DOCTOR WHO - SHADA
DOCTOR
WHO-SHADA ep 1 and 2; and the rest
DOCTOR:
Shada. No. You?
PARSONS:
Doesn't mean anything to me.
DOCTOR:
Well, Mister Skagra, or whatever it is you call yourself, you've killed a Time
Lord and a very old friend of mine. It's time you and I had a little chat. K9!
What struck
me this time watching-- is the importance of books: people treasure them, use
them, even the villain, huddle with them, use them to prop up the dying Prof’s
head, and even grasp them when being faintly blasted to the floor! Academics is
important to the Doctor, Romana and even K9, the Prof, Chris, Clare and others.
It’s not the pompous, mainstream academics, however that seem to overpopulate
the McCoy Era (all 12 TV stories! And the New Adventures). There’s also so much
less popular culture indulged in by the Doctor and Romana and more appreciation
for art and classic literature rather than, say the badges Ace wears or the 7th
Doctor performing for someone (even the Gods of RRRRRRAGGGNOORRRROK). In fact,
Tom, Lalla, and K9 seem to shun pop culture when it’s too mainstream. There’s
something freeing about this that is almost a jail sentence when McCoy, Aldred
(a boom box, really?), and the NA authors take control of DW’s direction and
this direction never fully stopped (even the New Series which appreciates books
seems to indulge in this, given that RTD WAS a NA author and puts in THE LION
KING in David’s first story). Well books and tea (lumps and sugars).
Again, I
love this, SHADA, I mean. Even when the jokes are just puzzling (the two lumps
joke: I mean I get it, a lump can be
anything and from the way Chris looks at the tea, I’m not sure what it does
actually contain but it is not overly funny joke), the humor is wonderful and
very anti-collegiate while being so very college.
The animated
parts look adequate and do the job, the rest looks wildly crystal clear and
remastered…
…but…
…somehow I
miss the days when we had my now departed friend Rob Wesmin reading from the
teleprompter (no, rather that was too blurry and type challenged to read off
of, from a script) all the parts that were not filmed while the rest of the
Gallifreyan Embassy of Long Island listened and laughed at his inflection,
which was just perfect and we all watched a grainy bootleg of the filmed parts
of SHADA found by and traded for by another fan.
Still, I’m
glad those days are over and everything that’s available is available…mostly.
There are still parts of the trailers from the 2005 and 2006 seasons that ARE
not anywhere and I can’t find the Tom Baker yelling about how to hold tea
direction from the director of SHADA anywhere. Nor Tom’s yelling “FUCK” during
his own slip up during THE PIRATE PLANET. Love Tom and love it all really.
The story is
a mystery at this point. What is this strangely dressed man (okay, we’ve had
some curious fashion victims on DW before…the Archimandrite in ANDROIDS OF TARA
and some might say---not me---the bare legs of the pseudo companion in KEYS OF
MARINUS….he’s hot actually…BUT Skagra’s outfit of fedora, white outfit, and
white cape and high heeled boots takes the fashion disaster award!) doing with
a huge ball, men on a space station, and odd voices emanating from the ball.
The solution to this is a brilliant idea but more on that when we find out what
it actually is.
Prof
Chronotis is a wonderful character, funny, charming, forgetful (maybe?), and
doddering as an old, old, old man/Time Lord/Gallrefrean who is retired and who
admits he took at least the odd two or seven books from Gallifrey when he
left…having just walked into the Panopticon Archives and taken the most
dangerous one. I love the BBC joke, the funny character moment of “Or maybe
it’s red!” from his character and so much more. Seeing him get attacked in ep2
is hard to watch but I love Romana’s eerie, wonderfully alien-ish delivery of,
“The Professor isn’t human,” when Chris mentions no human can deliver a message
via Morse code using his heart! Pure alien-comedy Doug Adams.
Chris and
Clare seem nicely drawn characters and frankly, they, too seem to be pseudo
companions. I love their reactions to things and to each other. More on that
later.
http://www.drwhoguide.com/who_5m.htm
Let me stop
here for a moment and gather my thoughts on this era and Tom Baker and the
other Doctors and the New Adventures. While doing this, I’m reading this: https://www.atbpublishing.com/product/bookwyrm-an-unauthorised-unconventional-guide-to-the-doctor-who-novels-volume-1/
So Gosh Help
me!
