the latest shooting scripts, with the author's own additions.^[4]

The story revolves around the planet Shada, on which the Time Lords have constructed a high security prison for some of the Universe's most dangerous criminals. Skagra, a flawed genius from the planet Dronoid, wishes to create a "Universal Mind" in which all the pooled knowledge of the universe's greatest criminals would be placed at his disposal and with which he intends to take control of the Universe. Skagra wants to go to Shada to extract the knowledge of the criminals who have been imprisoned there.

Unfortunately for Skagra, knowledge of the location of Shada has been deliberately hidden by the Time Lords, but Skagra discovers that there is a Time Lord living on Earth in the twentieth century who may hold the key to its location. This Time Lord is masquerading as a professor at St. Cedd's College, Cambridge and calling himself Professor Chronotis. Sensing danger, Chronotis calls for the assistance of his old friend and protégé, the Doctor. The story climaxes in a battle for control of the Universal Mind.

Originally, writer Douglas Adams presented a wholly different idea for the season's six-part finale, involving the Doctor's retirement from adventuring. Facing resistance from producer Graham Williams, Adams chose to avoid work on a replacement, under the expectation that time pressures would eventually force the producer's hand and allow his idea to be used. Ultimately, however, Williams forced Adams to conceive a new story as a last-minute replacement, which became Shada.

Under its original remit, Graham Williams intended the story as a discussion about the death penalty, specifically how a civilisation like the Time Lords would deal with the issue, and treat its prisoners.^[5]

As composed by Adams, the story was scheduled to span six 25-minute episodes. Location filming in Cambridge and the first of three studio sessions at BBC Television Centre were completed as scheduled;^[4] however, when the scheduled second studio block was due to start, it fell foul of a long-running technicians' dispute at the BBC.^[6] The strike was over by the onset of rehearsals for the third recording session, but ultimately the studio time was redirected to other higher-priority Christmas programming, leaving the serial incomplete.^[7]

Following the departure of Graham Williams from the producer role, attempts were made by new producer John Nathan-Turner to remount the story; for various reasons, however, this never transpired. Consequently, in June 1980, the production was formally dropped. It is estimated that only 50% of the story was filmed.^[4]

After the production halt, Adams expressed a low opinion of the script and was content to let it remain obscure, turning down offers to adapt the story in various forms. He once claimed that when he had signed the contract allowing the script's 1992 release (accompanying the serial's VHS reconstruction), it had been amongst a pile of papers sent over by his agent, and that he was unaware of what he was agreeing to.^[8]

In 1983, clips from Shada were used in The Five Doctors, the 20th-anniversary special. Tom Baker, the fourth actor to play the Doctor, had declined to appear in the special, and the plot was reworked to explain the events in the clips.^[6]

Denis Carey was subsequently cast as the eponymous Keeper in Tom Baker's penultimate story, The Keeper of Traken, and also appeared as the Borad's avatar in Timelash.

A decade after the serial's abandonment, John Nathan-Turner set out to complete the story in a fashion, by commissioning new effects shots and a score, and having Tom Baker record linking material to cover the missing scenes. The resulting shortened episodes (of between 14 and 22 minutes each) received a 111-minute VHS release in 1992. In its UK edition, the VHS was accompanied by a facsimile of a version of Douglas Adams's script.^[4] The release was discontinued in the UK in 1996.

This VHS reconstruction, the 2003 BBCi/Big Finish adaptation and the 1994 documentary More Than Thirty Years in the TARDIS,^[9], were re-released together on DVD on 7 January 2013, as The Legacy Collection (UK) or simply Shada (North America).

On 24 November 2017, an effort to complete the serial officially, using newly recorded dialogue from the original cast (using the serial's original recording engineer and audio equipment), and new animated footage, to complete the missing segments, was released as a digital download; DVD and Blu-Ray releases followed on 4 December 2017 in Region 2.^[11] The new sequences were animated by the same team that undertook the 2016 animated edition of the 1966 serial The Power of the Daleks.^[12]

A 2-disc region 1 DVD release was originally set to be made available on 9 January 2018; this was later postponed in the U.S. and Canada to 4 September 2018.^[13][14] The serial was released on 10 January 2018 in Region 4.^[15]

Shada
Big Finish Productions audio drama
Series	Doctor Who
Release no.	II
Featuring	Eighth Doctor – Paul McGann Romana II – Lalla Ward K9 Mk. II – John Leeson Skagra – Andrew Sachs Professor Chronotis – James Fox Chris Parsons – Sean Biggerstaff Clare Keightley – Susannah Harker Wilkin – Melvyn Hayes Dr Caldera – Barnaby Edwards Motorist/Constable – Stuart Crossman The Ship – Hannah Gordon Think Tank Voice – Nicholas Pegg
Written by	Douglas Adams, Gary Russell
Directed by	Gary Russell
Produced by	Gary Russell
Production code	II
Length	150
Release date	December 2003

In 2003, the BBC commissioned Big Finish Productions to remake Shada as an audio play which was then webcast^[4][16] in six episodic segments, accompanied by limited Flash animation, on the BBC website using illustrations provided by comic strip artist Lee Sullivan.^[17] The play starred Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor and Lalla Ward as Romana. The audio play was also broadcast on digital radio station BBC7, on 10 December 2005 (as a 21⁄2-hour omnibus), and was repeated in six parts as the opening story to the Eighth Doctor's summer season, which began on 16 July 2006.

