The Doctor Who Real Time Marathon: Shada
Shada: Part One (19/01/20)
Somewhere out there in an alternate universe, Season 17 ended with six part 'epic' 'Shada'. And that is (sort of) where I find myself today. It's been an interesting but very slow episode where very little happened.
The Doctor and Romana are in Cambridge having parked the TARDIS in the corner of Cambridge lecturer/retired Time Lord Professor Chronotis' study (and seemingly left K9 inside). While they were gallivanting about on the Cam, young Parsons (a student) called round and borrowed some of Chronotis' books. One, however, was a very dangerous book from Gallifrey which Chronotis had 'borrowed' and subsequently contacted the Doctor in the hope that he'd return it for him.
Meanwhile, some bloke called Skagra has travelled to Earth with one of his huge balls in a carpet bag, looking for Chronotis and hijacking a car to return to his invisible spaceship. Played by the handsome Christopher Neame, Skagra is quite an imposing figure, albeit dressed in a rather odd white suit with a huge, floppy white hat and a billowing white and silver cloak. It looks like he wants to take over the universe or something and sees the powerful book, 'The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey' as the key to doing this. His ball also babbles with inhuman voices - possibly the minds of the men who were hooked up to the same machine as him in the opening scene. Parsons, incidentally, has tested the book having noticed something odd about it and found out it's alien.
There are some nice ideas at play here, but it's not been a particularly engaging episode with the Doctor and Romana doing very little but exchange witty quips once they reached Chronotis' study whilst eking out the plot at a snails pace. Hopefully the story will pick up pace next week because, interesting ideas and gorgeous locations aside, this episode hasn't really gone anywhere.
Shada: Part Two (26/01/20)
Much better this week. Skagra is a good villain and has thankfully changed out of his Glam Rock outfit into something more flattering and inconspicuous. In a surprise turn of events, he visited Chronotis (while Romana was in the TARDIS getting milk and the Doctor was out looking for Chris Parsons and the Book), stole his mind and ultimately killed him! Romana found him on the floor in a coma when she returned with the milk and brought K9 out to monitor him. They couldn't do anything, however, and he died after leaving the warning 'Beware the Sphere; Beware Skagra; Beware Shada' beat out in Gallifreyan Morse Code by his hearts.
Chris joined them before Chronotis died having crossed paths with the Doctor, and the Doctor found the book with Clare, Chris's friend, and worked out it's not a book! He then encountered Skagra as he cycled back to Chronotis' with the book, cue pleasant but not particularly exciting chase with the Doctor fleeing the sphere on his bicycle. However, he lost the book and Skagra now has it, and trapped in a dead end the Doctor now has the Sphere bearing down on him!
Much more happened this week, but it still doesn't feel quite as exciting as some of the episodes this season. The best thing about it are the location sequences which show off Cambridge quite wonderfully. There's some nice little references to Time Lord history, too, such as Chronotis remarking on the Doctor's Type 40 being made when he was a boy and that the kitchen is too far from the console room, but there doesn't feel to be any major threat. It's still better than 'The Armageddon Factor' (has it really only been a year since the Black Guardian was around and Romana was Mary Tamm?) and 'The Invasion Of Time', but quite oddly paced. Perhaps it will pick up and develop in the next few weeks like 'The Horns Of Nimon' improved. At least it's nice to look at!
Shada: Part Three (02/02/20)
Well, that was a definite improvement on last week. Chronotis' body disappeared before the Doctor and Romana returned, Romana having rescued the Doctor by materialising the TARDIS in the way of the Sphere. The Doctor has vowed to stop Skagra from doing whatever he's doing because he's killed a very old friend, and they all followed the Sphere to an invisible spaceship in a cow field using the TARDIS to track it. Luckily, K9 could see the ship and when Skagra, alerted to their presence, chose to let them in they were able to enter via the invisible entrance ramp (cleverly marked by a huge, red carpet).
