Doctor Who: Classic 17x6: "Shada" Parts 1-3 | Reaction!

[@MrPaulMorris]

The strike was by studio technicians--which is why location shooting all exists. By the time the strike was resolved there was no studio time available as the BBC was busy shooting their Christmas seasonal specials. Not too long later there was a new producer and he wasn't interested in rehashing old material.

[@sirsamfay99]

The script was finished before production started. All the outside location filming was completed.Only the first of three studio recording blocks were completed before a production strike began. The reason Shada was not completed after the strike ended was because other productions were in progress and a free slot could not be found for Shada.

[@Bibblethruster]

To be fair, this was made in Cambridge in 1979. Trust me, no one would have battered an eyebrow at Skagra, lol

[@woodhouse122]

I remember buying the first bbc video release of this on VHS in 1994 and it came with a copy of the script,so it was definitely finished .It was cancelled due to a major strike (there is a decent documentary on the blu Ray set that goes into it)

[@ListerDavid]

I still have that vhs and script box.

[@jonathanmurphy3141]

The US vhs, did not come with script replica - we had card sleeves for the tape, not the plastic box, like the UK or Aust’/NZ would have been regular. I watched Tom’s narrative recon, and all the footage dozens of times over the years,…until the animation.

[@josefschiltz2192]

@@ListerDavid Yep. Same here. Grabbed it as soon as it was on sale in Andy's Records.

[@davidbull7210]

Actually it was 1992

[@joshuajoshua2732]

The last missing Doctor Who episode to have animation was "The Invasion" Episodes 1 and 4.

[@whobp8]

Your Dad nails it on the head when he says that a production strike makes more sense than a writer's strike. That's exactly what it was, technical staff on strike. To answer your question about how Doctor Who was filmed, all of the location footage was shot in advance, that animated footage of Parsons on his bicycle was an artistic choice on the part of the animation company, if this story had been completed there would have been no such shot, as it's not really necessary, we would have cut to Parsons entering his lab. In the first studio session they shot all of the scenes which take place in the Professor's rooms, so they don't have to keep constructing the set and tearing it down again for each individual episode. They also shot all of the space station stuff, as it's the first scene, they needed to get that in the can. Then the prison cell stuff, probably because that was a small set and brief scenes so they could get them in during the same session as the Professor's room stuff. If they had been able to have their second studio session they would presumably have filmed all of the stuff in Parsons lab and on Skagra's spaceship, with possibly a third studio session for stuff on Shada and stuff in the TARDIS, etc. As it happens, the striking workers padlocked the doors to the studios, preventing anyone from filming there. The strike was relatively brief, but a lot of other shows in addition to Doctor Who were put behind in their production schedules and, in order to catch up, BBC execs had to pick and choose what shows to prioritize and what ones to let go. It was ultimately decided to favor shows that were Christmas themed, so they would be ready for the upcoming holiday. In addition to this being Douglas Adams last story as script editor, this is Graham Williams last story as producer. Williams successor, John Nathan Turner, did consider remounting this story for Season Eighteen, but it would have meant negotiating new contracts for the guest actors, at least some of whom would have had other commitments at the time they would have been considering filming, so he ultimately abandoned the idea as unfeasible. Nathan Turner was also about to make a lot of changes to the show to put his own brand on the series and it was easier to do that when he was starting with a clean slate.

[@stephencoppins9467]

The show had been doing location shooting and then studio filming for some years now, with all the scenes in one set for the whole story filmed together before moving onto the next set (same as modern productions). This is why we have all the location shots, and only certain studio scenes filmed, before the technician’s strike shut down production of this story. Though there is a new production team for Season 18, there was an attempt by the new Producer (Show Runner) to finish the story, but actor schedules (and possibly funding, but don’t quote me on that), conspired against remounting the missing shots. On an interesting note, the character Professor Chronotis made an appearance in Douglas Adam’s first Dirk Gently novel. As Shada hadn’t been released on VHS when the novel came out, the Professor was technically not part of the BBC copyright, and was technically the character’s first appearance.

