Shada (Doctor Who)

*Shada*
Shada
Doctor Who Serial
	Shada, the prison planetoid of the Time Lords.
Cast
	Doctor Tom Baker (Fourth Doctor);
	Companion Lalla Ward (Romana II);
	Others Christopher Neame — Skagra; Denis Carey — Professor Chronotis; Daniel Hill — Chris Parsons; Victoria Burgoyne — Clare Keightley; Gerald Campion — Wilkin; Derek Pollitt — Dr Caldera; John Hallet — Police Constable; David Strong — Passenger; Shirley Dixon — Voice of the Ship; James Coombes — Voice of the Krargs; James Muir, Lionel Sansby, Derek Suthern, Reg Woods — Krargs;
Production
Directed by	Pennant Roberts (original)
Written by	Douglas Adams
Script editor	Douglas Adams
Produced by	Graham Williams (original); John Nathan-Turner (video)
Production code	5M
Series	Season 17
Running time	Incomplete (original); 6 episodes, 25 minutes each (intended)
First broadcast	Unaired (original); 6 July 1992 (video release)
Chronology
← Preceded by; The Horns of Nimon	Followed by →; The Leisure Hive

For the Arabic emphasis sign, see Shadda; for the village in Azerbaijan, see Şada.

Shada is an unaired serial of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was intended to be the final serial of the 1979-80 season (Season 17), but was never completed due to a strike at the BBC during filming. In 1992, its recorded footage was released on video using linking narration by Tom Baker to complete the story.

Shada was later remade as an audio play with animation produced by Big Finish Productions and broadcast 2 May - 6 June 2003 on BBCi and later webcast on the BBC website, and (in a slightly different version) on the BBC7 Digital Radio Station in 2005 and 2006.

Synopsis

The story revolves around the lost planet Shada, on which the Time Lords built a prison for defeated would-be conquerors of the universe. Skagra, an up-and-coming would-be conqueror of the universe, needs the assistance of one of the prison's inmates, but finds that nobody knows where Shada is anymore except one aged Time Lord who has retired to Earth, where he is masquerading as a professor at St. Cedd's College, Cambridge. Luckily for the fate of the universe, Skagra's attempt to force the information out of Professor Chronotis coincides with a visit by the professor's old friend the Doctor (and this is where the story really begins).

Continuity

In an unfilmed scene in Episode 5, a listing of prisoners kept on Shada included a Dalek, a Cyberman, and a Zygon. Instead of these, aliens bearing resemblance to Ice Warriors were seen.
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.

For the Big Finish version, 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.

Although working from the original Adams script, 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 K-9 because he has begun to have a feeling that there was something they should have done at that time. In addition to this –
- Romana is referred to as Madam President by Skagra in Episode 5.
- In Episode 6 it is Romana, using her Presidential powers, who decides that Chronotis should be allowed to return to Cambridge.
- When the policeman enters Chronotis' room, the Doctor can be heard talking about a "terrible way to see in the New Year" in a possible reference to that Doctor's first adventure.
- Various other minor dialogue changes throughout, mostly relating to the Eighth Doctor reflecting that he has missed Romana and [K-9] since they left him and how much he enjoyed their company in the past.

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, Creature from the Pit, The Androids of Tara, Destiny of the Daleks, and City of Death. The webcast features outlines of the first eight Doctors' faces.

Production

Television version

Location filming in Cambridge and the first of three studio sessions at BBC Television Centre were recorded as scheduled. The second studio block was affected by a long-running technicians' dispute. The strike was over by the time rehearsals began for the third recording session, but this was lost to higher-priority Christmas programming.^[2]

Attempts were made by new producer John Nathan-Turner to remount the story, but for various reasons it never happened and the production was formally dropped in June 1980. Nathan-Turner was eventually able to complete the story (so far as was possible) by commissioning new effects shots and a score and having Tom Baker record linking material to cover the missing scenes. The result was released on video in 1992, but has never been aired on television – making Shada the only Doctor Who television story never to be broadcast. As of today, the BBC has not issued any information regarding a DVD release of the story, although online retailers actively collect interest in a release.^[3]

Big Finish version (2003)

Template:Bigfinishbox

The Cast

The Doctor — Paul McGann (Eighth Doctor)
Romana II — Lalla Ward
K-9 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

Broadcast date: 10 December, 2005

In 2003, the BBC commissioned Big Finish Productions to remake Shada as an audio play which was then webcast^[4] in six episodic segments, accompanied by limited Flash animation, on the BBC website using illustrations provided by comic strip artist Lee Sullivan.^[5] The play starred Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor and Lalla Ward as Romana. The audio play was also broadcast on digital radio station BBC 7, on 10 December 2005 (as a 2½-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.

Lalla Ward (Romana) is the only actor to appear in both the original television version and the subsequent Big Finish remake.

Canonicity

The canonicity of Shada is notably unusual in that the Eighth Doctor audio remake - having been broadcast on a BBC station - can be considered canonical but the canonicity of the original (and more widely known) Fourth Doctor version - having not been broadcast - is more debatable.^[6] Canonicity of all such Doctor Who spin-offs is uncertain due to there being no official arbiter of canon in Doctor Who.^[7]

Outside references

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.

The battered space helmet which the Doctor adapts in Episode 6 of the webcast bears the serial number NCC-1701D – the registration ident of the Starship Enterprise in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

In print

Template:Doctor Who book Elements of the story were reused by 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 – 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 fan group in New Zealand published an unofficial adaptation in 1989, later republishing it as an online eBook titled Doctor Who and Shada.^[8]

Video and Webcast release

Shada's video release featured linking narration by Tom Baker and was accompanied by a facsimile of a version of Douglas Adams's script (except in North America). The release was discontinued in the UK in 1996, although it remained in print in the United States until 2004.

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.

References

^ "Serial 5M: Shada". A Brief History of Time (Travel). 2008-09-23. Retrieved 2009-06-09.
^ BBC Radio 4 "Shelved", broadcast Dec 12, 2009; http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00p7g8b
^ http://www.amazon.com/Doctor-Who-Shada-Tom-Baker/dp/B001QCWQO4
^ http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/webcasts/shada/
^ http://www.leesullivan.co.uk
^ http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Canon
^ http://www.whoniverse.org/features/canon.php
^ http://nzdwfc.tetrap.com/archive/shada/

Bibliography

Howe, Stammer, Walker (1994). Doctor Who: The Seventies. Virgin Books.

External links