Doctor Who- Shada Audio

"The Doctor has a spot of unfinished business. Reunited with his old friends Romana and K9, he answers a summons from Professor Chronotis, a retired Time Lord now living the academic life in a Cambridge college."

The best thing about Shada is that it had that "good classic who" feel to it. Some classic episodes are simple, and clear, with no surprises- such as "The Horns Of Nimon" or "The Gunfighters" but occasionally, you'll get a story that mixes several elements. I'm speaking of such stories like "The Face of Evil", or "City of Death." I always go into a classic who episode looking for these qualities, and with Shada- I was not disappointed. I am looking at it from the perspective that it was intended to be a televised episode, not an actual big finish audio drama.

I have been hopping round the idea of listening to this recreation of Shada for a long time, but I only got round to it recently. And going into it, I was shocked to find that professor Chronotis was actually a time lord! Professor Chronotis was highly entertaining, and he reminded me of my neighbour, who has a room full of old books, and every time you visit, he offers you a cup of tea every two minutes. Thinking about it, he only leaves his house to buy milk... Maybe he could be a time lord!

The only trouble I have with the Shada is that it was never finished production wise when it comes to the television story. All of the really good stuff never got made. Instead, we got the padding about tea, and the lack of milk. We want to see The Doctor on Shada! Or traveling through the vortex trying to get to his TARDIS! Or even the doctor trying to convince the ship that he's dead. It's a shame this was all left to the imagination, but it still resulted in a good audio story. I'm just dissapointed that the late, great Douglas Adams' story never made it to television.

Professor Chronotis, Chris Parsons and his beautiful friend Clare Keightley made really good secondary characters, who I enjoyed seeing aid the Doctor. Even if they did mess everything up by stealing that damn book!

I quite like the idea of the eighth Doctor going back to Gallifrey to get Romana and K9, and then going back to the incident at hand. It's just a shame that it was the only big ammendent to the script. It was a few minutes in the beginning, but we needed a scene of Gallifrey towards the end, of the Doctor and Romana discussing how time is back on track.

In conclusion, I haven't got many critisisms for this story, as Douglas Adams is a hero of mine, who's way with words was (thankfully) much better then his way he dealt with deadlines.

Douglas Adams- the Classic Who version of Steven Moffat. Rest in peace, Adams.

9/10