Shada

The Doctor and Romana are summoned by the Doctor's old friend Professor Chronotis, another Time Lord who has left Gallifrey and is now living quietly on Earth. Chronotis wants the Doctor to return something to Gallifrey, a book called "The Ancient and Worshipful Law of Gallifrey", one of the Time Lord artefacts that should never have left the planet. Also after the book, though, is a criminal scientist named Skagra, who wants to use the book to take him to the prison planet Shada in search of the imprisoned Time Lord criminal Salyavin.

Sound like a thin plot? Well, it sort of is, and how it was supposed to successfully fill 6 episodes is a bit of a mystery. Written by Douglas Adams, who was still serving as script editor at the time, Shada is unlike any Doctor Who adventure so far, being that it never got finished. Halfway through production the BBC went on strike and the story was never finished beyond the location work and a block of studio recording, but what did survive was preserved and eventually released on a special VHS tape with Tom Baker, several years later, providing linking narration for the adventure where there is no visual to go by. The project is of course interesting, but to look at it as it might have been when finished, one can see why script editors shouldn't be allowed to contribute scripts to the seasons they are working on without someone keeping watch on them. Shada, if you ask me, was two episodes too long, even in this diminished format, and some of the dialogue was starting to get a bit tedious, so maybe it was best that Shada met this fate as opposed to being completed and being a clunker ending to an overall poor season.

All is not lost with Shada, though, and in the years to come it would be revisited, and with more success in my opinion.

NEXT EPISODE : THE LEISURE HIVE