In any case,
while I understand the lore and lure of having the Doctor be manipulative and
sneaky (and I still widely and wildly insist that BLAKE’S SEVEN’s Avon and
other characters had a HUGE, larger than known influence on the New Adventures
and even DOCTOR WHO from 1981 to the present day of making the Doctor edgy and
violent as well as the show in general), that Doctor, mostly Doctor 7 (but also
11 as well), is NOT the Doctor I want to travel with.
Tom’s Doctor
is. He’s alien but not so alien he can’t be a close friend. He’s scary and
admits that we, even his friends, might be dead during the course of most any
adventure. BUT he never seems to, sometimes through sheer luck and near misses,
lose a companion to death as Docs 1 and 5 do (I would count 11, too but since
Moffat’s era has every main character come back to life, Moffat almost doesn’t
count…for anything). Some might argue that pseudo companions like Scarman DO
die and the Doc seems cold about it and he is. BUT it is seasons 15 through 18
that the Tom Doctor I see is the one I’d want most to be with.
Mind that I
LOVE all the Doctors (except 11, most of the time) but this is a list of why I
would want Tom to be my traveling companion …my Doctor so to speak, though I
would not mind meeting the others on one of those special adventures…. (?)
Doc1: he’s
cranky and warm at times but also a bit on the old side so as to be a
grandfather figure and not always a ball of fun to travel with.
Doc2: a bit
manipulative and can’t fight his own battles so…me having to step up far too
much and fight his battles…might not make him the ideal Doc to be with or
friends with but it makes for, like Doc 1, fun viewing all the time.
Doc3 is just
the opposite. He fights his battles all too much and he offends those around
him a lot, often making friends but it would seem I’d have to step in like Jo
in DAEMONS part 1 and smooth over this Doc’s more conceited and nasty side.
Doc5 is a
bit to frustrated and in over his head. He also lets his companion(s) die and
doesn’t even try to against time to save them. Love this Doc but less so once
Adric died. His ineffective routine and his “there should have been another
way,” while realistic and great story fodder makes him one of the Docs I would
not want to be MY traveling Doc.
Doc6:
uhm…mmm. Far too much of a mess for me to want to sail with. Plus, we might
always be fighting. Or not.
Doc7: far
too silly at times and far too dark at other times. I don’t like having a
friend who doesn’t tell me what’s going on.
Doc8: not a
lot to go on other than the books where he’s a mess most of the time or the
audios where…he’s mumbling a lot of the time and …a mess some of the time. Love
this Doctor, though. A lot.
Doc9: seems
great but on closer examination, he plays favorites and that’s a no no in my
book. He can also be quite hard on others and also…if you watch closely, while
he can and does sacrifice himself for others (Doc 5 would, too), he also lets a
lot of others fight his battles for him and die for him.
Doc10: might
be ideal but…so many die around him, he’s sometimes ineffective but has a very
high, too high opinion of himself. Far too full of himself for me.
Doc11: let’s
save this for the Matt Smith/Moffat “braving it all” rewatch.
Doc12: Love
this Doc but his stories sucked and his almost constant crankiness, jealousy,
and childishness about his companions’ lives annoyed me. He also, like 11, made
these exhausting (for us, not for him) long winded speeches that just…would
wear me down…a lot. Jealous, stalker-ish (again like Doc11)…
Doc13: well,
maybe. Not sure I’d want to travel with a female Doctor. Love her, though.
Back to
SHADA!
https://www.atbpublishing.com/product/bookwyrm-an-unauthorised-unconventional-guide-to-the-doctor-who-novels-volume-1/
http://www.drwhoguide.com/who_5m.htm
OKAY I’m
back from finishing SHADA and rewatched a good part of part 1 and all of part 2
again and then the rest. LOVE IT. I could easily re-watch it all again later
today! I love it. Admittedly the first half is more enjoyable as the ideas flow
and the location work helps the jokes are profitable and wonderful. I love the
other characters, too, even the villain. I am even crazy about Skagra’s tailor.