[@andrewbowman4611]

As others have mentioned, Shada waa the victim of a labourers' strike, essentially. Elsewhere in the BBC, someone who was not a scene-shifter shifted a bit of scenery; specifically, the clock from children's programme Play School. As a result, the union demanded its members down tools which led to industrial action. The production of many shows was disrupted as a result. With Doctor Who, they'd already filmed their location shots, and had completed only a small amount of studio work when the strike was called. Once the strike had come to an end, the resource were no longer available to complete the story. I think there was a general election in the offing or something which precluded the use of studio space and whatnot. It wasn't until 1992 that the footage was released on VHS, with Tom Baker presenting the missing episodes to camera. Interestingly, he makes reference to Chris Parsons running an old people's home these days. This was a referendum to Daniel Hill's role has Harvey Bains in the sitcom Waiting for God, which also starred Graham Crowden, who played Soldeed in The Horns of Nimon.

[@josefschiltz2192]

The General Election had already taken place in May of that year and filming for Shada was in late autumn, around mid-late October for televising early in the new year.

[@andrewbowman4611]

@@josefschiltz2192 Yeah, I wasn't sure about that, to be honest. There was certainly a scheduling reason why Shada wasn't prioritised. It could just have been something as simple as other programmes were further into their production, and the cost would have been too much for Doctor Who's budget or something.

[@josefschiltz2192]

@@andrewbowman4611 I think that's likely what it was.

[@garybryant5946]

A bloke walking around Cambridge looking like he did wouldn't attract any attention he was a eccentric artist visiting campus to give a talk or something 😁

[@Rocket1377]

It wasn't a writers strike, the script had already been completed. It was a strike at the BBC in general, so they had to stop filming.

[@happyman050]

It was not a writers strile but a production strike at BBC that affected all shows. All the location filming had been done and filming from the first studio production block but studio blocks two and three though rehearsed could not be done and when the strike was over studio space was given priority to christmas shows. The production was cancelled by higher ups at BBC and also some of the guest actors were now unavailable due to other work

[@flaggerify]

That's been corrected several times.

[@ListerDavid]

It’s funny as all the animated part where done from the technology camera scripts for the original production plans so they are the same moves and angles that the camera would have done and filmed. Also they filmed in sections so all of the professors room parts then take that set down and build another hence why it’s the lab and Spaceship sets that never got filmed on.

[@jch13213]

change of the guard season 18 basically. incoming script editor chris bidmead and show runner john nathan-turner

[@bjgandalf69]

The main reason this story wasn't finished later to be broadcast at the beginning of Season 18 probably is because we changed production teams. Graham Williams left and John Nathan Turner took over and the show underwent a total retool with a new title sequence, music, costumes and effects.

[@kierenevans2521]

As well as K9's actor David Brierley having passed away, so had Denis Carey who is Professor Chronotis here. Carey appears is two other stories and any lines he has in animated sequences are taken from those.

[@josefschiltz2192]

This from Tom Baker. "We were staying just outside St John's College in a pub called the three tons or three nuns and the music scholars, the singers, would come to me in the pub and I would buy all the drinks and they would sing to me, in harmony. It was a very happy time," he says. The broadcasting unions, however, targeted the programme for industrial action. A planned night shoot was disrupted when the technician in charge of the lighting was ordered to withdraw his labour. Studio recording was disrupted by the strike but it was all over the day before Shada was due back in the studio. Yet it never made it. The programme was left two-thirds finished and then dropped altogether. Thousands of pounds-worth of work came to nothing. Source: BBC News Channel Web Page.

[@Finbarzapek]

I do wonder why the bicycle chase wasn’t used in ‘The Five Doctors’ instead of the punting scene. They could have had the triangle timescoop chasing the Doctor through the streets - would have been a bit more exciting than just grabbing him off the river. Then again, it would have meant no Romana ( unless they used her at the end when the 4th Doctor is returned ).

[@ClaireWW]

This and City Of Death were essentially cannibalised for the plot of Adams' first non-Hitchhiker novel, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, because while the man was talented he was also exceptionally lazy, and he wasn't one to let unseen writing go to waste.

[@joshuajoshua2732]

In answer to your question Richard they didn't finish the story because it was too late by the time they wanted to finish it as other shows were on schedule to filming so they had to scrap the story all together infact the footage was almost going to be in the disintegrator and not have "Shada" happen all together but with Tom Baker's decision not to participate in "The Five Doctors" incoming new producer/showrunner John Nathan Turner decided to keep the footage just to have Tom appear in "The Five Doctors".