Skagra separated the Doctor from the others (teleporting them into a doorless prison) and tried to get the Doctor to read the book. The Doctor played dumb, though, so Skagra used the Sphere to steal his mind. Then he freed Romana, took her hostage and went to the TARDIS. However, the Doctor had played dumb and hadn't fought the Sphere so it only copied his mind and he's okay (not sure about that bit), and he got the ship to release Chris and K9 by arguing that, since he was clearly dead after having his mind stolen by the Sphere, he couldn't give any orders which would be harmful to Skagra (again, not sure about that but I guess that's computer logic). However, the ship has now switched off the oxygen supply because dead men don't need to breathe!
Skagra's back in his silly Disco cape, but he's still pretty cool and, on the whole, smarter than your average villain, still refusing to give his plans away. Clare was in this episode, too, but didn't do much apart from go to Chronotis' room after everyone had left. This is a bit of a slow story and not the best of the series, but it has its plus points,
Shada: Part Four (09/02/20)
This episode zipped along with plenty happening. Skagra took Romana to his command ship in the TARDIS where he introduced her to the Krargs - silicone lifeforms he controls. To be honest, they don't look that great, clearly made up of lots of flaps of foam upon which a 'molten' core is Bluescreened. The Bluescreen isn't the issue; the foam costume really needs to be something more solid. When one was following K9 toward the end of the episode, the flaps around its feet were... er... flapping all over the place in a very un-rock-like way. Still, the basic design is good, just the realisation that's shoddy.
Anyhow, Skagra figured out how to use the book in conjunction with the TARDIS to get what he wants - access to a Time Lord prison called Shada (which the Time Lords have forgotten on purpose) and a criminal called Salyavin. Meanwhile, Chris and K9 rescued the Doctor, and the Doctor fooled the ships computer into taking them to the last place where Skagra had been - the AISS - where he hooked Chris up to the Think Tank machine so he could converse with Caldera, one of the scientists who'd had their minds stolen. This way he found out what Skagra is up to, and the cliffhanger had the Doctor, Chris and K9 trapped by a Krarg which, for some reason, had been created on Skagra's shuttle craft when it left Earth.
The most interesting thing that happened this week, however, was Clare fiddling about in Professor Chronotis' study, finding some controls, and bringing Chronotis back to life because (dun-dun-DUN) the study is his TARDIS! Very old, rescued from a scrap heap and stolen. Whatever she did took the TARDIS out of time and space and brought Chronotis back from the dead; and he seems much less muddled than he was, thinking clearly and talking sense - sort of.
This story's still fairly slow in places, but improving week by week. Clare in particular is a pretty decent character when we get to see her, and her first scenes with Chronotis felt like the introduction of a new companion, albeit in a show called 'Professor Chronotis' and not 'Doctor Who'. This week benefited from having three clear plot strands, so I'm feeling optimistic about next week.
Shada: Part Five (16/02/20)
Everything is starting to make sense this week. Salyavin was a Time Lord who could impose his mind onto any other being and was a criminal locked up in the Time Lord prison planet Shada. Skagra wishes not to control the universe but to be the universe - he's developed the power to steal minds and keep them in his Sphere but he wants the ability to put his mind into everyone else, which is why he wants Salyavin.
In Chronotis' TARDIS, Clare commented she'd be able to help if she knew how it worked and so Chronotis did some Time Lord juju and put his knowledge in her head (see where this is going?). The Doctor, Chris and K9 escaped AISS but the Krarg killed the scientists (wasn't too impressed with that - they'd had their minds stolen, but the Doctor did nothing to try and help them!) then blew up the space station. They then took Skagra's shuttle to his command ship and confronted Skagra. He tried to catch them, but they escaped and ran into Chronotis' TARDIS which he and Clare had got working again and followed the Doctor's TARDIS time track (or something). Skagra took Romana and his Krarg army to Shada and freed a load of prisoners, taking over their minds with his Sphere (which had multiplied after being shattered), and the Doctor and Chronotis turned up to confront him/stop him releasing Salyavin. They were too late, though, and Skagra opened Salyavin's cryopod to find it empty.
