Six Episodes
Never Aired
Written by Douglas Adams
Produced by Graham Williams
Directed by Pennant Roberts
Synopsis
In the far future, on a research space station called "Think Tank", a sinister looking man undertakes an experiment that sucks his colleagues minds into an autonomous floating grey sphere.
He smiles at his handiwork, takes the sphere and puts an automated quarantine message on the speakers.
Back in 1979, the Doctor and Romana have visited Cambridge, to see the Doctor's old friend (and fellow Time Lord), Professor Chronotis. Apparently Chronotis summoned them, but he's not in at first, so they go punting.
Chronotis arrives whilst they're out and meets a student called Chris Parsons. Chris borrows a book from the scatterbrained Professor and it turns out to be a very special one - it's the Worshipful and Ancient Law of Galifrey - an artefact from the time of Rassilon that contains a huge amount of power and Time Lord secrets.
The Doctor and Romana return to see Chronotis who asks them to help him find the book. After a lot of searching, Chronotis suspects that Chris may have the book. The Doctor goes to find him.
Skagra, the man from Think Tank goes to see Chronotis, and manages to use the sphere to steal Chronotis' mind whilst Romana is inside the TARDIS, looking for more milk.
Chris Parsons turns up to question the Professor about the book and helps Romana with him. The Professor manages to beat out a message on his hearts that says beware Shada.
The Doctor (having missed Chris Parsons) returns to the university with the book.
He encounters Skagra who sets the sphere on him. The Doctor races away and escapes in the TARDIS. They decide after all that they need to speak to Skagra and go to his invisible ship to see him. Romana and Chris are taken prisoner and the Doctor's mind is taken by the Sphere. Skagra seems to hold all the cards once he's taken the book and he grabs Romana, stealing the TARDIS to go and find the hidden Time Lord prison planet of Shada.
The Doctor survives (the sphere only took a copy of his mind) and he uses Skagra's ship to go after him. The ship takes them to Think Tank, where they find out that Skagra is a scientist who tricked the others into putting their intellect into the sphere. They are suddenly attacked by Skagra's henchmen - the Krargs, giant slate like monsters. They escape, but the scientists of Think Tank are killed.
Meanwhile, Chris' colleague, Claire goes to Chronotis' room and finds that it's in fact a TARDIS itself. As she dematerialises the room accidentally, it brings back Chronotis who seems less forgetful and more purposeful. They go after Skagra too.
The lot of them ultimately meet up at Shada, and Skagra says he intends to use the sphere to trap everyone's minds in the universe, merging them into one giant super mind. He needed to get to Shada, because there, the master criminal known as Salyavin had the power to project his will into others minds and therefore it would be crucial to the plan for the sphere to inherit that power.
Using the Krargs to guard everyone, Skagra opens Salyavin's cell, only to find it empty. It turns out that Chronotis is the master criminal himself. He repented for his crimes, managed to escape, made every Time Lord forget about the prison planet and stole the book so he would be safe and could live out his life peacefully on earth.
Skagra attacks everyone with the sphere, bringing the other prisoners under its control. K9 holds them off but Skagra escapes in the Doctor's TARDIS. The others take off in Chronotis' TARDIS and the Doctor manipulates the force fields to sneak on board his own TARDIS.
Skagra takes the TARDIS to his carrier ship and there they have the final battle. Romana and K9 ultimately defeat the Krargs, and the Doctor makes a mind control helmet and uses it to counteract Skagra's commands. He takes control of the ship and puts Skagra in prison, leaving him there for the Time Lords to deal with.
The gang all return to Cambridge and have a nice cup of tea, baffling the Police with the sudden return of the room to it's normal place in the time and space continuum.
The Doctor and Romana leave and whilst tinkering on board the TARDIS, Romana asks if the Time Lords exagerated Salyavin's crimes because he seemed like a "nice old man". The Doctor smiles and says yes they always exaggerate, just like with him. He expects in 200 years someone to say "was that really the Doctor, he seemed like such a nice old man."
