We take a single episode of a science fiction TV series and overanalyze it to within an
inch of its life.
This is the Fusion Patrol Podcast.
Welcome to the discussion.
Hello and welcome to another episode of Fusion Patrol. I'm Eugene.
And I'm Simon.
And tonight we are looking once more again into the breach do we go to look at the notorious, the infamous, the one, the only, and actually not the one and only, it's like in every form ever known,
Shada, Douglas Adams' unfinished legendary episode of Doctor Who.
Repeatedly finished again and again episode.
Shada, this time the animated version with Tom Baker.
Aboard a space station, something sinister involving people and a ball has happened.
The sinister Skagra leaves with his ball.
Meanwhile, at Cambridge, a researcher named Chris Parsons stops in at the rooms of Professor Cronotus
to borrow some books. Unbeknownst to him, he borrows a mysterious book from Cronotus's library.
Meanwhile, the Doctor and Romana have come to Cambridge to visit Cronotus, who is a retired
Time Lord friend of the Doctor's, who's been living at Cambridge for the last three centuries.
He called the Doctor to get him to return a book to Gallifrey, the worshipful and ancient law of
Gallifrey, one of the relics from Rassilon's time. Skagra wants that book too. And by what seems to
be the most tortured of coincidences, the Doctor and Romana have turned up on the same day as Skagra,
which also happens to be the day when Chris Parsons inadvertently borrowed the book, which
has just been fine for the last three centuries. Skagra kills Cronotus by sucking his mind dry
into the sphere. Comedy ensues as bicycles are ridden around Cambridge, while the Doctor pursues
Chris and the book, and Skagra pursues the Doctor and the book. Meanwhile, Claire, a colleague of
Chris's, gets drawn into the mystery when Chris attempts to analyze the book and discovers it has
some very, very weird properties. Skagra gets the book and imprisons the Doctor Romana K-9 and Chris
Parsons aboard his invisible spaceship. Skagra sucks the Doctor's mind dry and learns that the
Doctor didn't know what the book meant anyway, so he forces Romana to use the TARDIS to take him to
his command ship. The Doctor, like Kronotus, has been killed by the Sphere. Unlike Kronotus, the
doctor really isn't dead. He defeated the mind drain by using one of his time-honored strategies,
pretending to be stupid. The ship's computer knows the doctor to be dead. The doctor uses this to
argue logically that since he was an enemy of Skagra, but now he's dead, he must therefore be
an ex-enemy of Skagra. An ex-enemy is not a threat, and therefore anything he asks of the computer
cannot possibly be a threat to Skagra. The computer accepts this and cooperates with the doctor.
Sans TARDIS, the doctor uses the ship to go in pursuit. Meanwhile, Claire, not knowing that
Cronotus is dead, is waiting for him to return to his rooms. She accidentally launches his rooms
into the time vortex, for you see Cronotus's rooms are a TARDIS. Cronotus, now no longer dead,
then shows up and, demonstrating some very atypical Time Lord powers,
works with Claire to get his TARDIS more operational.
The Doctor has returned to the point where Skagra came to Earth from.
It is a think tank, the Institute for Advanced Science Studies.
He finds the now much, much older wizened and mindless scientists
that Skagra nefariously did things to at the beginning of the episode.
He stole their minds, too.
They were the greatest minds in the galaxy.
The sphere, it turns out, is a device for collecting minds.
Skagra has taken Ramanite's command ship,
where he wastes a lot of time not really explaining his nefarious plot
to become the entire universe,
but first he must find the forgotten Time Lord prison planet Shada,
to which the book is the key.
On Shada is the most infamous of Time Lord criminals,
Sally Aven, a Time Lord with an atypical gift.
the ability to project his mind into others,
just like Cronotus did earlier when nobody but Claire was looking.
The Doctor and Chris track him down, as does Cronotus and Claire.
Things go awry, and Skagra gets to Shada,
discovers that Saliavan is missing,
then discovers that Cronotus is Saliavan,
and with Saliavan's mind in the sphere now again,
actually, since he'd already mind-sucked Cronotus earlier,
who had been Saliavan all along,
Skagra has the ability to project his mind into every living organism in the universe.
But he's got the Doctor's mind in there, too.
The Doctor, with the help of a stylish helmet that he whipped up in the TARDIS,
is able to defeat Skagra and imprison him in his ship.
Cronotus, now alive again once more,
returns to Cambridge to live out the rest of his retirement in peace.
The end.
Shada, I greatly debated whether I should go back and listen to our
previous Shada podcast.
Episode 211.
June 1st, 2015.
That's been some time now.
Almost four years since we've done this.
Yeah.
And Shada doesn't get better
every time I watch it,
I gotta say.
And I've watched it at least twice now
because they also came out with a DVD
that had everything in it
and then, I guess, linking narration.
The Tom Baker linking narration.
Yeah, the Tom Baker.
Yeah, and then they came out with that in DVD.
And then after that, they came out with this animated version.
Yeah, because that was only about four years ago, if that.
That may even be where I got the animated version from.
I think it might be one of the bonus features on it.
I don't remember.
Ah, you mean, yes.
You mean what they're now calling Return to Sharda, the eighth Doctor animated Sharda.
Yeah, which, how animated was that?
I don't remember.
I know it was a big finish.
No, I think you're right.
I think it was included as an extra on that as a flash thing
if you put it into your computer or something.
Yeah, I think so.
I won't swear to it.
Whereas, if, and it'll give you a bit of a clue
as to my attitude towards this particular Sharda release,
that I was wavering over whether to bother getting it at all.
And the thing that tipped the balance for me
into getting the Steelbook Blu-ray
was that it has on one of the discs got a proper version of the animated 8th Doctor Sharda.
So you can pop it in your Blu-ray player and actually watch it.
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
So I get a feel for your attitude there.
I think I probably...
I tell you...
I mean, well...
We should describe this animation first, right?
For our listeners, in case you don't know.
Let's just quickly do the background because regular listeners who go enough years back will know what we thought of Sharda before.
And I'm not...
I don't remember what you thought of Sharda.
Well, I don't dislike it.
But between then and now, and that in itself was a couple of different versions because that was staged with a completely new cast, including a new Doctor.
in a recording made by Big Finish and webcast.
And those are two slightly different versions of it.
