Shada Doctor Who and Shada (TSV)

BBC Books Doctor Who - Shada

Author	Gareth Roberts
Published	2012

Back cover blurb: The Doctor's old friend and fellow Time Lord Professor Chronotis has retired to Cambridge University - where nobody will notice if he lives for centuries. But now he needs help from the Doctor, Romana and K-9. When he left Gallifrey he took with him a few little souvenirs - most of them are harmless. But one of them is extremely dangerous. The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey isn't a book for Time Tots. It is one of the Artefacts, dating from the dark days of Rassilon. It must not be allowed to fall into the wrong hands. And the sinister Skagra most definitely has the wrong hands. He wants the book. He wants to discover the truth behind Shada. And he wants the Doctor's mind...

• "Lost" And Found By Matthew Kresal

"Lost" And Found By Matthew Kresal 16/8/12

In 1979, Douglas Adams was working as the script editor on Doctor Who. Having written or co-written two stories for the series already (including the fan favorite City Of Death) and on the brink of his own creation The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy becoming a worldwide success, Adams wrote his Doctor Who swansong, Shada. The story was partially filmed before a BBC strike led to the story being left uncompleted and thus never shown on television. Now, over 30 years since those events and more than a decade after Adams' own untimely passing, a novelization of this "lost" Doctor Who story is available at last.

This novelization has been written by Gareth Roberts, writer of such episodes as The Shakespeare Code and Closing Time for the current TV series of Doctor Who. Roberts perfectly captures the distinctive style of Douglas Adams' prose, be it the book's opening paragraph or the closing lines of chapter sixty two to name but two examples. The book is also filled with Adams' trademark style of absurd humor, yet the humor never overwhelms the story but rather heightens and enhances it. Much of the book's success comes from the original Adams' scripts but kudos must go to Roberts as well for making the script into a fully functioning novel.

My only real complaint about the book stems from Roberts' own additions. Roberts makes his own stamp on the story in places and most of them aren't bad. He's good at expanding scenes with references to post-1979 Doctor Who that fits in perfectly with the original Adams script such as in chapter fifteen for example. Where this expanding runs into issues in the final third of the novel (parts five and six of the TV version) where he often rewrites complete chunks of the story. This includes an additional chapter (chapter seventy three) where the book feels like it's being dragged out for an additional fifteen pages rather unnecessarily. Overall, though, the changes work more often than not.

To be fair as well, Shada isn't really that "lost" is it? The filmed sequences were edited together, along with linking narration by the fourth Doctor himself Tom Baker, for released on VHS in 1992 for example. The "complete" story (as it were) is available on audio CD from Big Finish Productions (the company who have been doing Doctor Who audio adventures since 1999) and has been since 2003, though it stars Paul McGann's eighth Doctor since Tom Baker wasn't interested in taking part. Plus the original webcast version of that (complete with limited Flash animation) is still up on the BBC's classic Who page. So is there any point in buying/reading the novelization then?

To my mind, the answer is yes. This is as close to a completed version of the original story you're likely to see with the intended TARDIS crew for one thing. The changes, both great and small, made by Roberts also makes this version of Shada stand on its own as well. So while Shada itself might not be quite as lost as it's been claimed, this book version completes it nicely nevertheless.