07 Shada, The Unaired episode and the webcast

[cuisle]

Production Code 5M



Cast

The Doctor - Tom Baker
Romana - Lalla Ward
Voice of K9 - David Brierley
Caldera - Derek Pollitt
Chris Parsons - Daniel Hill
Claire Keightley - Victoria Burgoyne
Krarg - Harry Fielder
Krarg - Lionel Sansby
Krarg - James Muir
Krarg - Reg Woods
Krarg - Derek Suthern
Passenger - David Strong
Police Constable - John Hallett
Professor Chronotis - Denis Carey
Ship - Shirley Dixon
Skagra - Christopher Neame
Voice of the Krargs - James Coombes
Wilkin - Gerald Campion



Crew
Director - Pennant Roberts
Assistant Floor Manager - Val McCrimmon
Costumes - Rupert Jarvis
Designer - Vic Meredith
Make-Up - Kim Burns
Producer - Graham Williams
Producer - Graham Williams
Production Assistant - Olivia Bazalgette
Production Assistant - Ralph Wilton
Production Unit Manager - John Nathan-Turner
Script Editor - Douglas Adams
Special Sounds - Dick Mills
Title Music - Ron Grainer and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, arranged by Delia Derbyshire
Writer - Douglas Adams




Plot Outline from BBC


Written by Douglas Adams as his final contribution to Doctor Who, Shada was envisaged as a Time Lord story without a Gallifreyan setting. It sees the Doctor bringing Romana to present-day Earth to visit Professor Chronotis, an elderly Time Lord who absconded from Gallifrey and now lives a quiet academic life at St Cedd's College in Cambridge. Also seeking Chronotis is a scientist called Skagra who has a device, in the form of a floating sphere, with which he intends to steal the Professor's mind and thereby learn the location of a book entitled The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey. Skagra eventually succeeds in obtaining the book, which has been borrowed from the Professor's study by a student named Chris Parsons. He then kidnaps Romana and hijacks the TARDIS.

The book turns out to be the key to Shada, the ancient prison planet of the Time Lords. Skagra's objective is to use his sphere on one of the inmates, Salyavin, whose unique mental powers he can then exploit to project his own mind into every other creature in the universe. When the TARDIS reaches Shada, however, he discovers that Salyavin's cell is empty.



After a number of close encounters with the Krargs - Skagra's monstrous crystalline servants - the Doctor, Chronotis and K9, along with Parsons and his friend Clare Keightley, arrive on Shada in Chronotis' TARDIS, which has been disguised as his study. Chronotis admits that he is in fact Salyavin; he escaped from Shada centuries ago and has been living on Earth ever since. The Doctor thwarts Skagra's plans by winning a mind battle against him.

Shada was formally droppped from the seventeenth season in December 1979, it having become apparent that due to the backlog of Christmas specials waiting to be recorded there was no prospect of studio time being found for its completion. A number of attempts were subsequently made to remount it but these ultimately came to nothing, and in June 1980 it was officially cancelled. A version of the story was eventually released on video in 1992 with Tom Baker providing a narration to cover the missing scenes.




Analysis by Cuisle

Shada is a difficult one to review, since it is so very incomplete. A lot of the incomplete sections are the ones with the special effects of the Krargs. That stands to reason, since special effects are almost always done last.

What it does have is all of the location filming in Cambridge, and these set the scene very nicely. The shots of The Doctor and Romana punting along the Cam past the ‘dreaming spires’ is a timeless image. The year could be anytime from Victorian to present day. The Doctor cycling through the streets allows for some establishing views of the university city, and the scenes around the college campus are equally evocative.

Incidentally, St. Cedd’s IS an invented college. It is allegedly based on St. John's, where Adams went to university and the actual film location is Emmanuel College. For anyone who wants to know, Saint Cedd brought Christianity to Essex.
Professor Chronotis’s big secret was not the hardest to guess. The mention of Salyavin several times, coupled with the Professor’s own hints at a past make it almost inevitable that they would be revealed, eventually, as one and the same. The Doctor had admitted already that he admited Salyavin even though he was a notorious criminal, and is clearly good friends with Chronotis. Somehow, therefore, we find it difficult to believe that Salyavin is as notorious as is suggested. And he isn’t, of course. Like The Doctor, also branded a criminal and renegade in his time, Salyavin is a misunderstood genius. As fans we are inclined to believe in The Doctor’s judgement. And we are right to do so. Skagra is the real evil genius, and his plan, of course, is universal domination. His method is to create a sort of super-brain, made up of the minds of geniuses with which he can enslave the lesser minds of the universe. Naturally The Doctor defeats him and humans and Time Lords alike gather in Chronotis’s study for tea, all very civilised.
Shada is legendary as the lost, unfinished story. It is highly sought after by fans who feel their experience of Doctor Who is incomplete without it. As a story it is not any kind of Holy Grail, though. It DOES introduce some new ideas, such as the prison planet of Shada, and another exiled Time Lord on Earth. And it looks very good, with the location filming giving it a bigger feel than studio based productions. But if it had been completed and broadcast in the usual way it would not have stood out particularly from the season it belonged to.




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Big Finish version
The Doctor — Paul McGann
Romana — Lalla Ward
K-9 — John Leeson
Skagra — Andrew Sachs
Chris Parsons — Sean Biggerstaff
Clare Keightley — Susannah Harker
Wilkin — Melvyn Hayes
Professor Caldera — Barnaby Edwards
Constable — Stuart Crossman
Professor Chronotis — James Fox
The Ship — Hannah Gordon
Think Tank Voice — Nicholas Pegg




The animated version made in 2005, based on a Big Finish audio script, updated the story slightly. It had a pre-amble which saw the Eighth Doctor going to Gallifrey to meet President Romana and persuade her to come back to Earth to uncover the secret of Chronotis. This, of course, causes problems for followers of the TV series chronology as they immediately point out that Romana stayed in E-Space and could never return to Gallifrey. The Big Finish audio books stray from the accepted canon quite widely at times.

[caringcara]

i've seen both versions. it's not the greatest story ever. i think the legend of the 'lost' story has grown in telling. but its interesting in its own way. another renegade time lord, after all.

[Frontman]

As a Doctor Who story; I agree with you cuisle that it wasn't all that special. However, for a Douglas Adams story, it did have his sense of fun and humor. The line of "they'll publish anything nowadays" was pure Douglas wit. And in that it becomes an important piece of work; that it was Douglas' last work on Who.

And you're right, it isn't the Holy Grail of stories, but its a part of Doctor Who history that all involved felt disappointment in it not being finished, and I think since it was so dear to Lalla and Tom (who folks seem to overlook he came back to Doctor Who to narrate the missing scenes, myself included) that since Tom returned, and since Lalla and others involved spoke so highly of it?

I think it makes the fans of Doctor Who feel a tad obligated to search it out. I for one am glad I did find it and watched it. A bit of a shock to hear John Leeson (the one true K9) in the flash animated version but not in the original, as John was not under contract to do K9 at that time.

The part as a fan that upsets me is that; on the surface, it didn't seem like there was that much actual shooting left to do. It's like climbing a mountain yet having to turn away just an hour away from the top. To be so close to completion yet never being finished (and thus 'canon') disappoints.