Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 552: Shada, Episode Six

Dear diary,

I couldn’t remember what happened in this final episode, so I wasn’t sure if I’d be happy with the ending or not. Certainly, it seemed as though the story could have been wrapped up during the final stages of yesterday’s episode, so I worried that today would feel like spreading the story a little bit too thin. Actually, there’s a great deal to enjoy: the Doctor having to make his way through the Vortex from one ship to the other is a great idea (and something I can’t believe they’ve never done with the Master’s TARDIS!), the closing scenes with lots of humour to close the season (and the Graham Williams era), and the fact that the Doctor has to do battle with all these creatures purely through using his mind. If anything, this part of the story feels like it could do with one further draft, just to up the tension, but it’s certainly not a bad ending to the story at all.

I’m surprised just how much footage exists for each of the episodes in the tale, including this one, although you do become somewhat accustomed to seeing certain sets over and over again! I’ve been very impressed with the animation that’s used to fill the gaps in between, though. By this final episode, I’d even stopped noticing the discrepancies between the real Tom Baker’s voice and the impersonator used for the new segments - I don’t know if the performance gets better or if I simply got used to it, though I suspect it’s a combination of the two. It’s been nice to see the story completed, at any rate. And now, I’m going to imagine that Professor Chronotis goes off on various adventures with Chris and Clare at his side. I think they’d end up having TV Comic style trips through time and space, in the professor’s TARDIS!

There’s always a big question mark around Shada, and it’s that consideration that maybe it wouldn’t be quite so well loved if it didn’t have that status as the mythical ‘lost’ story of the Tom Baker era. It’s something I’ve long wondered when people bang on about how great this story is, and I’ve always put that partly down to the fact that it’s got such a reputation from being unfinished. I think, though, having now watched it properly in context with everything that came before it, I’m willing to say that there’s a lot in here to really love. It sort of runs out of steam towards the end, but on the whole I’ve really liked it. I think, had the production made it through to the end, it would probably be held up with City of Death as a tent-pole ‘classic’ of Season Seventeen.

With the end of this story, we say goodbye to the Graham Williams era of Doctor Who history. Three years that don’t, perhaps, have the best reputation among fandom, but which certainly seems to have produced some pretty decent stories. Looking back to the end of The Talong of Weng-Chiang, with the Williams era about to begin, I commented:

”I’m really interested to see how my feelings develop as we move forward into the Williams era. From where I stand now, at the end of Season Fourteen, I’m simply expecting it to be ‘cheap’. That’s the only thing that I think I really know about the period to come, and after stories like The Talons of Weng-Chiang*, and* The Robots of Death*, that may come as something of a shock to the system…”*

I think, in places, the series has looked cheap over the last few years, but that’s certainly not as prevalent as I was expecting it to be. Stories like The Androids of Tara, The Ribos Operation, or The Creature from the Pit all feature great settings that are realised as well as anything in the previous few years of the show. As far as the era has gone as a whole… it’s been a bit bumpy. Since Graham Williams took over the producer’s chair 70-something episodes ago, none have received higher than an ‘8/10’ (although there have been 13 of those, more than half of which in this last season, and the rest during Season Fifteen), and the era has attracted three ‘3/10’ (all for The Pirate Planet) and a few ‘4/10’, too.

The overall average score for the Graham Williams era is 6.32/10, which makes it better than a straight average, but it’s far from being the highest-rated era of the programme to date. In fact, it’s a score which makes Seasons Fifteen - Seventeen the lowest rated era of the programme so far (coming in just marginally lower than the Verity Lambert years, which averaged 6.33). That’s not to say that I’ve not enjoyed it, though. There’s a lot I like in Season Fifteen, and a lot I like in Season Seventeen, I think it really is that Key to Time season in the middle that just didn’t quite gel with me.

And now, we move on toe Season Eighteen and the start of the John Nathan-Turner years of the programme. Everything to come is going to be increasingly ‘marmite’, and while I’ve enjoyed it in the past, I’m wondering how much that will hold true now that I’ve seen everything that happened before… 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 551: Shada, Episode Five

Dear diary,

I’ve been somewhat pathetically looking forward to this episode, simply because I wanted to see what the Time Lord prison planet looked like. For some reason, the design used for the Big Finish webcast version of the story (it’s a gigantic ‘disc’ with the Seal of Rassilon on the top, surrounded by jagged rocks almost as though it’s being held by them) has always stuck in my mind as one of the most striking visual shots from the history of Doctor Who. Put simply, I love it. It was with bated breath, therefore, that I waited to see what the prison would look like in this version of the story.

