Douglas Adams and Doctor Who fans rejoice!
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy writer, Adams, also did a fair amount of work on Doctor Who in the 80s, out of all that work, his best known is probably the one that never got properly made.
Adams wrote Shada for Tom Baker’s sixth season in 1980 and, despite filming beginning, ir t was never finished due to a strike at the BBC.
However, the script has been released as a novel and been adapted for Paul MGann’s Doctor by Big Finish audio adventures too and in other ways too. Interestingly, the Doctor being a College Professor in the most recent episodes was a clear nod to events in Shada.
The story by Adams was his last for Who and, at six parts, would have been his longest too.
Now however it is being turned into an animated adventure and the best part? It will star Tom Baker as The Doctor!
Now, thirty-eight years on, BBC Worldwide has announced that Shada, is to finally be completed, combining the original, remastered footage, with brand new colour animation to complete the story. The animation will feature the newly-recorded voices of the original cast, including Tom Baker as the Doctor and Lalla Ward as Romana, performing the original script. Shada will be released as a digital download on Friday 24th November, and on DVD and Bluray on Monday 4th December.
Check out the trailer, synopsis and box art below.
This has the Adams fan in me pretty giddy, I’ll not lie…
“Delicate matter, slightly. It’s about a book…”
Chris Parsons is happily engrossed in studying post-graduate physics at Cambridge, when one day he finds an old book, sitting on a dusty shelf in an ageing professor’s library. Written in a language nobody can read and made of a paper that can’t be torn, this is no ordinary book. And when it enters his life, everything changes for young Chris Parsons.
Soon finding himself aboard an invisible space-ship, chased by monsters made of molten rock; aboard an alien prison on a distant planet and attacked by a horde of mind-control zombies. Chris also meets a strange man with a very long scarf who claims he can travel through time and space… in a police box.
It’s going to be a busy day for Chris Parsons.
An abandoned Doctor Who classic is brought to life. Starring Tom Baker and written by Douglas Adams, this is “Shada” for a modern audience, with footage upscaled to high definition, and incomplete footage now completed using high-quality animation.
.@BBCWorldwide_UK confirms completed ‘Shada’ #DoctorWho release for Download, DVD & Blu-ray! https://t.co/G7LuxsfslR pic.twitter.com/kXpRLXcseJ
— Doctor Who Online (@DrWhoOnline) October 9, 2017
Marc
Marc is a self-confessed nerd. Ever since seeing Star Wars for the first time around 1979 he’s been an unapologetic fan of the Wars and still believes, with Clone Wars and now Underworld, we are yet to see the best Star Wars. He’s a dad of two who now doesn’t have the time (or money) to collect the amount of toys, comics, movies and books he once did, much to the relief of his long-suffering wife. In the real world he’s a graphic designer. He started Following the Nerd because he was tired of searching a million sites every day for all the best news that he loves and decided to create one place where you can go to get the whole lot. Secretly he longs to be sitting in the cockpit of his YT-1300 Corellian Transport ship with his co-pilot Chewie, roaming the universe, waiting for his next big adventure, but feels just at home watching cartoons with his kids….
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