Now that's what I call Time Travel.
Tom Baker returns to finish shelved Doctor Who episodes penned by Douglas Adams
The fourth and finest Doctor, Tom Baker, has reprised the role to finish a Who serial scuppered in 1979 by strike action at the BBC. Shada, penned by Hitchhiker's Guide author Douglas Adams, was supposed to close Doctor Who's 17th season. Location filming in Cambridge and a studio session were completed but the strike nixed …
COMMENTS
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Monday 27th November 2017 17:24 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Doctor Who's 17th season
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Doctor_Who_serials#Season_1_.281963.E2.80.931964.29
The early seasons were indeed serials, but with one story arc running through several episodes, and several story arcs per season, is I think what you meant to say. The 2k+ version again may have story arcs spanning several episodes, with stand-alone episodes wedged in there also.
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Monday 27th November 2017 13:14 GMT Prst. V.Jeltz
Re: DNA
Adams ended up using elements of the plot in his novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, where Chronotis is a university professor who happens to be hundreds of years old
And uses his time travelling skills to watch last nights telly as its easier than using the video recorder :)
Icon for Mr Adams r.i.p
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Monday 27th November 2017 17:18 GMT Teiwaz
Re: DNA
Adams ended up using elements of the plot in his novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, where Chronotis is a university professor who happens to be hundreds of years old
Also elements from 'City of Death', another DG Doctor Who story, which is also damn good (and has Lalla Ward dressed Parisian schoolgirl style).
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Monday 27th November 2017 14:07 GMT Teiwaz
Re: DNA
I would have loved to read another Dirk Gently story. Or five.
Unfortunately the much lamented man in question got himself so stressed up over the writing lifestyle he needed a bath or five to chill out so they never happened.
Woosh!!, there goes another deadline...
What a guy!!
'So hip, he'd no problem keeping his bum on.'
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Monday 27th November 2017 15:32 GMT Valerion
Re: DNA
Well there were the BBC Dirk Gently TV series starring Stephen Mangan . Although loosely based, personally I think they are grossly under-rated and probably the best small/large screen representation of DNA's work
I enjoyed those, too. Stephen Mangan was a perfect Dirk - pretty much exactly how I imagined him when reading the books.
There's also a Netflix "Dirk Gently" that is nothing to do with anything DNA did. Still quite entertaining and a suitably odd plot, but only Dirk Gently by name.
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Tuesday 28th November 2017 13:00 GMT Kristian Walsh
Re: DNA
There's also a Netflix "Dirk Gently" that is nothing to do with anything DNA did. Still quite entertaining and a suitably odd plot, but only Dirk Gently by name.
My impression of the Netflix series was: "there's no way in hell that a man as peaceful as DNA would ever have allowed such a bloody and violent script to be attached to his creation"
It's still worth a watch if you forget about the original Dirk (or the underrated BBC series which captured the tone of the books brilliantly), but I despaired when [without spoiling any plot points] it slipped into the hackneyed big-government conspiracy theory nonsense that ruins so many American Sci-Fi programmes...
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Monday 27th November 2017 15:26 GMT ArrZarr
Re: @AC
I think the whole story leading up to the "death" of the master in that episode was a case of such strong wibbly wobbly timey wimey that the Whoniverse itself decided to be rid of the problem by cremating the master until such time as it had figured out what had happened to it.
Tennant did spend as long as he could in that form before regenerating into Smith and had the extra regeneration that he pumped into his old hand (long story) so there is obviously some aspect of will in the matter.
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Tuesday 28th November 2017 00:05 GMT davidp231
Re: @AC
He got resurrected again (partially) after that by a cult. It didn't go well and he came back 'not all there', and ultimately ended up back on Gallifrey, and presumedly got killed in the Time War - then we meet Missy. How she came to be is never explained - she just appears, so one can assume he was a casualty of the war, and as Missy, manages to escape. Somehow.
His first resurrection was to fight in the Time War, until he decided to leg it, fire up the Chameleon Arch and hide at the end of the universe, and keeping a low profile by narrating In The Night Garden until he's shown the watch - kicking off the chain of events that led to his cremation.
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Monday 27th November 2017 22:32 GMT DerekCurrie
Re: The nth time the unfinished Shada has been completed
The first reconstruction was available on VHS in 1992. It added narration by Tom Baker. Details are provided at Wikipedia:
"...Some years later, Nathan-Turner eventually set out to complete the story in a fashion, by commissioning new effects shots and a score, and having Tom Baker record linking material to cover the missing scenes. The resulting shortened episodes (of between 14 and 22 minutes each) received a 111-minute VHS release in 1992. In its UK edition, the VHS also was accompanied by a facsimile of a version of Douglas Adams's script. The release was discontinued in the UK in 1996."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shada_(Doctor_Who)
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Monday 27th November 2017 14:47 GMT Francis Vaughan
Re: And for those lost episodes.
Oh they can do much better that that. They still have the audio, and the have the "telesnaps". Every 10 seconds, or so, a still image taken from the screen.