Meanwhile, Clare and Chris (in Chronotis' TARDIS) worked out that Chronotis had to be Slayavin at the same time as he revealed himself to Skagra. However, he and Chris now have Spheres on their heads and it looks like Skagra may have won.
This isn't a bad story, but I think the first half suffered from it having to fill six episodes. The last couple of weeks have been okay, but the first three could have constituted one episode. And after taking centre stage in the last story, Romana has had bugger all to do in this one, basically kidnapped by Skagra so that he has someone to talk to and very slowly feed the occasional plot point to. I'll have to wait til next week to decide how it compares to previous finales, but I feel that, despite its faults, it's already better than the last couple of years.
Shada: Part Six (23/02/20)
Well, that was quite a satisfying conclusion. The Doctor, Romana, K9 and Clare escaped in Chronotis' TARDIS, and Skagra left in the Doctor's TARDIS with his Krargs and controlled criminals and returned to his command ship to put his plan into action. Then Romana pointed out that Skagra's Sphere contained a copy of the Doctor's mind so they devised a plan to get the Doctor onto his own TARDIS (doing something like linking them in the Space/Time vortex) where he put together a mind control unit and confronted Skagra.
Romana, K9 and Clare reached Skagra's command ship and K9 held off the Krargs while the Doctor and Skagra had a battle of minds and Romana and Clare destroyed the Krargs. Skagra escaped to his shuttle after his Spheres were destroyed but the Doctor had reprogrammed it to obey him, not Skagra, so Skagra was left trapped in a doorless cell while the Doctor and Romana took the unconscious criminals back to Shada. There was a quaint, silly bit at the end where Chronotis was back to his normal, albeit less doddery self, Chris had a headache and the receptionist bloke from the first few episodes brought a policeman round to investigate the theft of Chronotis' rooms, but on the whole, it was a decent final episode to a mostly very good season.
Nothing was said about Clare knowing all about the workings of Chronotis' TARDIS, and Chronotis/Salyavin wasn't returned to Shada (which was fine, I guess, since Chronotis stated that his crimes were hugely exaggerated - but then I suppose he would say that, wouldn't he?), so who knows what adventures Chronotis, Chris and Clare may have in the future - now there's an interesting spin-off idea!
Overall, this season has been an improvement on Season 16 and a bit more structured than Season 15 which had some massive highs but some equally massive lows. Each serial this season has had plenty to recommend it, even the Dalek story! And the new Romana feels like she's been part of the series for ages. I've got used to K9's more expressive voice and Tom has been pretty good on the whole, although I am wondering how much longer he's going to stay in the role. He's improved over the last three years, but I think that's partly to do with having different companions each series. We'll have to see what the next season has to offer. Roll on, August!
Somewhere out there in an alternate universe, Season 17 ended with six part 'epic' 'Shada'. And that is (sort of) where I find myself today. It's been an interesting but very slow episode where very little happened.
The Doctor and Romana are in Cambridge having parked the TARDIS in the corner of Cambridge lecturer/retired Time Lord Professor Chronotis' study (and seemingly left K9 inside). While they were gallivanting about on the Cam, young Parsons (a student) called round and borrowed some of Chronotis' books. One, however, was a very dangerous book from Gallifrey which Chronotis had 'borrowed' and subsequently contacted the Doctor in the hope that he'd return it for him.
Meanwhile, some bloke called Skagra has travelled to Earth with one of his huge balls in a carpet bag, looking for Chronotis and hijacking a car to return to his invisible spaceship. Played by the handsome Christopher Neame, Skagra is quite an imposing figure, albeit dressed in a rather odd white suit with a huge, floppy white hat and a billowing white and silver cloak. It looks like he wants to take over the universe or something and sees the powerful book, 'The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey' as the key to doing this. His ball also babbles with inhuman voices - possibly the minds of the men who were hooked up to the same machine as him in the opening scene. Parsons, incidentally, has tested the book having noticed something odd about it and found out it's alien.