And since then, or maybe around then,
there was also, which we didn't look at
and didn't review on the podcast
in a remarkable show of restraint,
an adaptation of the original Tom Baker version,
filling in the gaps with animation.
That sounds familiar.
Made privately by Ian Levine
with some of the original members of the cast.
I forget who.
Certainly Lala Ward, probably Daniel Hill.
Maybe it was John Leeson playing K-9.
I don't know.
I don't think it involved Tom Baker.
But it was basically a similar project to this one,
which I think he offered to the BBC
and the BBC told him where he could stick it.
Someone novelised Sharda.
James Goss, I think.
Sounds right, I've got that somewhere.
Gareth Roberts may have been down to do it
and gave up on the project.
So there's another version of Gareth Roberts.
Almost, almost tempted by that.
And then here we have an official BBC attempt
at that project to take the original footage
and fill in the gaps with animation.
But obviously the gaps themselves,
they're not like the other Lost Doctor Whos
that we've looked at where there is an original soundtrack because no soundtrack was already
recorded with the original cast the the production for those who aren't familiar with it were was
stood down after strike action disrupted it and they decided not to restage so the missing scenes
and there are many were never recorded in any form and so what we've got on this production
is a new audio recording with all of the original casting uh minus one or two but yeah who are
David Brearley oh I see they reused they reused lines from other shows whenever they could because
I was sure it was David Brearley it was were there any lines from K9 that were not no they just if
there were any lines that they couldn't find or put together a recording from other stuff they cut
them right okay that makes sense and i think the actor who played chronotis may have been dead
because i noticed he didn't speak really in the animated sections but i'm not sure i didn't oh
does he not speak i was thinking he speaks in that final scene on sharda but gosh okay i i see i i
made myself sit through it without checking on on who was doing the voices because i wanted to judge
how good they were if they were not the original voices and I was I was extremely um critical in my
head of the guy who was playing uh Christopher Neame's part because I thought you know why have
they cast someone who doesn't even sound like him but uh it would seem that it was Christopher Neame
and that would explain that so but I didn't check that until the end so I was like oh yeah
You're bloody recasting.
Yeah, so as far as I know, they got everybody who was still alive.
And I specifically saw the comment about the David Brewerly.
I didn't dig deep enough to find out about the actor who played Renotis,
or Sally Aven, depending on what you want to call him.
But we could probably find out.
Yes, in fairness, many of whose scenes,
almost all of whose scenes were actually shot at the time in 1970-whatever.
Yeah, his, you know, it's very clear in this episode that, you know, they didn't do anything on Skagra's spaceship.
They didn't do anything on the command ship.
They didn't do anything on Shada.
So you'll have a scene where they run from the spaceship to Kronotus's TARDIS and you switch from animated to live action and vice versa.
Which I guess we'll come back to.
And presumably Shirley Dixon didn't record anything in the 1970 production.
So I don't know whether she was ever cast as the ship or whether that was a recent casting decision purely for this production.
Well, yeah, there's nobody there that was done at the time.
So, yeah, it makes sense.
And the actor who played Cronotus was Dennis Carey, died in 1986.
Okay. So he definitely wasn't voicing anything we hear in the animation.
But does he say anything? I'm going to have to re-watch it.
Well, he might have said something like doctor or, you know, something that was said elsewhere.
So they could reuse a line, perhaps.
Yeah, just to make it appear that he was.
He was definitely there in a couple of scenes, but he didn't say a lot if he did say anything.
Yes.
So let's start with talking a little bit more about the animation.
How did that work for you then?
Well, so the, I mean, if we just take the quality of the animation on its own, we're looking at, I mean, I guess it's slightly unusual for a Doctor Who animation house to actually manage to stay in business long enough to do a second story.
But we're looking at the same crew who put together the power of the Daleks, which I kind of liked, I think, you know, that it wasn't invasion good, but it was it was it wasn't as bad as the Ice Warriors.
And, you know, it had its had it had its strengths.
And I kind of felt that, you know, in terms of taking the animation alone on this, it wasn't too bad either.
I wasn't wild about their fourth doctor.
No, he's kind of weird looking. I think they just repurposed their Troughton. They really like those eye sacks.
Yeah, yeah.
Obviously, the doctor has very dark circles under his eyes.
And there's something about the movement, which I still find distressing.
Yes.
It's like, you know, they haven't put a...
There's some effort in the drawing and the backgrounds and all the rest of it, but in the actual...
the way in which the characters move around,
it's quite sort of mechanical.
You know, yeah, it's not fantastic.
But again, if anyone from the BBC is listening,
I'll take it.
I don't even mind the Ice Warriors animation.
I will absolutely take it.
You guys just start at the beginning
and work your way through these things
and just get her done.
And that will be fine.
It's fine.
I think what's more jarring here is, and this is going to be a weird one, because we do have episodes where the episode exists and then the next episode is animated and then the episode exists again and it's animated.
You bounce back and forth, you see the distinctions.
In this particular story, for starters, Tom Baker is a much more animated face in real life as the Doctor.
He's a very, right?
He's a very, he uses a lot of big eyes and gawking and mugging it up for the camera.
And you go from that to the kind of dead animation of the face.
And the same in this story.
I noticed it a lot, in particular with Romana.
I'm not a huge fan of Lala Ward as Romana.
I much prefer Mary Tam to Romana.
But I don't dislike Lala Ward. But in this story and in and in probably City of Death, she is so much more animated.
Her face is always, you know, she's in the background and she's reacting to what's going on.
And she she beams and she she again, she's kind of playing it big for the camera in a way.
But it looks a lot more natural. And then you go Douglas Adams.
Yeah. And then you go to she likes Douglas Adams.
And then you go to the animation, and again, she's pretty much stoic.
And of course, the fact that the actress who is performing it is now 28, 38 years older.
1980? Yeah, 38 years older.
The animation of the voice doesn't sound the same either, just like Tom Baker's.
They don't have the same brightness to it.
And so...
All right, all right, all right.
It's a little...
Well, there's a couple of things.
I mean, first of all, the question of the animation, that's exactly why I said taking the animation on its own.
Because when you're switching back and forth from the animation, it is jarring.
There's no way around it.
And I mean, I did make a note, actually, of that first shot of panning up into the sky when they're punting on the cam.
panning up into the sky and then panning back down to seeing Briss riding on his bicycle
in animated form.
Oh, yeah.
And I knew what they would, you know, as soon as that shot went up, I thought, right,
I know what's going to happen when we're coming down.