[@joshuaverran9443]

It was a studio technicians strike not a writers strike.

[@jch13213]

technicians strike not a writers strike

[@kierenevans2521]

7:10 It was a long technicians strike. There's a new producer for season 18 and he decide to not bother with it as it didn't fit in with his new direction for the show.

[@josefschiltz2192]

The industrial action occurred due to conflict over which union had jurisdiction over the operation of an elaborate clock that was featured on the BBC children's programme Play School. This is sourced from TARDIS Data Core. It does raise a vague memory of the time and is suitably daft so I'm pretty sure that was the case. I saw Shada first on a double video cassette that I haven't played in many years. I honestly can't remember how it was stitched together. it might be thirty years since I've seen it. I do remember Professor Chronitus being an enjoyable character. A script book was released with the videos.

[@josefschiltz2192]

Ah, those old Greek copyrighters! The writers had to disguise the source material! Wilkin, the college's porter is played by Gerald Campion. TV's first Billy Bunter who played the role for the BBC 1952-1961. Gerald's mother, Blanche Louise Tunstall née Bear (1890-1933) - ws a first cousin of Charlie Chaplin. The impossibly tall Douglas Adams journeyed through a portal to the Restaurant At The End of the Universe in 2001. It is leaked that his favourite biro accompanied him on the journey.

[@MuchWhittering]

It wasn't a writers strike. As I understand it, they completed all the location work, and one studio session, when studio strikes made studio time a very rare commodity. The script was written, they just didn't have any space to film it. By the time they could have finished recording, they would have missed the intended broadcast date. Now, technically they could have filmed it and moved it to the front of Season 18 (and given how much I don't like The Leisure Hive, I wouldn't object to that), but both Douglas Adams and the producer Graham Williams were leaving, so I imagine their replacements (Christopher H. Bidmead and John Nathan Turner respectively) weren't too keen on inheriting any stories from the previous regime. Considering it's an "incomplete" story, Shada has been completed more times than any other story. Off the top of my head, we have the novelisation, the Big Finish adaptation with the 8th Doctor and Romana, the 1992 VHS with Tom Baker narrating the missing footage, the 2013 DVD of that release, the movie-length animation, the episodic animation, the animation of the Big Finish version...am I missing any more? Oh, and Douglas Adams reused a lot of plot elements in his story Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, so I guess that counts too? I do wish they'd taken this opportunity to have John Leeson dub over David Brierly's K9.

[@AmyWarriorPrincess]

I have the limited edition British version of this season, and it said it was a writer strike.

[@MuchWhittering]

@@AmyWarriorPrincess It was not a Writers' Strike. That would not make even the slightest bit of sense. Why would that leave them with random portions of each episode written? Why would they start recording a script that hasn't been finished? Check out A Brief History of Time Travel's article on it, it's absolute nonsense that it would be the writers.

[@amelialikesfrogs5778]

alot of the plot was rewritten by douglas adams into dirk gently.

[@ximovac]

It wasn't a writers strike it was a general strike at the BBC so they couldn't rehearse the story and a lot of the filming was prevented. In the end they had to scrap the story.

[@kierenevans2521]

22:50 In many ways that's why this works a little better as the animation doesn't have to fit an off-air recording of a 1960s programme. 30:40 I think the implication is that the book has weird time properties so I'd take the -20000 years number with a pinch of salt.

[@kierenevans2521]

4:50 There are lots of extras. Personally I like the separate disk per serial.

[@DonnaLang42rockglobally]

The writers were innocent (this time); Shada was cancelled due to a long-running technicians' dispute at the BBC. The strike was over by the beginning of rehearsals, but in the end the studio time was redirected to other higher-priority Christmas programming. There was also a change in producers to mark the beginning of season 18; attempts were made to remount the story, but in June of 1980 the production was formally dropped. Edit: Also I liked the incidental music - it was very much in the style of Dudley Simpson, especially the music he composed for City Of Death. Kudos to Keff McCulloch and Mark Ayres for capturing that classic atmosphere.

[@bythebreach]

I watched this story for the first time in preparation for this reaction (I did read a novelised version of Shada a few years ago which was very good) , and I have to say I think the reconstruction works brilliantly. The Cambridge film sequences are lovely and the Professor's office is a brilliant set, thank god they were able to shoot those scenes before the industrial action kicked in. On the subject of novelisations, I'd recommend the Horns of Nimon target book by Terrance Dicks. Far superior to the transmitted version imo. Also, take a shot every time you see a comment starting with "it wasn't a writer's strike" lol

[@GideonTyree]

There is another episode in classic Who in which the TARDIS shrinks, but I won't spoil it for you.

