The year is 16127. Four decades have passed since the colonists of Nerva Beacon returned to repopulate the once-devastated planet Earth – and the chosen few are finding the business of survival tough. Far beyond the sterile safety of sanitised Nerva City, transmat scientist Roger Buchman has brought his family to an island surrounded by what they once called Loch Lomond, hoping to re-establish the colony he was forced to abandon many years before. But something else resides in the Loch. A pestilent alien infestation that the Doctor, beaming in from Nerva City, remembers only too well from his time aboard the Beacon… The Wirrn are back. And they’re hungry.

he arrives close to an unstable area on the interstellar cruise ship “Empress”, which has emerged from hyperspace at the same co-ordinates as the trade ship “Hecate”, causing a dimensional crossover that the Doctor and Romana realise must be repaired and he offers his services to detach the two craft. Rigg, captain of the “Empress”, is suspicious of the Doctor’s alias as a representative of Galactic Salvage but nevertheless agrees to let him try and separate the two craft by reversing the smaller craft at full thrust. The Doctor is accompanied on this task by Riggs co-pilot, Secker, who, it becomes apparent, is a drug addict. He is hooked on the organic substance Vraxoin, whose origins are unknown, but whose properties are lethal and dangerous. Secker heads off alone into the unstable area and while there is attacked by a clawed monster and left for dead. K-9 arrives from the TARDIS and is tasked with cutting through the locked ships.

Also aboard the “Empress” are a zoologist named Tryst and his assistant Della, with their CET (Continual Event Transmuter) Machine, which stores portions of planets on electro-magnetic crystals. Their collection is large and ethically dubious. Their most recent stop was on the planet Eden where one of their expedition was killed, but both Tryst and Della are reluctant to provide too many details. Romana, however, examines the Eden projection when she is on her own and is sure she has seen eyes staring out at her from the dark and forbidding jungle. When she later looks at the projection again an insect appears from within it and stings her.

The Doctor and Rigg find the wounded Secker and send him to the sickbay where he dies. When the Doctor finds Seckers drugs stash he is prevented from acting when someone stuns him and steals the evidence. Once he has recovered, he returns with Rigg and K-9 to cut through the power source. Once a hole is made a roaring creature appears, flexing its vicious claws.

K-9 repels the creature with blaster fire while the Doctor and Rigg refit the segment of the craft. The Doctor continues to try to separate the two ships while also trying to source the Vraxoin on the craft. Rigg is positive there are no drugs on his craft, but events soon take a sinister turn, which proves him wrong. When Romana wakes up an unseen hand spikes her refresher drink with the drug, but it is Rigg who ends up drinking it. He soon starts to show signs of addiction and altered perception and heads off alone as his cravings grow.

After the Doctor and K-9 fail once more to separate the two ships, he spots a silver-suited stranger and pursues him through the passenger deck and into the blurred area between ships. The Doctor loses his quarry, but manages to relieve him of a radiation band which he dropped and proves that he was on Tryst’s expeditionary team in the past. The clawed monsters are loose near there. When the Doctor flees back to the “Empress” he discovers Rigg has become addicted and it becomes apparent that Tryst thinks Della is the smuggler, in league with her late partner Stott, who was killed on Eden. Two Azurian Customs and Excise officers now board the craft, Fisk and Costa, and start to suspect the Doctor of smuggling because of the traces of Vraxoin in his pocket. The Doctor and Romana make a break for it and head to the CET Machine room where they evade capture by leaping directly into the projection.

Inside the projection, the Doctor and Romana are menaced by the jungle plants and must hide to avoid the clawed monsters, which obviously originate from Eden and roam freely in this section of the planet. They soon meet up with the fugitive previously sighted by them both, Stott, who takes them to his sheltered cubicle. It seems that he is a Major in the Intelligence Section of the Space Corp and has been hiding in the projection for the past 183 days while he tries to establish the source of the Vraxoin, which he knows is from Eden but not from which organic source. He also names the vicious creatures as Mandrels. The trio exit the projection and return to find the “Empress” under siege from the marauding beasts, which have now started killing the passengers (as shown in the picture above). Rigg too is killed, shot down by Fisk during a mad search for Vrax.

The Doctor, Romana and K-9 evade the creatures while trying once more to separate the two spacecraft. In the process, the Doctor incinerates one of the Mandrels, which disintegrates into raw Vraxoin. The beasts are evidently the source of the drug. He reapplies himself to the technical task and, with the help of his companions, the ships are finally parted – but the Doctor disappears from the “Empress” in the process.

