Review of the re-animated Shada
Since Shada was a story out of 1970's Classic Who, I don't seem much of a need to put this review behind a cut, as there's little outside of the intro that could be considered a "spoiler".
As many know, Shada was the Douglas Adams story that never aired due to a BBC strike occuring in the middle of shooting. The story has been novelized, and the filmed bits have been cobbled together with voice over by Tom Baker, but never before had the full production been actualized on screen.
In this story, Romana and K9 team up with a different Doctor (Paul McGann) to run through the same series of events as they were/had with Tom Baker. The only new material is a fairly brilliant explanation of the Doctor-swap, sewn in with the bits that were lifted for The Five Doctors. That, plus very minor amount of tweaked dialogue, to reflect Romana's new station. Everything else sticks to the Adams script as it was from the 70's.
I'd forgotten that this story was set to be a six-parter, so it did take a quite a while to watch. Each story is divided into 5-7 Flash animation segments. Which brings me to the animation - Don't have too high expectations. It's really more like cutouts from a graphic novel being slid about to simulate movement. But it's most definitely worth it to have Shada realized. The story is also quite complicated - I had been familiar with the overall plot, but still, some bits required close attention to understand what was going on.
Watching it made me a little sad, as I could really hear Douglas Adams' voice in some of the dialog. I'm guessing between the novel and the video, there were large parts of the script that hadn't been publically available. On the flip side, it became doubly hard for me to see McGann as his own Doctor, since the lines were so obviously written for Tom Baker. It was definitely a story that had its "ghosts".
Overall, I am really, really glad this was put together, and that Lalla Ward and John Leeson (K-9) got on board with it. I hope it eventually becomes available on DVD.
As many know, Shada was the Douglas Adams story that never aired due to a BBC strike occuring in the middle of shooting. The story has been novelized, and the filmed bits have been cobbled together with voice over by Tom Baker, but never before had the full production been actualized on screen.
In this story, Romana and K9 team up with a different Doctor (Paul McGann) to run through the same series of events as they were/had with Tom Baker. The only new material is a fairly brilliant explanation of the Doctor-swap, sewn in with the bits that were lifted for The Five Doctors. That, plus very minor amount of tweaked dialogue, to reflect Romana's new station. Everything else sticks to the Adams script as it was from the 70's.
I'd forgotten that this story was set to be a six-parter, so it did take a quite a while to watch. Each story is divided into 5-7 Flash animation segments. Which brings me to the animation - Don't have too high expectations. It's really more like cutouts from a graphic novel being slid about to simulate movement. But it's most definitely worth it to have Shada realized. The story is also quite complicated - I had been familiar with the overall plot, but still, some bits required close attention to understand what was going on.
Watching it made me a little sad, as I could really hear Douglas Adams' voice in some of the dialog. I'm guessing between the novel and the video, there were large parts of the script that hadn't been publically available. On the flip side, it became doubly hard for me to see McGann as his own Doctor, since the lines were so obviously written for Tom Baker. It was definitely a story that had its "ghosts".
Overall, I am really, really glad this was put together, and that Lalla Ward and John Leeson (K-9) got on board with it. I hope it eventually becomes available on DVD.
Tags: doctor who
Mood: 
nostalgic
posted by Skunque @ 4:03 PM
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