Okay,
another side note: the whimsy of Doctor Who during this time…Lalla, Tom, K9,
Douglas Adams, the jokes, the quick wit, and even the lamer jokes at this time
has never been equaled in my opinion and it flames inspiration in me, though,
of course I feel as if, with the theme song changing and the jokes toned down
coming up (though not entirely), an era is over in my watching. DOCTOR WHO,
Season 17, 16, and Tom’s entire era is inspirational, creative, wonderful,
funny, scary, disturbing, and laugh out loud with only four stories not worth
much (if you’ve followed me at all, you can probably recite which four) but to
be fair, ALL seasons from season 1 to 17 are just…solidly wonderful.
I’m
currently reading BOOKWYRM, an excellent book about the New Adventures, which,
were also wonderful but…the whimsy for the most part is overshadowed by a lot
of death (we DO get death in SHADA and you cannot get darker than a man who has
his mind or rather, his intelligence, sucked out, falling face first into the
water and left there to drown!) darkness, grim, a manipulative and almost evil,
unlikable Doctor, some strange sex S&M scenes, a “don’t care about violence
and good people dying” and a sense of pessimism. This sense, driven by most NA
authors, NEVER goes away. As William Hartnell once said, and perhaps I agree to
an extent, evil entered into the heart of the thing but I feel it entered in
during the 1990s and maybe even before that in the Davison Era as Eric Saward
and JNT tried to ape the negative tone of BLAKE’S 7 and made DW fail miserably.
Dark, death and grim are all…relevant story beats for DW and its media expanded
universe and even the manipulative, dark Doctor of the New Adventures and NOW,
quite a few BIG FINISH audios as well (the 8th Doctor, to unfairly
single out just one Doctor, seems to be, currently a negative extension of the
NA 7th Doctor “let’s make time go my way regardless of who it hurts”
Doctor). Again, all of it is good story
possibilities and a viable story outlet…I’m just not sure I like it that way.
Would I want to travel with the dark and almost evil 7th Doctor? Or
the recent BF audio 8th Doctor? Probably not. They’re not fun. They’re
not as fun as Tom Baker.
Again, to be
fair, since seasons 15 through, say 19, have been unequaled in my mind, even by
most of the new series, I must say Chris E and David Tennant, came close, at
times, to the whimsy and fun of TOM BAKER and the show at this time. And I love
it. There’s nothing better than that feel of humor mixing comfortable and at
times, uncomfortably with dark and death. Moffat got that all wrong with forced
humor and overtly dark themes masquerading as “It’s all okay.” Matt Smith
tried, though and in his first season, now almost all rewatched (just have the
last 20 min of his last first season ep) but the humor, unlike the humor and
fake whimsy of McCoy’s early stories, was okay. After that, Matt, like McCoy’s
first season, was all forced and fake and it felt fake. In fact, BAD DW, when
it’s bad is not something that matters. It’s not even MST3K worthy bad. It’s
just when DW is so good and so inspiring, even with flaws, as SHADA has many, I’m
sure, it can’t be beat. Comparing that to really bad, badly written, badly
acted, overly and overtly depressing stories (HAPPINESS PATROL and almost ANY
New Adventure novel), DW feels like misery and is quite depressing.
Anyway,
SHADA the animated TOM version ( I don’t even go into the HORRID 8th
Doctor/Romana remake that some feel is more canon just because it fits right in
as a later Doctor…it clearly doesn’t and it’s clearly lame and not funny and
not interesting at all and is totally forced) feels as if it may have cut out a
few things here or there and at the same time also feels as if it added a few
things here or there, some for the better, some for the worst. Memory does
cheat at times because I really thought K9 was taken over by the spheres in
some scene. Clearly he was not.
So what
else? Love the bike “chase”, love the standby being knocked over the sphere,
love the “cliffhangers” and I had to figure out where they were from memory
because this was one long version with no cliffhangers and no episode breaks.
