Douglas Adams's Lost 'Doctor Who' Serial To Be Novelized

A novelisation of the "lost" Doctor Who serial Shada, scripted by Hitchhiker's Guide author Douglas Adams in 1979, will be published next year.

Adams wrote three series of Doctor Who in the late 1970s, when he was in his twenties and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was first airing as a BBC radio comedy. Shada was intended as a six-part drama to finish off the 17th season, with Tom Baker in the role of the Doctor.

Read the whole story: guardian.co.uk

Comments

[MSchlagel]

11:55 PM on 03/27/2011

Next March! The Guardian and HP must love toying with us.

[Aaron Cogan]

01:34 PM on 03/26/2011

If the TARDIS landed on Ann Coulter, I couldn't be happier!

[TheRealThunderMonkey]

07:17 PM on 03/25/2011

QUEEEEEEEEEE!!!

[AustinCynic]

03:10 PM on 03/25/2011

Most of Shada did get made; in fact, the footage you see of Baker and Lala Ward in "The Five Doctors" was taken from Shada since Baker declined to appear in The Five Doctors in person. And I believe the audio was used in a webisode version of the story on the BBC's Doctor Who site with the addition of "bookends" with the voices of Ward as Romana and Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor.

I really wish Adams were still around, not least because I bet he could have written some incredible stuff for the new series--especially for the 10th Doctor.

[RedDogBear]

02:28 PM on 03/25/2011

What a shame that never got made with Tom Baker. I am a die hard Who fan both the original and the new one so I even listen to a lot of the audio commentaries. From that I've heard several times that Adams was a lot more involved in several of the most interesting Tom Baker stories than you might think from the credits. Although he's often just listed as the editor (or perhaps its "story editor") on them several people in the commentaries say that he actually ended up rewriting most of those scripts. His sense of humor along with Tom Baker's impecable feel for the doctor were such a natural combination.

Even without Tom Baker though I would like to see them make Shada into actual real episodes. Although I suppose they might have to change a lot, in terms of companions and story lines, to make it fit into the current show.