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How lost Doctor Who story was recreated 40 years later

Photo credit: BBC
Photo credit: BBC

From Digital Spy

Back in November 1979, the Doctor's greatest enemy wasn't the Daleks or the Cybermen... it was industrial action at the BBC.

A technicians' strike ensured that the final story of Tom Baker's sixth series of Doctor Who would never air, with only half of 'Shada' being completed. But now, almost 40 years later, it's finally being visited.

Having assembled a cut of the existing live-action footage from "seven hours of studio tapes", the team behind last year's 'The Power of the Daleks' reconstruction have filled the gaps with new animated sequences.

Photo credit: BBC Worldwide
Photo credit: BBC Worldwide

Having started planning on the project in late 2016, producer Charles Norton explains: "BBC Worldwide were keen to have another release for the end of the year. There's a long list of potential Doctor Who archive projects you could do... virtually none of which you could turn around in five months! 'Shada' is one you can."

Norton describes 'Shada' - written by The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy author and then-Doctor Who script editor Douglas Adams - as "a legendary lost story", while actor Daniel Hill - who played the Doctor's ally, Cambridge student Chris Parsons - says he was "haunted" by its incompletion.

"It was a wonderful thing to be in, so when we were hit by the strike, none of us believed that it wouldn't be remounted," Hill explains. "It was a real blow [that it wasn't]. So to see it completed, it's fantastic. It was really quite emotional that we got to do it."

The entire original cast - led, of course, by Tom Baker as the Doctor - have returned to lend their voices to the animated sequences. "After 38 years, if somebody didn't want to do it, it would not have been that surprising," Norton admits. "But everybody was really enthusiastic and prepared to come back."

Norton and his team went to painstaking lengths in their efforts to have the animated sequences match the live-action as closely as possible. The cast's new dialogue was recorded by original sound man Michael McCarthy, using a boom mic to match the acoustics of the TV soundtrack, while the new score by Mark Ayres features "big nods" to 1970s Doctor Who composer Dudley Simpson (who passed away earlier this month).

But recreating 'Shada' wasn't quite as simple as stitching together the existing footage and the new animation. Visual effects work was missing from the live-action scenes, so has been produced specially by Doctor Who veteran Mike Tucker "using techniques that would've been available at the time".

Only one moment required a minor cheat: an effects shot featuring the Doctor that hadn't been filmed, but that was so brief it would've jarred if it had been recreated in animation. Instead, a stand-in donned the Doctor's outfit, with Tom Baker's face digitally mapped over his double's.

Of course, besides the animation and how it gels with the existing footage, the other big talking point from 'Shada' is the closing scene. Tom Baker again reprises his role as the Doctor - but this time in live-action, as he appears today.

Photo credit: BBC Worldwide
Photo credit: BBC Worldwide

Stood in a recreation of his original TARDIS set, Baker delivers the closing line: "I expect that sometime in the future - in about 200 years' time - someone will meet me and say, is that really the Doctor? He seemed such a nice old man."

Why go this route? Norton explains: "The way that Douglas had written that last scene, it just seemed to work. So we thought, well, why don't we just record it with [Tom] as now?It sort of chimes with the lines that Douglas had in the script.

"It's a nice way of waving goodbye to an era of Doctor Who, waving goodbye to the '70s and the Tom Baker era. I hope viewers enjoy it."

Doctor Who: Shada is available now to download and on DVD from Monday, December 4.


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