There are some nice ideas at play here, but it's not been a particularly engaging episode with the Doctor and Romana doing very little but exchange witty quips once they reached Chronotis' study whilst eking out the plot at a snails pace. Hopefully the story will pick up pace next week because, interesting ideas and gorgeous locations aside, this episode hasn't really gone anywhere.
Shada: Part Two (26/01/20)
Much better this week. Skagra is a good villain and has thankfully changed out of his Glam Rock outfit into something more flattering and inconspicuous. In a surprise turn of events, he visited Chronotis (while Romana was in the TARDIS getting milk and the Doctor was out looking for Chris Parsons and the Book), stole his mind and ultimately killed him! Romana found him on the floor in a coma when she returned with the milk and brought K9 out to monitor him. They couldn't do anything, however, and he died after leaving the warning 'Beware the Sphere; Beware Skagra; Beware Shada' beat out in Gallifreyan Morse Code by his hearts.
Chris joined them before Chronotis died having crossed paths with the Doctor, and the Doctor found the book with Clare, Chris's friend, and worked out it's not a book! He then encountered Skagra as he cycled back to Chronotis' with the book, cue pleasant but not particularly exciting chase with the Doctor fleeing the sphere on his bicycle. However, he lost the book and Skagra now has it, and trapped in a dead end the Doctor now has the Sphere bearing down on him!
Much more happened this week, but it still doesn't feel quite as exciting as some of the episodes this season. The best thing about it are the location sequences which show off Cambridge quite wonderfully. There's some nice little references to Time Lord history, too, such as Chronotis remarking on the Doctor's Type 40 being made when he was a boy and that the kitchen is too far from the console room, but there doesn't feel to be any major threat. It's still better than 'The Armageddon Factor' (has it really only been a year since the Black Guardian was around and Romana was Mary Tamm?) and 'The Invasion Of Time', but quite oddly paced. Perhaps it will pick up and develop in the next few weeks like 'The Horns Of Nimon' improved. At least it's nice to look at!
Shada: Part Three (02/02/20)
Well, that was a definite improvement on last week. Chronotis' body disappeared before the Doctor and Romana returned, Romana having rescued the Doctor by materialising the TARDIS in the way of the Sphere. The Doctor has vowed to stop Skagra from doing whatever he's doing because he's killed a very old friend, and they all followed the Sphere to an invisible spaceship in a cow field using the TARDIS to track it. Luckily, K9 could see the ship and when Skagra, alerted to their presence, chose to let them in they were able to enter via the invisible entrance ramp (cleverly marked by a huge, red carpet).
Skagra separated the Doctor from the others (teleporting them into a doorless prison) and tried to get the Doctor to read the book. The Doctor played dumb, though, so Skagra used the Sphere to steal his mind. Then he freed Romana, took her hostage and went to the TARDIS. However, the Doctor had played dumb and hadn't fought the Sphere so it only copied his mind and he's okay (not sure about that bit), and he got the ship to release Chris and K9 by arguing that, since he was clearly dead after having his mind stolen by the Sphere, he couldn't give any orders which would be harmful to Skagra (again, not sure about that but I guess that's computer logic). However, the ship has now switched off the oxygen supply because dead men don't need to breathe!
Skagra's back in his silly Disco cape, but he's still pretty cool and, on the whole, smarter than your average villain, still refusing to give his plans away. Clare was in this episode, too, but didn't do much apart from go to Chronotis' room after everyone had left. This is a bit of a slow story and not the best of the series, but it has its plus points,
Shada: Part Four (09/02/20)
This episode zipped along with plenty happening. Skagra took Romana to his command ship in the TARDIS where he introduced her to the Krargs - silicone lifeforms he controls. To be honest, they don't look that great, clearly made up of lots of flaps of foam upon which a 'molten' core is Bluescreened. The Bluescreen isn't the issue; the foam costume really needs to be something more solid. When one was following K9 toward the end of the episode, the flaps around its feet were... er... flapping all over the place in a very un-rock-like way. Still, the basic design is good, just the realisation that's shoddy.