I also think
that the Doctor doing the vortex walk between TARDISes is better in the older
versions…in some we see the vortex as it looked from the titles of the show,
which is neater than what appears to be a bridge like the one in HORNS OF NIMON
from TARDIS to ship. The idea is not a force field that the Doctor can crawl
down but vortex swimming and this is lost in this animated version. I also can’t
find my copy of the original ANIMATED version from a few years ago. I really
believe they animated EVERYTHING. The version I’m watching now has the live
bits mixed in, which is better.
Another bit
I’m not happy about is when Skagra scans the Doctor’s mind, here the scenes of
Romana 1 and 2 being the foremost thing on his mind and the clips from past
episodes of this season and the season before are MISSING. It almost ruins the
latter half of this.
In a few
scenes in …well, I’m not sure where he was…possibly in his TARDIS storeroom or
something…we see shelves behind and to the side of the Doctor and while I could
not identify everything on them, MOST of them looked very familiar. One looked
like a Movellan gun, another was a CyberMan Earthshock head, and another was
the robot parrot from THE PIRATE PLANET. I also thought I saw the claw of the
ROBOT from, erhm, ROBOT. I don’t know if I like this sort of thing. I liked it
here but I’m hearing disturbing comments that FURY FROM THE DEEP and/or
FACELESS ONES and/or MACRA TERROR contain posters on the walls of various
places with, among other things, the Roger Delgado Master, the John Sims Master
(ewl), and even Missy? As I’m sure (100 percent positive) that these things
were not in the originals, I feel these are just stupid gimmicks, indicative of
today’s fandom and what they drool over and of the DW makers in general. I want
the Animated Recons of what the BBC STUPIDLY erased to match the original
episodes as close as possible. I don’t want built in EASTER EGGS. It defeats the
purpose. So while that is not so bad here, in SHADA in the TARDIS, where such
things might be lying around and which the production team MIGHT have put in…why
not to the original idea of what they were doing to do and put a Zygon, a
Cyberman, and a Dalek in the cages rather than what looks like New Series
aliens or STAR TREK glue on appendages to the nose and forehead aliens?
http://www.chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/17-6.htm
That said
SHADA is one of the few DOCTOR WHO stories that can give me joyful chills and
happy goosebumps. Lalla Ward is terrific, and I love when she answers Chris’, “The
human mind doesn’t work that way,” with a chillingly delivered, “The Professor
isn’t human.” I also love that the Prof
puts his mind into Clare and so many other double entendre lines such as Tom’s,
“Good then, come on over here and hold onto this!”
And then as
Clare’s lever gets too hot to hold, there’s Romana’s, “Well, then hold it down with
a pencil,” which used to bring laughs from the DW group I first watched this
with.
Practically
every line is somehow needed or funny. And we get, without ALL the pomp of
other stories and all the great big echo chambers of over emphasized drama, a
lot of GALLIFREY history.
I’m also not
sure what to make of the newly filmed live action version of Tom at the end. It’s
nice that he did this but fictionally within the story, not sure it makes much
sense but there you have it, it is fun and cute. He even gets to look at the
camera again and address us (?)!
Tom goes F
word in this studio highlight that is or was on the DVD and not on the Blu
Ray?
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6alvv4
Past review:
Okay I'll
preface this with the fact that I love
this version of
SHADA over the 8th Doctor
version. If
others like that version over the
Tom Baker one,
I'm sorry. So sorry. I don't mean
to say that you
are not able to like that or
that you are bad
people if you do. I just found
the 8th Doctor
no 4th Doctor and Paul, as good
as he is in
most things, was not in SHADA. And
he's no Tom Baker but who is? And
WHO is?
Anyway, the
best way to watch this was the way
that EMBASSY
did it back in the mid 1980s (I
think) with someone
reading the script as it
shows up on the
telecine word processor on the
screen...and we
couldn't see it.