We're looking at the animated version.
This is the transition.
But it is just beautifully done, I think.
But they must have shot that in the first place with the panning up.
Well, that's the weird thing.
I can't find, I mean, I don't know how to find out,
but the footage you get, the obvious place to look
is the version they made for VHS
with the Tom Baker linking narration.
The footage you get in that cuts
from well before you go up to the sky.
So I have no idea whether they had to do anything
to that shot in order to make it do what it does.
I mean, obviously that particular location
and the sky are still there.
So they could have gone back and shot that
and somehow cut it together.
I don't know.
But I wanted to pay tribute to the fact
that they had obviously thought quite carefully
about the difficulties that the audience would have
in switching between live action and animated
and that they had kind of let us in gently to it.
Because I think it is a real weakness.
I think it is an issue that your criticisms
of how animated Tom Baker is in the live action or whatever,
I think you could and would just as readily make them
towards something involving Patrick Troughton, you know.
Say the invasion cut back and forth in that way.
Patrick Troughton is no less animated than Tom Baker.
Perhaps.
And the animated scenes are pretty much just as static.
The difference is you're being asked to you're being asked to watch something different.
And so you put your head in a in a space where the the input, the visual input you're expected to receive and therefore the work your imagination is doing and so forth is different for a full 25 minutes.
And that's much easier to do. I mean, even then, I seem to remember when we started out on this journey and when we were watching the invasion, I was thinking in some ways what I would prefer to do would be to watch eight episodes of animated invasion because then you wouldn't have the back and forth.
And I'd still like to have the six surviving episodes on the DVD because I would still watch them.
But as a viewing experience, it would be different if you sat down and watched something completely animated.
And I thought that was what was so interesting about doing Power of the Daleks,
because there you got a whole story which was just done in one consistent style and there was no chopping back and forward.
And I thought that worked really, really well.
And it just astonished me that they chose to do Sharda, which, frankly, has been done enough.
And, you know, it wasn't on my list of things I felt they needed to do.
And it was always going to have this problem.
It was always going to have this issue with the fact that you'd be sitting there watching it in one mode and then you'd be watching it in another mode.
and it's not so bad at the beginning,
but by the time you get to the end
and they're running out of Kronotus' TARDIS
onto the ship or whatever,
and it's literally, you know,
they run through a door and into the animation.
It, you know, it just, it starts doing your head in.
So I'm going to talk about another flaw I see in this.
And again, I'm pleased to try and put stuff out.
There's so many other animated projects
I would have rather seen than Shada.
Yep.
But here's another problem that I think is the fundamental flaw with this.
And I think it's why we have so many darn versions of Shada.
There's two things.
One, there's somebody who obviously thinks everything Douglas Adams ever did was fantastic.
And there's obviously someone who thinks, no, it's not, because Shada's proof of that.
And two, there's some belief that every last scrap of footage that they ever shot is worth keeping on this show.
And so they have taken this production, which should have been a six-part episode, six one-part episodes.
They have edited into a movie.
Six one-part episodes?
Sorry, six one-half-hour episodes.
I see what you mean.
And they have edited into a movie, which, first off, if you're trying to recreate the original, that's not how you do it.
It wasn't written to be one movie.
It was written to be six parts.
The beats are set for six parts.
Yes.
And then...
Absolutely.
And then...
100%.
And they didn't edit it.
That almost stopped me buying it.
And they didn't edit it.
They didn't go, okay, well, you know, we've remade this.
This is not Shada, the original Shada.
I think we can maybe take some of these scenes that are not advancing the plot and cut them out like way too much bicycling.
And they could have.
Well, there's a lot of wasted footage that I just feel like they've got the guy sitting there going, well, we've got this shot.
Probably it would have been lost in edit, but it's real.
Let's do it.
And they just left everything in.
Absolutely every last scrap of film they've got.
And they could have.
Too much tea.
Too much making tea and muffins and just, man, it's just a slow, dull slog.
Okay.
And they've made it worse.
Well, see, I think that because, so first of all, the running time of the finished product is the running time of the original Shada.
So I'm not sure that there is evidence that they would have cut it a lot.
and furthermore if you look at other serials from the period it's not as if they're entirely
free from padding oh no no no but you could eliminate the padding in when you've converted
it to a movie well you could if you're down some because you're defeating the you're defeating the
format so why not go at it and say yeah i think we can make this better okay because you're because
what you're doing is you're making sharda 2017 not sharda 1980 17 whatever and uh so yes i would
agree with that except that what i would actually want if they're doing this what what i would
actually want because there is the question of why they're doing this which i think we'll come
back to i would want the six individual episodes and it the fact that when i you know when i was
thinking of getting this and the and the reviews were sort of positive and i was like well all
you know maybe despite my skepticism this is going to be worth getting and then I saw as a
kind of footnote oh but it's a shame they didn't present it or at least offer the option of
presenting it in the six individual episodes and I thought what no you know no what's what why would
I be surely the whole point of this project is to present the sharder that would have been and
And I'm just going to add, they put the 1980 BBC intro at it to try to make it even look more like what the original project would be.
I know.
And then they change it.
It makes no sense at all.
See, that did just kind of irritate me, that intro.
Because, yes, it's a reminder of the fact that what they're trying to do is set something up that is a recreation.
Now, so the criticisms of it,
it's back and forth between the footage and the animation.
That makes me wonder, you know,
well, with some of the other animations,
Tenth Planet or whatever,
let's pick on Tenth Planet.
They reconstructed the missing fourth episode
and they've tried to do it as pretty much as faithfully as they can
so that it fits with the other episodes
and now you can watch a completed serial.
But the fourth episode, no one would mistake it for the original.
No one would go, oh, I wasn't looking too closely,
and I thought that was the actual live-action episode come back.
No.
We know it is an animation.
And a recognition of that fact is that they don't,
even with key scenes like Hartnell regenerating into Troughton,
where the actual genuine original footage does still exist,
they don't splice that back in.