Anyhow, Skagra figured out how to use the book in conjunction with the TARDIS to get what he wants - access to a Time Lord prison called Shada (which the Time Lords have forgotten on purpose) and a criminal called Salyavin. Meanwhile, Chris and K9 rescued the Doctor, and the Doctor fooled the ships computer into taking them to the last place where Skagra had been - the AISS - where he hooked Chris up to the Think Tank machine so he could converse with Caldera, one of the scientists who'd had their minds stolen. This way he found out what Skagra is up to, and the cliffhanger had the Doctor, Chris and K9 trapped by a Krarg which, for some reason, had been created on Skagra's shuttle craft when it left Earth.
The most interesting thing that happened this week, however, was Clare fiddling about in Professor Chronotis' study, finding some controls, and bringing Chronotis back to life because (dun-dun-DUN) the study is his TARDIS! Very old, rescued from a scrap heap and stolen. Whatever she did took the TARDIS out of time and space and brought Chronotis back from the dead; and he seems much less muddled than he was, thinking clearly and talking sense - sort of.
This story's still fairly slow in places, but improving week by week. Clare in particular is a pretty decent character when we get to see her, and her first scenes with Chronotis felt like the introduction of a new companion, albeit in a show called 'Professor Chronotis' and not 'Doctor Who'. This week benefited from having three clear plot strands, so I'm feeling optimistic about next week.
Shada: Part Five (16/02/20)
Everything is starting to make sense this week. Salyavin was a Time Lord who could impose his mind onto any other being and was a criminal locked up in the Time Lord prison planet Shada. Skagra wishes not to control the universe but to be the universe - he's developed the power to steal minds and keep them in his Sphere but he wants the ability to put his mind into everyone else, which is why he wants Salyavin.
In Chronotis' TARDIS, Clare commented she'd be able to help if she knew how it worked and so Chronotis did some Time Lord juju and put his knowledge in her head (see where this is going?). The Doctor, Chris and K9 escaped AISS but the Krarg killed the scientists (wasn't too impressed with that - they'd had their minds stolen, but the Doctor did nothing to try and help them!) then blew up the space station. They then took Skagra's shuttle to his command ship and confronted Skagra. He tried to catch them, but they escaped and ran into Chronotis' TARDIS which he and Clare had got working again and followed the Doctor's TARDIS time track (or something). Skagra took Romana and his Krarg army to Shada and freed a load of prisoners, taking over their minds with his Sphere (which had multiplied after being shattered), and the Doctor and Chronotis turned up to confront him/stop him releasing Salyavin. They were too late, though, and Skagra opened Salyavin's cryopod to find it empty.
Meanwhile, Clare and Chris (in Chronotis' TARDIS) worked out that Chronotis had to be Slayavin at the same time as he revealed himself to Skagra. However, he and Chris now have Spheres on their heads and it looks like Skagra may have won.
This isn't a bad story, but I think the first half suffered from it having to fill six episodes. The last couple of weeks have been okay, but the first three could have constituted one episode. And after taking centre stage in the last story, Romana has had bugger all to do in this one, basically kidnapped by Skagra so that he has someone to talk to and very slowly feed the occasional plot point to. I'll have to wait til next week to decide how it compares to previous finales, but I feel that, despite its faults, it's already better than the last couple of years.
Shada: Part Six (23/02/20)
Well, that was quite a satisfying conclusion. The Doctor, Romana, K9 and Clare escaped in Chronotis' TARDIS, and Skagra left in the Doctor's TARDIS with his Krargs and controlled criminals and returned to his command ship to put his plan into action. Then Romana pointed out that Skagra's Sphere contained a copy of the Doctor's mind so they devised a plan to get the Doctor onto his own TARDIS (doing something like linking them in the Space/Time vortex) where he put together a mind control unit and confronted Skagra.