The late, great
Rob Wessmin (and God I hope I'm
spelling his
name correctly and he's greatly
missed as,
sadly, he passed away awhile
ago) actually
read the script bits that were not
visualized. Mind you, this was WAY
before Tom
Baker's video
narration came out with the
televised bits
and as great as Tom is/was in
that video, they
left a whole lot out of the
script by
having him just synopsize the
unfilmed/unmade
bits. Rob did a GREAT FANTASTIC
job reading
those and he loved every moment of
it, I could
tell.
Anyway onward
to a story that again, I love to
pieces...SHADA!
1
This episode is
oddly almost intact. After a
three min or so
intro by Tom Baker ambling
around a museum
("I always feel at home in
museums")
of old Doctor Who monster suits ("Beat
him, beat him,
beat him"), Tom/Doctor Four(?)
finds a Karg
outfit and starts to remember SHADA
("SHHH!").
The video
release adds music to the show and it
sometimes jars.
I recall watching this with the
EMBASSY at that
meeting and the strangeness of
not having any
sound effects and music made this
seem...even
better!
In any event,
we have Tom Baker, Doctor Who, and
Douglas Adams. Any
one of those things alone
would be a
great exercise in entertainment but
together...we
have gold, especially in ep1. To
digress however, Tom did fail in
SHERLOCK HOLMES
THE HOUND OF
THE BASKERVILLES mostly because he
was so
Doctor-ish in my mind but not in that
show...he
played it serious and yet in my mind
he was the
Doctor and then he wasn't doing any
Doctor-ish
things (or rather not doing any
Fourth Doctor-ish things). It
didn't help that
one of the
guest stars was Caroline John (Liz
Shaw). I kept
expecting him to say, "Liz, it's
me. Me me. A
new face but still the same
person."
ANd her: "You've changed!" Anyway...
SHADA: the
location work gives this a new feel,
something we
haven't really seen of late and
probably not
this grand since...oh since...the
Pertwee era
(and SPEARHEAD FROM SPACE at that).
It gives it
that 70s UK feel...which is both
cheap and grand
at the same time. The first
scene of the
scientists having seizures is a bit
disturbing.
Prof. Chronitis: just a marvelous
character and worthy of both DW and
Adams. I
just love him
and the actor playing him is just
perfect. Almost
all of the jokes work. And the
fact that he's
a Time Lord without us having
been hit over
the head that he is...and on
Earth...is just
so quaint. And lovely. Chris
Parsons is
introduced and that's just great as
well.
The villain:
Skagra is flamboyant. I can tell
you both the villain
the Prof being with letter
S and I think
this might have been deliberate to
get us to think
that the Prof was the villain
and for a few
moments I thought maybe he and
Skagra were one and the same or
that maybe the
Prof alone was
the villain or something even
stranger than
what we got. What we got wasn't
bad though. All
that comes later in a brilliant
twist of
"I want to rule the universe".
Back to the
punting scene for a few: it's rare
we get to see
the Doctor relaxing. We get some
hints of it and
some aborting holidays and we
get to see him
fishing...but here a wonderful
scene of
relaxation at Cambridge punting occurs.
The Doctor and
Romana seem almost human here and
almost
domestic. It's a great scene and
wonderfully
shot. And scripted and acted.
The Doctor has visited the Prof
before and once
in a different
body. We find out about the book
that Chronitis
stole from Gallifrey among a few
others (4 or 7 others) and that it is
dangerous.
The villain
starts his plans, but just what are
they?
A creature is
listening.
A great start to a story and with lots of
funny
bits. The
Doctor tells Romana to search for a
red book but
the Prof, off camera, says, "May be
green..."
This just does
it so right. It's an academic,
down to Earth
Doctor Who with spices of
spaceness and
outer worldliness mixed with that
Cambridge
spirit and that anti establishment
feel that only
the 4th Doctor and Romana can
bring to it
without being overwhelmed by
crassness or a
violent feel. All that talk about
tea helps. I
can't praise this enough. It's just
so
entertaining.
2-3
The Prof tries
to help them find the book that
Chris took but
his memory is like a...he can't
recall what his
memory is like, right away. He
does recall it's like a sieve.
Lots of funny
stuff including
the joke that he can't remember
Chris's name
but can recall what it starts with.