There's no kind of cut back and forth,
because presumably they've weighed it up and they've decided that the better viewing experience
is you just sort of sit there and have an episode that is animated and if you want to then go and
watch the remaining scraps of footage well you can do so just put it on the dvd and there you go
yeah yeah yeah so what we've got here isn't quite that what what they're trying to do is they're
trying to present to you what is essentially a bunch of scraps of footage and the animation
is it's even more so than with the animated missing episodes it's filler in order to make
it possible for you to watch the original footage and yet still be able to kind of follow a through
narrative in a way that it you know however however engagingly tom baker presents it in the
in the linking narration you just don't quite get from his sort of pricey of of the the the
action in that version and so in view of that again i would say that argues for you to try and
recreate something that is as close to the original as it would have been which includes putting the
beginning and end bumpers in and you know if for no other reason and not i'm not saying they're
the greatest cliffhangers in doctor who history right especially the the chain link gate um but
You know, as you say, those are the beats.
And those scenes almost don't make any sense unless you get the shriek and the play out over it.
I get this when I'm listening to Big Finish.
My daughter and I listen to Big Finish when I take her to school and bring her home every night.
So we're watching, we're listening to these things, you know, maybe the majority of a single episode of the classic range each day and or each way.
the majority of a single episode in each transit.
And so we'll get to one cliffhanger a day
through that technique.
And we'll be sitting there in the car
and you'll be going along and you'll go,
and cue,
because you know when they're building up to it.
And it's wrong when it doesn't happen.
And you see it in Shada from time to time.
And you go,
I think that might've,
I think when he's dying of no air,
that might be one.
And I think the Chainlink Finch might be one.
But-
We know the cliffhanger.
Well, I know the cliffhangers from knowing the story, but you still, yeah, you want the payoff.
The payoff is the theme tune.
And that cheat they do, like when he's at the chain link fence and, you know, at the end of the first episode, it looked like it was all over for the doctor.
But then when they play it the next time, the sound of the TARDIS materializing has been added to the mix.
Yeah.
Like it was this time.
So there was never any suspense at all there.
It's there in the VHS version.
Is it?
You know, they actually, yeah, that version has the individual episodes.
Oh, it has, okay.
The episodes get shorter and shorter as there's more and more narration in them.
It's still got the proper cliffhangers and the full titles
and then intro titles to the next episode.
And if someone could take the care to do that
when actually all they'd done was edit together the footage
with a bit of Tom Baker sat in a cupboard,
I don't understand why they couldn't do it
when they had gone to all of the trouble of remastering all of this
and actually getting as many of the original actors as they could
back together in order to restage an audio soundtrack.
I mean, it's a lot of work they have done for this one.
Why spoil the ship for Hay-Pet-A-Tar?
And some of, you know, I make fun of the bicycling.
Yeah, I know they do bicycles at Cambridge.
I like bicycles, a bicycle rider.
I'm not opposed to bicycles.
it doesn't make the most compelling television um but not a trans viewer then no but you see
like there's this scene where chris is riding away from chronotis and he is on a bike and then
you see the scene where he shows up in his lab and you see him ride the bike or walk the bike
past the window before he comes around and enters the room and i like that except that
like that i mean i mean could they have spent that money on something else you did need it
i mean so there is there is i will concede there is a question dramatically over whether you need
that i quite liked it from an aesthetic point of view but there is there is a different need for
it which is that that is the first animated shot so what what you're getting then is the transition
to the animation so i feel like that sequence is actually quite important it was lost on me
It was lost on me.
I went to animation.
I'm like, oh, it's animation.
And then they're like, they could have just started that with him walking in the door of his lab.
Because we already knew he was in transit.
So they spent money on that.
And I think that's probably the part that gets me.
It's like, if we assume that animation has a set cost per second, and they're apparently it's quite expensive.
Then, I don't know.
It just seemed like they didn't know what they were after here.
Maybe that shot was in the original.
Maybe they have the documents, the shot list,
and how the camera was going to be staged.
And maybe they went for that and went for every shot,
just like they had every shot of the bike riding.
And they just said, we're just going to animate everything that should have been done.
Absolutely, positively.
We're just not going to bother with the cliffhangers.
And we've got to fill out the time.
So we're going to make sure it's the full length,
Even though we're not doing a six episode show for Aaron.
Enough, enough, enough, enough harping on that.
All right.
Now I debated whether I should go back and listen to the podcast or to see, to make sure I'm not repeating stuff that I said before.
But I, you know, I also am watching the episode and taking some notes about the episode itself because this is not the same as the, um, the Paul McGann version because they, you know, did some work on it.
and some of the things,
we get a different Doctor kind of,
different attitude here and there.
We get some different performances.
But, so I want to point out here
that of all the series of Doctor Who,
17 kind of sucked.
It's not a good one.
And I don't know, you know,
Graham Williams?
Yeah, Graham Williams.
He did all right with the key to time.
He did all right with the Horror of Fang Rock season.
I mean, there are some things I don't like.
I love the key to time.
There are some things about the style and the design that changed,
that changed again when John Nathan Turner,
that I'm not really crazy about.
But season 17, and unfortunately this is, in my mind,
is inextricably linked with Romana 2.
It's not really her fault.
It's not her fault.
It's not, because season 18, which is brilliant,
is romana heavy right i think i think it was it was due a change of producer yeah so shada is not
good i mean it's not horns of niman bad but it's close um nightmare i kind of like nightmare
it's not creature no creature the pit um you know these are not good it's just not a good run of
stories and we have douglas adams as the script editor at this point in time and as i kind of get
from the interviews and stuff,
this was not a job he was suited to do.
He didn't, I don't think he pulled this together,
particularly when he was writing himself.
I didn't think he was script editor in season 17.
The only season he was script editor, wasn't it?
Oh, okay.
Because prior to that was Key to Time.
And I don't think he was script editor.
Yeah, no, you're right.
You're right.
It would have to be season 17.
Yeah, yeah.
For some reason, I thought he left the show earlier than that.
Anyway, yes.
But, so, you know, there's some problems
with the story itself.
There just isn't just it's part of a bad stretch of Doctor Who and it's not fantastic.
But, you know, it's got that it's got that reputation because it's it's Douglas Adams and it really is his lesser work of all the stuff I've ever read from Douglas Adams or seen.
This has got to be, in my opinion, the poorest thing he's done, bar none.
And yes, you probably you're probably right.
But it's still Douglas Adams.
And here's the thing.
It is.
It's still good.
It's the, I mean, okay, you're not going to agree with that.
And we could rehash episode 211 all over again.
But for me, what I've gathered from watching this,
which is definitely the best way to appreciate the performances
in the original stuff that was shot,
because you do have this through narrative
and it does give you the ability to judge it in a context
where you can kind of follow it through.