It is a bit of balance between cost and artistic intent how far into the CGI you would go. The reproductions done so far - such as The Moonbase, The Power of the Daleks, The Invasion, seem to have taken a good line. It isn't unreasonable to imagine we will eventually get the entire missing episodes back in a watch-able form. I saw all of these when they were broadcast, and the reproductions are not too shaby really. (I was of course quite young, but those it I remember are nicely captured even in the low cost animations used.) The most critical thing is the sound anyway. More of the story is told with the audio than we realise. That the sound is intact is the key.
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Monday 27th November 2017 14:48 GMT jelabarre59
Re: And for those lost episodes.
They may have long scrubbed the tapes, but presumably they still have the scripts. With the aid of CGI it shouldn't be too difficult to simply recreate those lost episodes from scratch.
Well, looking at the stilted and clunky animation the BBC uses for DrWho re-creations, they should leave it to someone else and not bother doing any more. Heck, the low-budget first-season animations of RWBY were way better than this, and that was with some off-the-shelf package.
Heck, they could get Toonz (Studio Ghibli's animation software) for free in the Open Source version (OpenToonz). No excuse for half-assed work.
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Monday 27th November 2017 15:35 GMT graeme leggett
Re: And for those lost episodes.
What pays for the animations is the expected number of DVD sales and downloads.
Which isn't much. Hence most of the investment in animation is to fill in between existing and recently recovered material that hasn't had a previous outing on DVD. Eg Invasion, Ice Warriors, Tenth Planet.
And those were stories which were expected to be popular. By comparison Underwater Menace was audio and stills standing in for missing episodes.
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Monday 27th November 2017 19:25 GMT MacroRodent
Re: And for those lost episodes.
> Can't we just zoom out* and collect all the TV transmissions from the very beginning?
Judging by the passion Dr Who inspires in scientifically-minded people, this idea will probably inspire the development of FTL travel (or time travel, actually pretty much the same thing).
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Monday 27th November 2017 19:45 GMT John Gamble
Re: And for those lost episodes.
Or perhaps an improved SETI program:
"Dear aliens twenty or less light years away. You know those electromagnetic signals from Earth that you've been recording? Could you do us a favor and beam them back at us? Particularly the ones from around 51°30′N 0°7′W. Thank you!"
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Monday 27th November 2017 14:19 GMT Daedalus
Not unprecedented
Very much off topic, but in 2005 when the Beeb went all completist and decided to finish all the Lord Peter Wimsey canon for Radio 4, they dug up Ian Carmichael to voice him for the non-murderous "Gaudy Night" (dark doings in Oxford women's college - oooh!). He sounded very different from his Woosterish early recordings, of course. On the evidence of his cameo in "The Day of the Doctor", Tom Baker (may he live forever) should sound as good as he used to.
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Tuesday 28th November 2017 12:45 GMT 's water music
Re: Tom Baker will always be the Doctor
I am afraid that I am of an age that the doctor is always William Hartnell in my (childhood) eyes.
Speaking of childhood memories, like one of those baby chicks who ends up imprinting the wrong object in place of it's mother, my one true James Bond is Roger Moore FFS. Took me ages to realise he was actually rather rubbish
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Monday 27th November 2017 15:57 GMT Anonymous Coward
blasphemy
most of those old 60s doctor who episodes seem to be loads of standing around blabbing then running around some boxes in the bbc basement.
No wonder they wiped the tapes when someone not into it all got in charge.
Maybe toms nutty turn is different but I never watched any of those.
Actually I never watch any of the new ones either so maybe shouldn't comment.
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Monday 27th November 2017 22:46 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: blasphemy
"most of those old 60s doctor who episodes seem to be loads of standing around blabbing then running around some boxes in the bbc basement."
Once you get past the "Childrens TV budget" level of effects, some of the stories are very good. But you really, really have to remember this was a "childrens" show and hence had a very, very small budget. You only have to look at the historical stories in the Hartnell era to see it was originally intended to be "edutainment" of some form (if that word had been invented back then)
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Monday 27th November 2017 17:26 GMT Anonymous Coward
On the subject of bringing back old Dr Who's...
"The Sun Makers" had a great villain in the form of "The Collector" -- an evil tax collector, what's not to like?
The modern Who team should bring him back, with the comedian Andy Hamilton cast in the part - he'd be perfect.
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Thursday 7th December 2017 13:04 GMT Stuart Castle
Saw Shada at the BFI on Saturday. Got the DVD, but had already pre-ordered the blu-ray.
In terms of quality, on the blu ray, they have upscaled the original 576i video rather than go back to the negatives and present the lot in 1080p. This was apparently a deliberate choice to maintain the look of the original show. That said, the studio based stuff (which would be most of this story) would have been shot on video rather than film, as UK TV companies mostly only used film for exterior and location shots (I say mostly as I believe some independant producers did shoot the entire programme on film).
The extras are HD, where available.
Anyhow, the story is excellent. Lalla Ward wasn't (unfortunately) present at the screening, but she sent a message saying that she always thought Shada was the most Douglas Adams-like Dr Who story, and having seen it, I agree. Oddly, the fact it looks crap almost adds to the enjoyment.