He says, "BB..." and the Doc and
Romana finish
with,
"C". Skagra gets normal clothes for a bit
and kills
someone, taking his mind while he
fishes and
leaving a body to fall face down in a
lake he was
fishing out of. Or least it looks
that way. I
tend to recall that the script might
have had someone come and
fish the man out.
There's a joke
about the TARDIS kitchen and
where it is or
something like that. Chris and
Claire are prominent
members of the story now and
the Doctor gets
to race away on a bike with the
book but loses
it. Visually the chase is
interesting and
the Doctor adds his bike bell to
a song being
sung on the streets.
In the
meantime, the Prof is attacked by the
sphere and
loses his mind but can briefly
communicate...with his
heartbeat!
A really creepy
line from Romana to Chris is,
"The
Professor isn't human," and Lalla delivers
it with such
conviction and amusement and
alien-ness it
sends shivers down my spine.
There's also
some nonsense with an invisible
spaceship. And
some great stuff as the Doctor
tries to talk
the computer out of keeping him in
the ship. Also
some silly stuff about K9
blasting a wall
when Romana and later Chris say
the word blast.
In any event, a
most gratifying two episodes. Oh
and Claire has
taken the Prof's TARDIS by
mistake out of
its place in the university. And
the Prof has
had all life functions cease. The
Doctor,
correctly assumes the Prof has used up
all his generations...but has
he? And is he
dead?
4
Some very
interesting things going on here.
Mostly Gallifrean
wise: for one, the Doctor
turns the
spaceship into a TARDIS with some
jiggery pokery
and realigning the ship from
analog to
digital! Another thing is he hooks K9
into a Krarg.
On his mind, continually seems to
be Romana.
Another thing:
the Prof comes back to life when
Claire tinkers
with his VERY OLD Tardis and he
calls himself a
paradox in an anomaly. She made
his timelines
cross or something. But he came
back to life!
Another thing is
that the Doctor tells Chris he
has a lot to
unlearn and one of those things is
Einstein
theory.
We also get to
the crux of Skagra's background
and what he's
doing on this ship, what is plan
is or part of
it.
There's also
plenty of jokery from Tom but
nothing too
over the top.
All in all an
entetaining ep
5
So he was
Salayvin all the time? A great bit but
not really that surprising,
after he put his
mind into
Claire but to be honest, I wasn't sure
what was going
on and who was who until the
reveal and it
made sense all the way through. I
love the
figuring out things bits with the tea
and all and the
Prof continues to amuse and be a
lovely
character. The idea is revealed that
Skargra doesn't
want to rule the universe but be
the universe by
putting his mind into everyone
in it. A great
idea and some great fun in this
episode. It's
also the scene I think where Tom
gets nuts over
being directed or rather as the
lady that plays
Clare is directed to pour tea a
certain way. On
You tube there's a Tom cursing
bit from this
scene. In any event, a good ep.
6
Just a joy to
behold, read, whatever. The Prof
is as charming
as ever, what a great Time Lord!
The ideas flow
and the Doctor goes vortex
walking. It's a shame that this
story...well
it's canon to
me...but this story should not be
thought of as
lost because it brings to the
table such
things as vortex walking, older
TARDISes that
can bring a Time Lord back to life
even if he's
used up his regenerations, the Time
Lord Prison, a
Time Lord who can throw his mind,
and a villain
who can or tries to put his mind
in everyone.
Tom acts like
Tom and the Doctor, he and Lalla,
especially Lalla, act very very alien
here; they
both have good
companions to play off of with
Clare and
Chris, a sort of younger version of
Ian and Barbara
but with more wit. At the same
time, both Tom
and Lalla imbue the Doctor and
Romana with a
warmth and care not often seen in
this time as
they interact with the Professor.
THe Doctor, as
he did to K9 at one point this
season, puts a
pin on Romana.
The ending is
just so quaint with the tea and
all. The way
Skargra is defeated and that hat
with the table
attached predates HOME
IMPROVEMENT by
many years.
I wish this would
be released on DVD soon.
Oh and another
observation of the TARDIS window
pane
being...somewhat broken!
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