It is coloured, and I guess we'll come back to this,
it is coloured by the 2017 performances by the same actors,
which you're obviously switching back and forth from.
But just looking at the kind of stuff that was shot at the time now
and comparing it, as we can do, to an alternative realisation of the material,
I don't think that it is a good production.
I think it's badly directed.
I mean, I think Ken Roberts is a good director,
but he's not making the most of the material that he's got
because Douglas Adams does comedy and it needs a direct.
Not well directed.
Yeah, yeah.
And I thought Dennis Carey, who I don't know from anything else, was...
Keeper of Trocken.
Good grief.
He's the keeper, is he?
Yes, that was his other doctor.
And that's only a year later.
Well, I think he was under makeup at that time.
Remarkable. Well, OK, I mean, because I think his performance as a keeper is excellent.
So I was wondering whether he was miscast or badly directed.
I mean, obviously, Cronotis, the performance is supposed to give you confused old man.
But half the time what I was getting was rather confused actor playing old man.
And it just it doesn't it doesn't hang together.
The comparison is against a cast that, you know, has Susanna Harker and James Fox, for goodness sake, and Hannah Gordon playing the ship.
Fantastic. Andrew Sachs, Sean Biggerstaff.
It's the new version, the newer version or the early 21st century version is extremely well directed.
I think it's Nicholas Pegg. And it has a stellar cast.
And they really do make the most of the material. And it has the proper canine in it.
You know, I can't get over the fact that when I see canine, it should be John Neeson's voice.
So I appreciate that they've gone to the trouble of filling in the bits with clips of David Brearley.
It's wrong.
I think they should at least have included an alternate track on the DVD where they got John Leeson to just revoice all of it.
I was going to ask you if they should have done that.
Absolutely.
But then they should have done that with all of the old Doctor Whos by that stretch two in season 17.
Definitely.
Because John Leeson's canine is just an absolute delight.
I'm so glad you went back to Big Finish and did a load of these.
The canine proper box set.
They can sell those as a separate reissue now where they take Series 17,
re-dub John Leeson, pop it down, sell it for some more money.
I think when it comes out on Blu-ray,
I shall be very disappointed if they haven't included that.
But, you know, my overall feeling is that what we are seeing here
in terms of the shortcomings of Sharda 2017
are not as much to do with the material,
which I'll agree is Adam's weakest work.
But it's not that.
It can be a load better.
We know that because we have seen it better elsewhere.
You know, he is high concept.
I think I can safely say that Doug Allen, high concept,
and high concept does not lend itself to long form.
So for starters, when he'd been doing this story,
When he was doing this story, he'd have been much better if it had been four parts.
Hitchhikers, well, OK, he struggled.
Yes, all right.
Hitchhikers, he didn't manage to write all six episodes of Hitchhikers and the LP version and the book are only the first step for adapted.
So maybe. Yeah, all right.
Yes, if he was right, if he if he were starting out writing a script that was intended as a four part serial, he might have done a better job at it.
And we might not be judging it his weakest work.
Yes.
It's still Douglas Adams, though.
Yeah.
Which I don't...
Never have thought fit very well in the Doctor Who universe.
So I'm kind of on the fence there.
I like Pirate Planet.
Everything fits in the Doctor Who universe.
I like Pirate Planet.
City of Death is...
Okay.
City of Death is great.
It's got its moments.
It also doesn't make a lot of sense in places where they just don't bother to...
They have stuff that they just don't even bother to explain.
that has no bearing on the plot like the guy drawing a picture of the time lady holistic
detective agency right well but that came afterwards he took his work and he and he's
added another draft he's taken another yeah he fixed it right first drafts are not his strong
suit either and this is well he's never a first draft deadline yeah well it shouldn't be a first
draft it was being shot i mean it's not like it didn't get finished because the script didn't get
finished it didn't get finished because they couldn't finish filming it but they started by
which point okay with douglas adams you couldn't guarantee it but by which point they should have
had a script he was the script editor so he had work to do on all the other scripts he'd already
written one script that season for city of death and this is the last production of the season
i'm gonna say that i'd be willing to bet that douglas adams was typing right up to the last
minute it feels like i don't think don't think you'll get any takers yeah i i think it it has
that feel and i think that if he had plopped this out and said well we're not going to make this
this year and then he'd written a book out of it a few years later which in a way he has
it would be better and it just it yeah there's so many you know too many coincidences
well he did he did but i'm talking about it would be it would be in parts of this get worked into
Dirk Gently's as well? No, Dirk Gently is... That's a good question. Did part of this get
worked into Dirk Gently? I can't remember now, but I felt like some of this Cronotus stuff was,
but... Yes, it is. Yes, of course it is. Yes. Including the name. Yeah. There's Professor
Reg Cronotus. Yes. Yes, it does. Yes, it does get worked into Dirk Gently, which I missed. Yes,
I missed when we were talking about all of the different versions of Sharda that we've got,
because in some ways that is the best one.
I don't know whether James Goss fixes some of these things in his novel version,
but I think the question of, I mean, you've alluded to the fact that you think it needs editing,
so we come back to whether what we are trying to do is produce a new version that is fixed,
or whether we're trying to produce something that is very much like it would have been in the 1970s.
And again, I think the issue here is this falls between two stools.
I mean, I keep coming back to this.
This is the real weakness with this whole project.
You can do various things with Sharda.
One would be you just try and do an absolute faithful recreation.
I think this is much nearer to what they've done.
Another would be you try and take what you've got, but just...
So let's say you have to restage parts of it.
And so what you could do is you say, well, let's fix it.
Let's make some script changes.
But actually, when you're going down that route, what you might do is say, well, let's fix all the other bits as well.
In fact, let's restage the whole thing.
In fact, let's do what Big Finish did, which is let's just recast everyone and do it properly.
And to me, that gives you a better result because think of it.
Yeah, I think it would be a better result, but I think people are going to be looking at that going.
But what about the Tom Baker footage?
Well, they are.
What are we going to do with that?
But that is kind of still there.
And so here's the other problem, which you've also mentioned, which comes up from switching between the live action stuff and the animated stuff,
which is that they have had to restage the recording,
or they have had to mount a recording of the missing stuff
because it never existed, with the original cast
because it has to fit in between the existing footage.
