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WHO HOME | BIG FINISH AUDIOS
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Shada holds a unique place in Doctor Who history as the only production that never finished shooting and, consequently, the series' only incomplete story. Never shown by the BBC, and never novelised, it wasn't until 1992 that we got to see it, with Tom Baker's narration filling in the unmade sections. Eleven years on from that release, the story was finally completed to mark the show's 40th anniversary and to commemorate its writer Douglas Adams. With Tom Baker unwilling to participate in Big Finish's audios, the story has been rewritten slightly to accomodate the Eighth Doctor. This is apparent in the pre-title sequence to the first episode, which lays out the story's premis - the Doctor and Romana were Time Scooped out of time (in The Five Doctors) and, consequently, the rest of the story never took place. Now, the Doctor has been summoned by Professor Chronotis to finally return The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey to the Panopticon library. There are a few other changes throughout the story, mainly to accomodate Romana's status as President, and the fact that K9 hasn't been travelling with the Doctor since Warriors Gate. The story was originally shown as a webcast by BBCi (as it was then called), but was also designed to work in audio-only format, which is how it has been released by Big Finish. The remake retains the six episode structure of the original television story, making it the first time that Big Finish have attempted a story of this length, although, of course, many of their releases have been longer than the traditional 4x25-minute length. I'm not a massive Douglas Adams fan, and I think that Shada's status as a "lost classic" is only because the story was never finished and because it has Douglas Adams' name on the script. It's got some good ideas in it, some that are less good (such as the overused "one lump or two?" gag) and like many Who six-parters is too long. At least on audio we're spared some of the worst excesses of the Graham Williams era - the Krargs, for example, seem a lot more menacing here than they did on screen. Since all the location filming and the studio material that was shot was edited together for the video release, a comparison between the two versions is inevitable. Despite the story being written for Tom Baker's Doctor, Paul McGann doesn't sound at all out of place. The Eighth Doctor works well with Romana and K9, although they are separated for a lot of the story. On the guest star front, James Fox makes a good Professor Chronotis, while the lovely Susannah Harker is also good as Clare Keightley, even though the script doesn't give her a lot to do apart from asking about her missing bicycle. Hannah Gordon does a job job as the voice of Skagra's ship while Russell Stone's music might not be great but it's still better than Keff McCulloch's awful score for the video release. Unfortunately, I was less impressed by Sean Biggerstaff's Chris Parsons and Andrew Sachs' Skagra - the former doesn't really seem to be putting his heart into it, while the latter doesn't do enough to make Skagra a particularly memorable villain. Meanwhile, Melvyn Hayes as Wilkin seemed to regard Doctor Who as an excuse for putting on a silly voice. To be honest, I was sceptical about the idea of remaking Shada, not least because I tend to be a bit of a continuity cop, but this is a good release, although the story itself is not the classic that it was long supposed to be. back to the top |
SHADA |
