Doctor Who Shada...

[shadowkat]

1. Oh forgot to mention in last post that Apple sent me the Powerbeats3 Wireless earphones, priced at $199.99 as a gift for their failure to help me. So...hmmm. Jut no clue how to work them.

2. Now, I'm watching this odd episode of Doctor Who written by Douglas Adams, from the 1970s, at least I think it is the 1970s, it might be the 80s. But it looks like the 70s. Entitled Shada, and has the curly haired Doctor that I remember from the 70s. (I watched it briefly in the 70s on PBS before we moved, and I found it too scary (because I was 8 or 9 at the time). [ETA: definitely the 70s Doctor, Paul Walker? The one with the scarf.]

Oh wait..it's animated. Why is it animated??? I knew it was supposed to be animated, but it wasn't and now, all of a sudden...I looked away for a moment from the Doctor rowing a boat with his companion discussing Issac Newton of all things, and suddenly it was animated. Rewind. Oh the professor is reading HG Wells The Time Machine (which is a crappy book by the way). "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction" -- ie logic and causal relationships - The Doctor tells us for no apparent reason whatsoever (I'm guessing it's the THEME of the episode). His companion discusses Spring, but it is October, he tells her. (I don't know looks like Spring or Summer to me.) She thinks they were coming for May Week. She's confused. So is the Tardis he says...and the audience, I think, ie. me. There's no changing colors of trees that I can see - and the grass is insanely green. Then we leave the pastoral scene and all of a sudden it is animated...not clear transition or anything. Sigh. Douglas Adams sense of humor. Sigh.

Okay the Doctor and his companion with the funky and somewhat ugly white and read dress, and the weird name aren't animated. Nor is the Professor. Just the guy looking for them on the bicycle.

This is just weird. And oh so seventies...in that it is cheesy, bad hair and clothing (the 70s had no fashion or design sense whatsoever) and filled with iconoclastic philosophizing.

Comments

Shada

[cjlasky7]

Okay, some background:

"Shada" is one of those legendary "lost episodes", a six-part adventure that was supposed to close out Season 17 (1979-80) of Doctor Who. But after a good portion of principal photography was completed, a strike shut down production and the episode was never completed.

For that reason--and the fact that "Shada" was written by Douglas Adams--a mini-legend had accumulated around the episode. There was a novelization and other adaptations, each claiming to be the truest version of Adams' ideas. (For the mega-crossover "The Five Doctors," producers used footage from "Shada" to bring the Fourth Doctor in.)

After the BBC had a big success animating "The Power of the Daleks" last year, the Beeb decided to finish "Shada" with animated segments filling in the gaps. Incredibly, Tom Baker and Lalla Ward came back (almost 40 years after the original stopped filming!) to provide voices for the Doctor and Romana.

I'm halfway through it. I'm enjoying it. Could it possibly live up to the legend? No--but seeing the location shooting in Cambridge, the Baker/Ward team at its most charming... it's why I loved this show as a kid.

Full review when I'm finished.

Re: Shada

[shadowkat]

I gave up when I realized it was THREE HOURS long. I'll come back to it tomorrow, when I've more time to watch.

But thanks for the back story -- that explains the weird animated bits that come and go. The villain looks better animated by the way. Actually everybody does. They had horrid lighting and production values in the 1970s.

Also explains why it popped up. (I have Doctor Who set to tape on BBCAmerica on my DVR. So it just tapes whatever is considered a new Doctor Who show, including some reruns. This one threw me. Since I thought, wait, it's not supposed to air until Fall, then saw...animated Douglas Adams Doctor Who episode? Adams wrote one? Really?...and it's three hours? Okay.)

Re: Shada

[cjlasky7]

Actually, Adams was the story editor for Season 17 and he co-wrote "The Pirate Planet" and "City of Death" along with "Shada" before he left for greener pastures. (And If you've ever read the original Dirk Gently novel, you'll realize he recycled a good chunk of "Shada".)

Re: Shada

[machiavellijr]

Doctor Who had even worse lighting than the rest of the 1970s. Apparently, the BBC had in the '70s an awful lot of directly employed, very very well unionised tech crew, most of whom were allegedly generalists who could turn their hand to anything from It's a Knockout to I Claudius. Some of them were great, some of them were less great, and they were all totally unsackable. Doctor Who was not exactly production priority no.1 and required a shedload of crew for its budget, so it got whoever (and whatever kit) was spare, even if all they knew how to light was studio gameshows, or hadn't learned anything new since they were playing with actual limelight in the West End.

Also yeah, it was written as a 6x30min serial, so even with some of the recaps cut out runs nearly three hours.

Re: Shada

[shadowkat]

So "Shada" had been written as a 6 part mini-series? Interesting.

Also, thank you, that explains a lot of the weirdly inconsistent offerings from the BBC in the 1970s. On the one hand - we have The Prisoner, which had rather good production values, and on the other - Doctor Who, which really didn't. And somewhere in between things like Upstairs/Downstairs and Poldark (the 1970s version).