But the original cast is almost 40 years older
and it wasn't so much Lala Ward's performance
that I was focusing on in this as it was Tom Baker's
because I've always had, you know,
since Tom Baker did start playing the Doctor again in the Big Finish stories, I've always
been trying to put my finger on exactly what it is that is off about his performance, because
far more than any of the other Big Finish Doctors, even someone like Peter Davison's, whose voice has
changed so completely, and yet the performance is still, for me, it still kind of rings through
to the performance that he was giving in the early 80s when he was on screen. And Tom Baker's doesn't
quite and Sharda is an opportunity where you actually get to watch 1970s Tom Baker and then
literally seconds later listen to present-day Tom Baker doing his performance as the Doctor and
and they sound very similar because obviously they're both Tom Baker but what I think it is
is that Tom Baker as the Doctor when he was on TV gave a performance as the Doctor that was
quite laconic and also quite deliberately and almost gleefully unexpected in the way
that he gave the performance so he wouldn't do the obvious thing so when you expected him to be
angry or urgent he would sort of pull back and he would he would you know his voice would drop or
he would he would become very gentle he you know when he was when you expected him to shout he
would whisper it would always be he would always be looking for some way to to put you off off
guard because that's what the performance is it's a very sort of uh it's it's slightly alien in its
unexpectedness okay so i'm gonna add to that right his performance is like that but a lot of that
performance was his physicality yes which we cannot get in big finish well we can because i think you
get that in the voice if you close your eyes and you listen to him doing it on screen you do get a
lot of that what i what i think is different about tom baker now is that you there is something
that about that young man because it because he was he was one of the quite you know young people
or maybe not so much when he was doing sharda but he was young playing the doctor and there's an
almost effortlessness to his performance you know think of him especially compared to pertweeber
sticking his feet on top of the windscreen of the land rover in robot and just you know lying back
with his hat over his face.
It's that kind of, that effortlessness.
And what you get now is someone who is trying to recreate
his performance as the Doctor,
putting a huge amount of effort
into sounding like Tom Baker did then,
40 years ago, playing the Doctor.
It's almost like listening to John Colshaw
or someone doing a Doctor Who impression.
It's the reason I don't like mimicry,
you know the the the kind of tim treloar pretending to be john pertwee type thing
because what they're actually doing what tom baker is himself doing is picking out those aspects of
his performance back then that are most recognizable and and playing them up and it
doesn't have that kind of very laid-back feel to it and i mean that sounds very critical of tom
baker the guy is 183 or something yeah yeah he's just about reached the age that
his doctor was when he was playing the doctor yeah yeah so this so the the idea that he could
in some way give that same kind of effortlessness or or youthful laid-back performance now is you
know it's it's just no one could no one could so so you can't you can't criticize him for that
but that's what i think is the difference between the tom baker performance today and the tom baker
performance in 70 whatever and the issue bringing it all back to to shada 2017 the issue that that
gives you is as you switch back and forth once again you're presented you're you know you're
you get used to the one performance and then boom suddenly you're in animation and you're getting the
the the kind of heightened more predictable performance and then boom suddenly yeah you're
back again but only for the one scene you can't relax into it because away we go on the animation
again. I will say this.
I think I recall you saying
that you were not particularly
following the Big Finish Tom Baker
adventures.
I have been.
I think he's definitely gotten better
through the Big Finish.
The early ones were kind of painful.
I've been dipping into Series 8
I think it is and he's pretty good.
Yeah.
But he still doesn't sound like
70s Tom Baker. It doesn't matter
hugely because you're listening to
an entire story with just the performance he's giving now and once you get used to it and you
get into it that's okay but you can't do that with this sharder right right um let's see what
else we got here um again you know the story wise it just feels like there's too many characters i
like claire i don't know why she's in the story they could have trimmed a lot of this out but um
one of the things that bugs me about this because it is being staged as if it's part of series 17
and it would have bothered the heck out of me in series 17 if it had been at the time and there
are instances where it's already a problem in series 17 but nowhere is it worse than in this
episode where is the randomizer the TARDIS is unflyable in series 17 and they don't fix it
until series 18 in the leisure hive right i mean that's that is fundamental yeah i guess of the
series but that's part of the part of the problem with going back and pretending that sharder occurs
between series 17 and 18 is that when they made the leisure hive they they knew that that that
sharder wasn't going to be shown so they could say we fixed the randomizer knowing that the
preceding episode the randomizer wasn't fixed well they no i'm not gonna say i i'm not saying
there is a in the leisure hive they destroyed the randomizer sorry yes they they took it out
and used it for something else yeah yes yes i mean yes getting it back to front what i'm not
saying is that they would have inserted such a scene into sharda had it got what what i'm what
i'm saying is that i think it probably wasn't in graham williams mind to do anything at all with
the randomizer they would probably have just forgotten about it it's weird about that is that
they went this is this is series 17 this is they started it at the beginning well they started it
in the last scene of series 16 and you know this was this was a problem that they dealt with
throughout the entirety of series 17 i i can't imagine that people working on this were just like
eh we'll just forget about it today because they did well i think they were because the point the
point about the randomizer wasn't to create a new series arc the point about the randomizer was
to snap away from this problem of the TARDIS having become too predictable.
Yep, I agree.
The reason the TARDIS had become too predictable
was just because they drifted into writing it that way.
And I suspect they would have ended up drifting back into writing it this way.
And I suspect that was what was happening with Sharda.
And I think when John Nathan Turner took over,
knowing what had come before,
the reason he could write a scene or he could have written a scene
where the randomiser was explicitly removed
was because it followed on and he wanted to show that
because he was coming in as a new broom
and he wanted to show what was different.
And I think therein lies a thing about this.
Sharda didn't happen between Series 17 and Series 18
and everyone making the show thereafter knew that.
And now we have what is now known as Return to Sharda,
but the 2003 webcast version of Sharda,
which had this whole scene in it
about how they were taken out of time
when they were punting on the cam
by the sequences in The Five Doctors.
Five Doctors is another example
where they knew Sharda hadn't been broadcast.
They could therefore use footage from it.
And so going back and saying,
well, actually we pretend that Sharda did happen,
it doesn't quite work with the continuity of the show anymore.
Sorry.
So it's always going to be a sidestep, an oddity, a kind of museum artifact, if you like, than a real part of canonical Doctor Who, if you make it a kind of showcase for the scraps of footage as they were filmed back then.