[@joshuajoshua2732]

I have to say the blu-rays are superior and far better to watch Classic Who than the platforms you watch them on because they keep switching from stream to stream which is frustrating and annoying and the picture quality is amazing.

[@davidbull7210]

Of course it wasn't a writers strike. It was an electricians strike. I like the idea of a story that is filmed as it's written though...😅

[@oldwebshooter]

Did you record the episodes of the serial in HD? Because when they kept the material they kept the original film negatives for the location footage, so all the location footage is HD.

[@EvHervey]

That wasn't an overly technical explanation of what you did. Seems like the smartest thing you could do, given the physical media limitations.

[@joshuaverran9443]

The junking of missing episodes ceased in 1978 even during the Pertwee and early Tom Baker eras episodes were still being junked Doctor Who was not the only show many shows from the BBC had suffered this even here in Australia the ABC use to junk stuff as people did not see any future value in them it was considered as seen as disposable television.

[@Benji568]

Shada is the famous unfinished story because of a BBC strike in '79. In 1992, the story was reconstructed for VHS with Tom Baker providing linking material for the scenes that were not filmed. In 2003, Big Finish did an audio adaptation with Paul McGann and a brand new cast including the late Andrew Sachs. In 2017, the surviving cast of Shada reunited to provide voice work for the missing scenes for a brand new live-action/animation hybrid recreation that was finally put to DVD and subsequently re-released for the Season 17 Blu-Ray box set in 2021 with a re-edited episodic version.

[@oldwebshooter]

I got the impression that they thought the reconstruction was like the telesnap recons, when it wasn't. It was just Tom explaining what happened in-between as you pointed out.

[@Benji568]

@@oldwebshooter In a Doctor Who Museum that was on in London at the time presumably in time for the 30th Anniversary in '93.

[@deebeedaydreamer]

"City of Death = we like Creature from the pit = okay Nightmare of Eden = exists Horns of Nimon = doesn't" * no other story mentioned* A perfect summary, actually.

[@bjgandalf69]

Just a little correction: the entire story is called a serial, each 25 minute part is called an episode. You are using the word episode to refer to both the entire story and each part which is confusing. Just one addition to why the story never got finished: the production strike happened before most of the studio work was to be shot in fact many of the sets were never completed. When production resumed, this series was considered a lower priority than let's say some of the more prestigious costume dramas. Finally, I for one love the BluRay sets. They have most of any extras on the DVDs plus extra interviews, documentaries and the totally awesome Behind the Sofa segments were artists who worked on the show get to watch and comment on stories. I just bought the William Hartnell 2nd season and it was a steal for under $50. This is the best way to collect the classic series.

[@joshuaverran9443]

Its not really a missing episode it just wasn't finished nor does it count as a missing episode.

[@AmyWarriorPrincess]

I love this story! 🥳🥳😀😀

[@ItsShaz1]

Shada looks quite interesting, the cape guys drip is indeed on point to Jojo lol.

[@jch13213]

If you try to "replicate " a regular tv shot in animation, it will look static and boring. Your brain forgives the lack of motion when shooting real life, but would become bored with a static animation shot.

[@bjgandalf69]

I cringe everytime Alex mispronounces names in the show...lol

[@joshuajoshua2732]

They're american what do you expect lol.

[@bjgandalf69]

@joshuajoshua2732 Well, I am to but have the advantage of having spent my first 4 years there as an Air Force brat on an RAF base in Norfolk, watched a lot of British TV over the years plus was a theatre major who studied dialects so I have no trouble understanding the actors.

[@7thHourFilms]

Yeah, I don't have that. Dad does (as he's pointed out many times). But I'm a boy born and raised in Oklahoma. I am curious what I mispronounced this time!

[@bjgandalf69]

@7thHourFilms Several of the character names referenced like Salyavin. Every one in the story pronounces the first syllable as Sara even if it isn't spelled that way.

[@richardlemin7840]

@@bjgandalf69: We were at RAF Lakenheath. Where were you stationed? ~Dad