The webcast version (originally broadcast via BBCi's "Red Button") remains available from the BBC Doctor Who "classic series" website, and an expanded audio-only version is available for purchase on CD from Big Finish. This expanded version was the one broadcast on BBC7.

Tom Baker was originally approached to reprise the role of the Doctor, but declined. The Eighth Doctor was then substituted and the story reworked accordingly.

Portions of the Big Finish version were reworked by Gary Russell to make the story fit into Doctor Who continuity. This included a new introduction, and a new explanation for the Fourth Doctor and Romana being "taken out of time" during the events of The Five Doctors; the Eighth Doctor has come to collect Romana and K9 because he has begun to have a feeling that there was something they should have done at that time.^{[citation needed]}

When Skagra is investigating the Doctor, clips from three other Big Finish productions can be heard, exclusively on the CD version – The Fires of Vulcan, The Marian Conspiracy and Phantasmagoria. The original serial was to have used clips from The Pirate Planet, The Power of Kroll, The Creature from the Pit, The Androids of Tara, Destiny of the Daleks, and City of Death.^{[citation needed]}

In Episode 2 of the webcast version, when Chris is in his lab showing Clare the book, a vending machine-like object in the background is labelled "Nutrimat", a reference to a similar device in Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Two other references are a sequence where Skagra steals a Ford Prefect and when images of Hitchhiker's Guide characters appear as inmates on Shada itself.

In 2010, Ian Levine funded an unofficial project to complete the original Shada story using animation and the original voice actors, minus Tom Baker and David Brierley, to complete the parts of the story that were never filmed. John Leeson would replace Brierley as the voice of K9, and Paul Jones would replace Tom Baker as the Doctor.^[4] The completed story was finished in late 2011 and announced by Levine, via his Twitter account, on 8 September 2011.^[4][18] J. R. Southall, writer for the science fiction magazine Starburst, reviewed Levine's completed version and scored it 10 out of 10 in an article published on 15 September 2011.^[19] The completed Levine version appeared on torrent sites over two years later, on 12 October 2013. When asked about the 2017 reconstruction, Levine responded with anger and profanity.^[20]

Doctor Who – Shada

Author	Gareth Roberts
Series	Doctor Who book
Publisher	BBC Books
Publication date	15 March 2012

Elements of the story were reused by Douglas Adams for his novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, in particular the character of Professor Chronotis who possesses a time machine. Adams did not allow Shada, or any of his other Doctor Who stories, to be novelised by Target Books. It is, therefore, one of only five serials from the 1963–1989 series not to be novelised by Target – along with Adams' other stories The Pirate Planet and City of Death, plus Eric Saward's two Dalek stories (Resurrection of the Daleks and Revelation of the Daleks).

A six-part adaptation of the story by Jonathan V Way appeared in issues 13–18 of Cosmic Masque, the Doctor Who Appreciation Society's fiction magazine. Adams granted permission for the adaptation on condition that it was never published in collected form.^[21]

BBC Books published a novelisation of this serial on 15 March 2012, written by Gareth Roberts. Roberts drew on the latest versions of the scripts available, as well as adding new material of his own to "fix" various plotholes and unanswered questions.^[22] Nicholas Pegg, in his review of the book for Doctor Who Magazine heartily praised it, calling it a "successful duet".^[23]

Lalla Ward delivered an 11hr 30min unabridged reading of the Gareth Roberts novelisation for AudioGo; joining her, voicing K9, was John Leeson. The audio recording was released on 15 March 2012, and is available for download or on 10 CDs (CD ISBN 978-1-4458-6763-2, Download ISBN 9781445867656).^[24] Vanessa Bishop reviewed it favourably for Doctor Who Magazine, singling out Simon E Power's sound design for special praise.^[25]

Paul Cornell, Martin Day, and Keith Topping gave the serial a mixed review in The Discontinuity Guide (1995), saying; "'I dunno, nowadays they'll publish anything.' Infamous because it was never completed, it was for a long time stated that 'Shada' would have been the highlight of the seventeenth season. What was filmed doesn't quite encourage such optimism. It's a very cheap looking story, and there are lashings of bad puns and dull comedy, including three takes on the 'One lump or two?/Sugar?' joke. Against that, the basic plot is interesting – almost justifying its six episodes, which is rare – and the Cambridge scenes, though stilted, are well executed. It's hugely flawed, but it's a shame that this one was clobbered by a strike and 'The Creature from the Pit' wasn't."^[26]

• Howe, David J; Stammers, Mark; Walker, Stephen James. Doctor Who: The Seventies (1994) (London: Doctor Who Books) ISBN 9781852274443

Wikiquote has quotations related to Fourth Doctor.

• Shada at BBC Online
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• Cambridge Time Traveller Group, Article on Shada,
• Shada: The Lost Adventure by Douglas Adams title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

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• Template:OG review
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• Doctor Who and Shada ebook
• Shada title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
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• Shada webcast on the BBC website
• Big Finish Productions – Shada