Three things I want to bring out, then I can turn over to anything else.
And these are nitpicks or big picks, however you want to look at.
But they're just, and watching this particular version of the story as it was,
there were three things that really stood out to me that glared in there.
This doesn't make sense.
The first is why did Chris take that book?
Who, how, anyone could go to someone and say,
can I borrow some books on carbon dating?
And they say, oh, they're down there.
And you pick books.
I don't know about you, but I never, ever pick a book in a language I can't read without knowing what the title of the book is and walk away with it, which is exactly what he did.
That makes no sense whatsoever.
I think there may have been some dialogue in the webcast version that I may have had to go back and share.
Because within the expert, obviously it's adapted for audio, essentially.
for those who haven't seen the webcast version or heard our discussion of it,
is not animation like the animation we're seeing here.
Because, you know, we're talking about 15 years earlier
and we're talking about something that went out online
and it's essentially a bunch of still images.
So showing that someone is browsing a bookshelf to scan for a particular title
is beyond what you could actually see on screen.
And therefore, in adapting it, it has to resort to the kind of devices you get on audio of things like people talking to themselves. And I wonder if I can't remember. It's not that recently that I last listened to it. But I wonder if in that Chris is kind of talking to himself about what he's seeing on the bookshelves. And perhaps in that bit of description, there's some explanation of why he why it takes his interest, because I think you're right. It's just not clear here.
It doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
The second thing is that Douglas Adams has always written fanciful stuff.
Right?
And again, I think it jars a little too much with Doctor of the Universe, but that's a different discussion.
It works great.
Because Doctor Who's not fanciful.
Well, Doctor Who is fanciful, but I don't think an infinite improbability drive falls from a cup of tea is at that level.
I think when they've taken it at that point, that's the problem.
A police box that can travel through time and space is...
Perfectly viable explanation for that.
I mean, a perfectly reasonable explanation for that in that context.
Like, okay, camouflage.
Camouflage is a good answer.
Tea is not.
You know, it's like, but anyway, but okay.
They don't even bother.
It's just like, it's a cup of tea and you're just, it's because tea.
Everybody knows improbability in a tea.
I mean, it's like, no, you don't.
But all right, fine.
He writes fanciful stuff.
But Douglas Adams is also was was a strong advocate of empirical skepticism and science in his personal existence.
So what he did wrong with carbon dating is so egregious in this story.
First off, to do carbon dating, you have to be able to measure the atomic material in an object.
The book, per the dialogue, has no atomic structure.
You can't carbon date it.
you can't carbon date something that is synthetic because it has to be organic that had to have
ingested the atmospheric conditions to get a level of carbon 14 that can be then measured
after it dies because then it starts decaying so it had to be alive the book is obviously
artificial the book has no atomic structure you can't carbon date it and you can't carbon date
something that's non-terrestrial at least you couldn't with terrestrial carbon dating because
the whole point is that we measure what the carbon 14 level was at that time we don't know what the
carbon 14 level is on Gallifrey so you couldn't you couldn't make that assessment and and it
certainly couldn't measure reverse time oh it's negative 20,000 negative 10,000 like wow that one
just just hits me like a hammer to the skull that is the stupid sign that's on par with kill the
moon it's so bad it really bugs me watching it i know it's supposed to give you a comedy moment
about oh time travel it's in the future but it's like no it's just wrong i have my have my say
there and the third and final one is how long were those guys on the iass station with no minds
because when the doctor gets there they got long fingernails they got really long fingernails which
if I'm not mistaken fingernails grow at the same rate that the uh the continents move around here
which I think is half an inch a year uh of course they're aliens mine grow faster than that I feel
like mine grow that fast but it's not it's not super fast but their beards I mean I couldn't
grow that beard in a year I guess some people could the hair length they've been there a long
time that way they've been there a long time would you agree yes they should be dead why did they not
starve to death
I'll grant you that they're not going to have a big pile
of poo
in the corner where they're all huddled
up and just functioning
but I
and I thought Skagra just
came from there isn't that what
we were told Skagra's spaceship left
from there and it's a three month journey
so at most those guys should have been
there three months since Skagra left
unless he's capable of time traveling
it's a return journey isn't it
wouldn't the return journey be roughly the same?
So six months.
Yeah, by the time the doctor got there.
But the doctor didn't take six months to get back.
He got there in three minutes because of his changes.
Oh, yes, I see what you mean.
Three months.
Unless time travel is involved, it's three months.
And even three months, thinking they should be dead.
Anyway.
And of course, the fact that, yes, their brains have been sucked out
unless you connect them to someone else's brain
and then it's still there.
Okay, do you have anything else about Shada?
which I genuinely, genuinely hope,
I genuinely hope that this is the last time we ever review Shana.
It will probably be the last time I ever watch it.
It's going to sit unwatched forever on my DVD shelf from now on.
There's just no way I'm going to watch this one again.
I think I might give it another watch.
I'm still, every time I watch it, I'm going to be annoyed about the episodes.
I'm vaguely hoping that when they come to release the season 17 full box set, which I presume will include another copy of Sharda, hooray, that they will at that point go back and put the beginning and ends of the episodes in.
Because if I'm going to watch a Tom Baker version of Sharda, it is going to be this one with the animation.
for all my criticisms of, you know,
the cutting back and forth and all the rest of it.
It's the best that we've got of that version of the story.
And if we're wrapping up,
just so that we end on an up note,
the score for this is superb, in my opinion,
because one thing about it is,
I don't, as far as I know, I'm pretty sure about this,
When they made it back in the 70s, they wouldn't have got to putting a score to it because that would have happened in post-production.
They didn't finish production.
So there's the VHS version, which has the Kef McCulloch score on it.
Not my favorite score.
Kef McCulloch can't do anything.
He can't do good scores.
Yes, because I'm not necessarily a McCulloch aficionado.
Whereas, and I hadn't looked up who'd written this score.
Mark Ayers.