Trivia
- So, lets get the obvious thing out of the way. This story was never shown on TV. It was partially filmed on location and had a slight bit of studio work. The crew had done rehearsals for the next block of filming and had all gone off for lunch. When they returned, they discovered that the TV studio had been locked and a technicians strike had been called (supposedly over the jurisdiction of whose job it was to operate the clock on the kids show, Play School)
- The strike was so disruptive that it was impossible to make up the scenes in time to get it out, so the story was shelved. Incoming Producer, John Nathan Turner said he wanted to finish it and use it as a Christmas Special, but it never really materialised in the time that Tom Baker stayed with the show, and it was decided to can it once he'd left.
- Parts of Shada were used for The Five Doctor's when Tom Baker couldn't be procured.
- This is the last story Douglas Adams wrote for Doctor Who. As is well documented, he used parts of this story to form his Dirk Gently novel, and he used the unrealised script of Doctor Who and the Krikkit men to form the basis of his third Hitchhikers Novel "Life, The Universe, and Everything".
- This was the last time that a six part Doctor Who story would be used. The format from this point on would be split into two or four part stories, occasionally three
- This was also the last story that Graham Williams was involved in. It's little known, but he had a significant hand in shaping this story into what was to be shot.
- This, sadly, is also the last time we see the 70's opening sequence, and hear the 1967 version of the music from Delia Derbyshire on the show
- As if that wasn't all, David Brierley's tenure as K9 came to an end as well. John Leeson would reprise the role in the next season
- And the lasts keep on coming. This was the last time Tom Baker would wear his iconic multi-coloured scarf and different frock coats.
- The TARDIS was remade after this story too, making it bigger and lighter to carry around set
- A plus point is that this is the most re-made Doctor Who story ever, with a VHS release, Two DVD's, a radio play, and two books (one being a fan produced one).
The Review
It's actually refreshing to have something this complicated in a Doctor Who story for a change. The six part format does offer a good opportunity to really dig deep into some of the aspects of the story, such as why Skagra wants what he wants, what Salyavin did to get imprisoned, what the Krargs are and why they feature in this at all, how come Skagra knows about the Time Lords and Shada in the first place, and much more...well, I said there was opportunity for that. The reality was a little bit different.
In fairness, the story does a very good job of some things. As I've just said, the story is complex enough to be intriguing at first. It throws in a good bit of foreshadowing with the mention of Salyavin, as if Skagra is going to be him and puts a mystery in the way with the ultimate Mcguffin - the book of the Time Lords. It also does a good job of integrating the real world into the story, just like in times gone by (and particularly in the fifth and sixth Doctor's run) with alien menaces in sleepy English villages, this manages to capture the feel of things going down in Cambridge quite well. Another point worth mentioning (that others don't necessarily agree with) is that for 60-70% of the show, Skagra actually acts like a villain, as in he DOESN'T tell anyone what his ultimate plot is, nor does he put them in easily escapable death traps. It's a shame then when ultimately, Douglas Adams couldn't find a way to uncover the character's purpose without him getting fed up and blurting it out in front of everyone.
The downfall of Shada, like a lot of past Doctor Who's, is the format. Douglas Adams chose to go down the line of focusing more on the cat and mouse aspects of racing after the bad guy, at the expense of more essential but perhaps less visually interesting parts of the story. Fair enough I suppose, but it is a shame because what starts as a great little story, soon drops down into monotony and a thick layer of tedious humour, incredibly low budget action scenes, and non-sensical plot points. If it had the cash to throw around like mission impossible, this wouldn't matter, but they don't. It's curious to note as well that the book of the Time Lord's starts off as extremely important, and acts like it's going to be the major focus of the story, but gets less and less relevant as time goes on.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Shada is fine for the first couple of episodes, but once they all hop in the TARDIS, things go downhill until it ends bewilderingly, with the Doctor leaving Skagra to die of starvation in his spaceship, and letting Salyavin off because he's probably a nice-guy after all.
Rating
7 out of 10
Rewatchability Factor
5 out of 10 (if watching 6 parter)
3 out of 10 (if watching the 2hr plus 2018 cut)
Watch this if you liked...
- Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
- The Mark of the Rani
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