It’s presented (as I suspected it might me) with footage from the original model sessions for the story, back in the 1970s. It’s… different, certainly, and I’m not sure if I like it or not. On the one hand, it looks very functional as a prison - it’s very much a structure with a cold and stark purpose. On the other hand… it’s lacking the flair of the Big Finish version. Still, I suppose that if the prison is supposed to be a secret from the Time Lords of this era, then having it look like a giant copy of their most famous symbol doesn’t exactly hide it very well…

If anything, I think I’m just slightly disappointed that it’s such a simple model that they use for the prison. I was blown away by the explosion of the Think Tank, with bits of debris flying off in all direction (including directly towards the camera!), and the remains of the ship burning away as the explosion clears, so it feels a bit plain when we finally reach this supposedly mythical lost prison world.

I still really love the idea of Shada itself, though. It makes perfect sense to me that the Time Lords would have a secret prison, which can only be accessed by following a specific set of instructions involving one of their ancient relics. For a race that purports to be non-interventionist, the Time Lords have always taken a particularly strong role when it comes to their place in the universe. Put simply, they decide what’s wrong and what’s right, and thus I love the idea that they’ve got a place to lock up individuals that they deem to be too dangerous in the grand scheme of things. I like to imagine that if they could still remember the existence of the place, then Genesis of the Daleks would have simply been boiled down to Davros being plucked from his Time Stream and locked away here.

But that’s partly my problem with the scenes set in Shada here. Although it’s great fun to see a Dalek, Cyberman, Zygon, and Wirrn (and… a Roman Auton from The Pandorica Opens?), they don’t really feel right to be locked away in this place. In the scene these monsters first appear, Skagra describes the prison as being thep lace Time Lords put the criminals ‘they want to forget’. It strikes me that locking up a few odd members of these various species is just a bit… odd? Unless these happen to be extremists even within their own cultures, it just feels a bit like an anti-climax for this mythical ancient prison.

Still, I love the reveal that this ancient and famous Time Lord villain Salyavin is really Professor Chronotis in an earlier life! I’ve been somewhat saddened over the past few days that I was aware of this particular plot twist, because I’s love to see if I was shocked when the reveal finally comes. All the clues are certainly in place here (and even laid on a little too thick, in some cases!), but it’s great fin to see the characters starting to piece it all together as they go. I’ve also always found it a shame that Salyavin - the lynch pin to this whole evil plan, and a character who just happens to be one of the Doctor’s close friends in disguise - only gets mentioned for the very first time here, and not even in relation to the story itself.

Romana mentions the man in an earlier episode, seemingly from nowhere, and then he just happens to be vital to everything that’s going on. Were this the modern era, it’s a great example of where planting seeds in earlier stories would come in handy, so that the name is already there in the back of your mind, and it feels like a greater surprise when he suddenly pops up a year or two later (instead of just an episode or two!) 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 550: Shada, Episode Four

Dear diary,

As has often been the case during six-part serials up to now, the fourth episode ends up being little more than filler material to keep the story going. Much of today involves people just padding out the running time, while the only real advancement to the plot is Skagra discovering how to use the book as a key. That’s not to say that I haven’t been enjoying this episode, though, because even when it’s simply trying to bulk up 25 minutes of story, Shada is keeping me entertained.

I think the thing I enjoy most about this episode is the introduction of the Krargs, which is a design that I’ve always quite liked. One appears (briefly) on a screen at the end of Episode One, but today we get them en masse and even creating new versions of themselves in some of the most impressive bits of animation in this story so far - a lovely mix of the 3-dimensional effect and great work on the character animation of the creature itself. I couldn’t remember if you actually got to see one of the Kraags in the live-action footage, so it was a nice surprise at the end of the episode when one of them shows up. It’s a bit of a shame that the ones in the animated footage are simply… grey, though. The thing I’ve always liked the most about the design is the fact that they use CSO rather well to give it a kind of ‘molten’ effect across the scales, and it’s a shame not to see that continued over in to the animated segments, too.

There’s also a lot of lovely bits of Gallifreyan mythology cropping up in this one, too. The idea of the Professor’s rooms being a TARDIS in disguise is fantastic, and I wonder if his description of the way Clare has ‘tangled with [his] Time Fields’ could be reconciled with the kind of ‘remains’ we see of the Doctor during The Name of the Doctor? Could Chronotis’ rooms at Cambridge have ended up housing his time line, with undergraduates popping in to take a trip back through history by touching it?