I know I have now, but the point when I put it in, it just immediately struck me that not only was it new and properly, you know, it runs across the animation and everything, but actually it's the kind of music that I would happily listen to as a separate soundtrack on its own.
and yet it suits the episode to a tee you know it fits the ear and everything so absolutely bravo
if there is one thing that has unquestionably been worthwhile in producing this new set it is
it is this fabulous new score i'll i'll say i did look up some information on the score
and yeah mark hares who was apparently friends with dudley simpson uh contacted him before he
died to see if he could get him to work on it found out found out that he was too ill to do the
work so he did it hence the dedication well and he died i guess probably during the the process as
well and um mark here's deliberately tried to go into the style of dudley simpson yeah because i'm
not aware i definitely can feel some of um i can feel some of city of death in it it's a little
evocative of city of death so it it i agree it does have the feel for it is not as awful as the
dudley simpson scores from that era because i think he's instrumented it differently i'm not a
fan of dudley simpson i i i know i i think this score is is instrumented in instruments is that
I don't know what the word is.
Anyway, I know exactly what you mean.
Yes, well, the instrumentation is actually quite modern sounding.
So I didn't listen to it thinking,
oh my goodness, did they find some original music
that had somehow been written for this?
I didn't.
It sounds too modern for that.
But at the same time, it has the sensibility to fit
with the era and the story and everything.
And I'm not aware that Marquez has scored anything.
I know he worked for the Radiophonic Workshop
during certainly the late 80s on the show.
Am I right?
So he would have been doing...
And then he's done a huge amount
with the restoration team, etc.
But I didn't know that he had done any other compositions.
And this is great.
Trying to see if I can find anything on him.
As a composer, he provided incidental music on Doctor Who.
Oh, no, not good.
No, no, no, no
Two out of three I really don't like
And the third I kind of don't like
Greatest Show in the Galaxy
Ghostlight, Curse of Fenric
So he was composer on those ones?
Yeah
I will re-listen to those with some interest
I mean they're not as bad as Kef McCullough
I'll give them that
They're not
But he is thankfully not gone with that era sound either
He is definitely gone with something a little more
the the the kef mcculloch sharder score is very much not any attempt to be a 1970s score
no yeah i i i think they did as well as they could have done um in putting it in there i i i don't
know that i would thought i was wanted to rush out and buy the soundtrack but heck i'll go out
and buy dudley's on some soundtracks uh of doctor who so even though i don't like them i'll do it
Because they evoke, they evoke Doctor Who, right?
There is that, there's that emotional attachment.
They have, you know, I think the only one that I just,
I can't listen to are...
Cary Blyton.
Sea Devils.
That's Cary Blyton, isn't it?
I'm not sure.
And then there's one, and I know I'll get hate from this.
It's, wow, can't think of the name of the episode.
It's extremely popular.
I can't stand it.
Part of the reason I can't stand it is...
Caves of Andrazani.
Yeah.
Horrible soundtrack.
I can't remember who did that.
I don't know who did it,
but it's like listening to somebody's fingernails on a chalkboard to me.
It's, no.
Anyhow, but this is not like that.
No, no, no.
I think it's great.
The other thing to mention in the very much plus column is, of course,
I've got to say Tom Baker cameo because obviously Tom Baker is.
Oh, how could we forget that?
of this but the you know the the 83 year old tom baker appearing at the end there um which i i knew
was coming up i mean it was it was uh quite widely publicized at the time so i think unless you
unless you got a pre-order and watched it on the day it arrived it wouldn't have been a surprise
to anyone but nevertheless it was just really really lovely it was a surprise to me really i
didn't i didn't uh i didn't fantastic i didn't know it was coming i when the tardis appeared
uh the console and it was an actual tardis console i'm like huh because that that there hasn't been
any tardis footage yeah something was wrong there and then when they showed his head under it it's
like why would they why would they do the scene and have him hanging under the maybe he's never
gonna pop his head out of the console and just talk from under there it's like why would they
go to the expense of doing this and yeah well it's pity they didn't get someone who was slightly
more convincing body double I thought but yeah also I although I although I was quite happy with
having him under the console because it's a doctorish thing to do and the shot is framed
in a plausible way having Romana quote outside the door shouting through really didn't work for
the length of time she had to I thought you know why why not get a straw hat and a cotton dress and
a body double for her and shoot her from behind you know shoot her over the hat or something so
all you all you kind of see is the brim but yeah yeah but anyway it it was worth it it was worth
it for for that laugh yeah it as i recall the ending of the story is just the doctor
reminiscing about the fact that someday that's what people will say about me yes right there's
There's no aspect of it actually getting old.
I will say this.
No, it does say it because the line is something like in 200 years.
Oh, no, no, no, no, physically getting old.
And they'll say, what a nice old man.
Yeah, no, no, no.
I mean, that was the actual ending of the show, that line.
But there is nothing in the story about him physically being transformed into an old man at that moment.
That's just.
Oh, no, that's the next story.
Yeah, that's the next story.
And I got to say, they did a more convincing job on this than they did in the next story.
I don't know.
I thought it was pretty unrealistic.
I mean, he definitely looks more like an old man in this one than he does in Leisure Hive.
Well, yeah.
But they didn't age him up.
They just got him back.
It just happens to be 40 years later.
So there you go.
I think it's a happy fit with the line.
It's obviously kind of at the end, it fits with the now on BBC One pre-title sequence
and the fact that we've just watched a whole serial where we know that it's switching back and forth from animation.
And therefore, in some sense, that has in itself broken the illusion.
And so this is just a nod to the fact that it is an illusion.
And it's just so charming.
Yeah. Funny thing is, I think the next stop is that he goes to become the curator of the Black Archive.
at that point.
Anyway.
All right.
Well, Simon, thank you.
It's a pleasure as always.
And I think, you know,
this is slotted in as a special episode
somewhere along the line.
I can say almost with certainly
that the next animated Doctor Who story
we're going to talk about
is going to be the Macra Terror.
Macra Terror.
Yay!
This is what I'm looking forward to.
In a big way.
I forgot one.
I forgot one other thing,
which is that there is that
between this 2017 Sharda and the 2003 webcast Sharda,
there is one common cast member.
Romana?
Nope.
Oh, yes.
Okay, so there's two common cast members.
I didn't think of that.
Yes, of course.
Oh, yeah, okay.
That makes that rather less special.
I know I spotted that the Krags were played by Barnaby Edwards
in both cases.
Oh, okay.
I forgot about Romana.
Of course Romana is in it.
Yes, so, yes.
Oh, well.
and canine
no no it's a different canine
it is a different canine which was part of my thing
there we go
well listeners I do hope you'll join us all again
next time on Fusion Patrol
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Our music is fight the future by Amber Wolf.
This has been a lone locust production.