Romana, K9 and Clare reached Skagra's command ship and K9 held off the Krargs while the Doctor and Skagra had a battle of minds and Romana and Clare destroyed the Krargs. Skagra escaped to his shuttle after his Spheres were destroyed but the Doctor had reprogrammed it to obey him, not Skagra, so Skagra was left trapped in a doorless cell while the Doctor and Romana took the unconscious criminals back to Shada. There was a quaint, silly bit at the end where Chronotis was back to his normal, albeit less doddery self, Chris had a headache and the receptionist bloke from the first few episodes brought a policeman round to investigate the theft of Chronotis' rooms, but on the whole, it was a decent final episode to a mostly very good season.
Nothing was said about Clare knowing all about the workings of Chronotis' TARDIS, and Chronotis/Salyavin wasn't returned to Shada (which was fine, I guess, since Chronotis stated that his crimes were hugely exaggerated - but then I suppose he would say that, wouldn't he?), so who knows what adventures Chronotis, Chris and Clare may have in the future - now there's an interesting spin-off idea!
Overall, this season has been an improvement on Season 16 and a bit more structured than Season 15 which had some massive highs but some equally massive lows. Each serial this season has had plenty to recommend it, even the Dalek story! And the new Romana feels like she's been part of the series for ages. I've got used to K9's more expressive voice and Tom has been pretty good on the whole, although I am wondering how much longer he's going to stay in the role. He's improved over the last three years, but I think that's partly to do with having different companions each series. We'll have to see what the next season has to offer. Roll on, August!
You take a more favourable view of this story than I do, even though you point out its flaws and limitations. The location filming is lovely, and the core cast are rather good, but the story itself is a total letdown in my books when it should be huge and important. The script also features some of the worst (i.e. least successful) excesses of the Douglas Adams school of writing, and once again the monsters are rubbish. Even if the story were complete I doubt it would improve matters much. For me it's the third overstretched and underwhelming 'season finale' in a row.
ReplyDelete'Shada', like 'The Tomb Of The Cybermen', turned out to be not remotely as wonderful and epic as people had initially thought. It isn't as successful as any of its predecessors in the season and the first half really does drag. Romana is incredibly short-changed (perhaps her sidelining here is why she was given 'The Horns Of Nimon') and I remember noting that she spends most of episodes 1-3 hanging out in Chronotis' study - in fact, I don't think she actually leaves it during Part Two! The story would just about fill four episodes (I'm being generous) and the plot (such as it is) positively crawls until episode four. The location scenes, as with 'City Of Death', are wonderful but don't really add anything and feel like the production team are just treading water by pulling the same stunt, but with less success. The chase scene in particular is horribly drawn out and brings to mind a similar area of padding from Pertwee's swan song. If 'Shada' brings any other story to mind, however, in terms of pacing and feel then it's actually 'The Space Pirates' (which famously *was* filled out with padding in its first few episodes in order to make a four part story a six part story), a serial with an uneven tone and some great ideas which fails to achieve much. If anything, I prefer the Troughton story (but not by much). Ultimately, I think 'Shada' is the best of the three Williams finales. None of them really work, but 'The Armageddon Factor' is incredibly dull and 'The Invasion Of Time' is incredibly uneven. It was a wise decision to call an end to the six part stories - done well they can be engaging and give space to develop the world in which they take place. Most of the time, though, as we see here they tended to be slow moving and full of padding, often stretching the budget beyond what was possible to achieve.
DeleteThat said, I'm not sure the two-parters that replaced them (as it were) proved that much of a success either. I'm pretty sure I've read and/or heard over the years that Season Eighteen got an extra two episodes because JNT demanded them in compensation for Shada being cancelled, and all-four-parters is a much better approach overall.
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