Aside from that, there’s the workings of this mysterious book. This is the thing that always used to fascinate me about Shada - the idea of the book being imbued with a great deal of power, and the realisation that turning the pages of it inside a TARDIS would automatically unlock the secret and take the occupants to a hidden location. The description of the ‘Ancient Time Prison of the Time Lords’ used to fascinate me, too, and I can’t wait to see how it’s realised in the animation.

I have to also admit that I’m warming to the voice of the Doctor in the animation here. I still don’t think it’s quite close enough to the genuine article to really work for me, but I’m certainly not noticing it sticking out as much now. I think this may well be down to the fact that there’s a great deal more ‘animated Doctor’ in this episode than there is of the actual man himself! The animation is also becoming so much the major format for this tale that there were a few shots (mostly the inside of Skagra’s ship, or the initial shots on his Command Vessel) where I even had to stop for a moment to work out if we were looking at the animation or the real footage - it has to be said that the set design on this project is simply brilliant.

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 549: Shada, Episode Three

Dear diary,

We’ve hit the tipping point with this episode, and suddenly a lot more of the story is being represented through animation rather than live action. I’ve been worrying about this a little bit, if I’m honest. Not because I’ve a problem with the animation, but because my over-riding memory of watching Shada for the first time on the BBC VHS was just how quickly it all zipped along. It wasn’t until starting out on the story this time around that I suddenly realised - it ‘zipped along’ because so much was being boiled down to some linking lines from Tom Baker! I’ve been worrying a bit that I’d not find it quite as fast-moving or exciting when having to watch it at the regular speed.

The bonus to having a higher proportion of the story in animated form is that I can really start to enjoy watching it this way. My biggest concern about the way the tale is presented for this version is that it intercuts between the live action footage and the animated sequences. When I was first told that, I really thought that it would be an odd experience, and perhaps not an entirely pleasant one, having to adjust every few scenes to something new. In actual fact, you don’t really notice it at all!

In this episode, for example, the TARDIS appears in an alleyway, and the Doctor hurries inside, slamming the door so fast behind him that his scarf gets caught in it. The next scene - in the TARDIS console room - is all animation, but it doesn’t feel out of place to be so. The only time I did sit up and take a moment to process events was when we cut to Romana and Chris trapped in a cell aboard Skagra’s ship. It only felt so out of place, though, because up to that point, every scene aboard the ship had been rendered as animation, and I assumed they’d never managed to build any of those sets!

I think it also helps that I’m just too busy enjoying the story to worry too much about the chopping and changing of formats. Today’s episode contains the only scene that I can remember fully from a previous watch (although I actually remember the version from the Big Finish audio), in which the Doctor manages to confuse a computer into thinking that he’s dead, and can therefore operate it despite an order to the contrary. It leads in to the cliffhanger for this episode, with the computer deciding that if the Doctor is dead, then he won’t need any oxygen, and so it’s been switched off to preserve power. I wonder, though, why that hadn’t happened before this point, since the computer was expecting the Doctor to be dead anyway…

The scariest bit of this episode, though, isn’t to do with the Doctor suffocating: it’s actually Skagra heading to the TARDIS with Romana. Not to worry, our favourite Time Lady has promised that she’ll never give Skagra the key, so he can’t get in to the ship anyway. That doesn’t matter, though, because he’s already taken the Doctor’s copy from his ‘lifeless’ body. Still, Romana and the Doctor are the only people around here who can even fly the TARDIS, so we’ve still got the upper hand. Ah, but Skagra has a copy of the Doctor’s mind - so if the Doctor could fly the TARDIS, then so can he… The ship is usually a place of safety, so when something like this happens (and through such a sinister character, too), it feels genuinely unsettling.

While I’m here, I need to take a moment just to sing the praises of K9. John Leeson is providing the voice for this animation, and it’s so nice to have him back. I’ve really missed K9 having this particular ‘personality’. There’s a sketch from a BBC Christmas Tape, made at the end of Season Sixteen, in which K9 cannot provide the Doctor with the information that he requires, and the Doctor responds… less than positively to the metal mutt. This episode seems to be hinged around the same joke - with K9 shooting at walls when Romana exclaims ‘blast it!’ in exasperation, and repeatedly telling Chris Parsons that he has ‘insufficient data’ to answer the man’s rhetorical questions! I’ve missed K9 being such an annoying little thing, and it’s good to have him back like this again!