The separation has been a success, with the elusive Dymond having returned to his own craft at the right time. Fisk warns him not to leave too quickly, but Dymond is keen to get away. The Doctor is also on the “Hecate”, having been caught up in the separation of the two ships, and, without being noticed, soon finds evidence of Dymond's complicity in the drug running project. Dymond returns to the “Empress” by shuttle, and the Doctor smuggles himself on board. Back on the “Empress”, Romana finds Della and confides in her that Stott is still alive, but Della is soon arrested by the Customs men and they are separated.

The Doctor rejoins Romana on the “Empress” and says he has seen evidence that the smugglers are planning to use an intuca laser to transport the Eden projection between the two crafts. He is now certain that Dymond’s ally is Tryst and, when Stott arrives, he also confirms the source of the Vraxoin. Fisk and Costa turn up to arrest the Doctor, but Stott pulls rank and warns them to back off. In another part of the craft, Tryst is reunited with Della and confesses all about his part in the smuggling racket. She flees when a Mandrel arrives and distracts Tryst, who is rapidly trying to escape with Dymond. They head back to the “Hecate”.

The Doctor has meanwhile rounded up the Mandrels using K-9’s dog whistle, having worked out they are pacified by ultrasonics. He leads them all back into the projection and then slips out, leaving the creatures trapped. His next task is to reverse the CET transfer process to stop the smugglers getting away with the Vraxoin supply. After allowing Tryst and Dymond to transport the Eden projection to the "Hecate", he activates the CET and traps them within a new projection – they are ready for the Customs Officers to walk in and arrest them. With the ships separated and the drug runners caught, the Doctor and friends slip away back to the TARDIS with the Eden project. The creatures will be projected back to their native planets. One can only hope that nobody else discovers the Mandrels' secret.

Production

Serial details by episode

EpisodeBroadcast dateRun timeViewership (in millions)

"Part One"

24 November 1979

24:17

8.7

"Part Two"

1 December 1979

22:44

9.6

"Part Three"

8 December 1979

24:06

9.6

"Part Four"

15 December 1979

24:31

9.4

Working titles for this story included Nightmare of Evil.

This story would be the final Doctor Who serial written by , who worked on it alone.

Alan Bromly is credited with directing this story, but he quit part-way through filming as a result of a vehement dispute with Tom Baker. As a result, Producer Graham Williams wound up having to complete the director's duties uncredited. The unpleasantness of this whole incident led Williams to decide that he had wished to leave the series. Bromly never directed another story for the series and in fact went into full retirement soon afterwards.

Outside references

This is one of the few stories to have a strong message, in this case against and the . The in question was originally going to be called "xylophilin", or "zip". However, was worried that the name would sound appealing to children, so it was changed to "vraxoin" instead. However, K-9 still mentions vraxoin as having the scientific code "XYP".

The British wrote that the Mandrels were terrifying monsters, as no publicity shots had been taken for them (which, as later reported, was untrue). However, the majority of critics were more scathing and many of them saw the Mandrels as being thoroughly unconvincing (particularly the , which described them as "cute rejects from ").

In print

book

Doctor Who and the Nightmare of Eden

Series

Release number

45

Writer

Publisher

Cover artist

ISBN

Release date

21 August 1980

Preceded by

'

Followed by

'

A novelisation of this serial, written by , was published by in August 1980.

VHS and DVD release

This story was released on in January 1999.

The story was released on on 2 April 2012.

References

Shaun Lyon et al. (2007-03-31). . Outpost Gallifrey. Archived from on 2008-07-31. Retrieved 2008-08-30.

Dominique Boies. . Doctor Who Reference Guide. Retrieved 2008-08-30.

Sullivan, Shannon (2007-08-07). . A Brief History of Time Travel. Retrieved 2008-08-30.

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

at

at

at the

Reviews

reviews at

reviews at

Target novelisation

[]

Synopsis

Business is bad for intergalactic media mogul Augustus Scullop, whose Trans-Gal empire is on the rocks. But, having retreated to his own private planet, Transmission, Scullop is about to gamble his fortune on a new show, made with an entirely new technology. And the name of that show… is Laser. Back in the real world, far from the realms of small screen sci-fi fantasies about monsters and aliens, the Doctor is interested only in watching Test Match cricket… but finds himself drawn into Scullop’s world when his new travelling companion, Flip, is snatched from inside the TARDIS. So, while the Doctor uncovers the terrible secret of Trans-Gal’s new tech, Flip battles to survive in a barren wilderness ruled over by the indestructible Lord Krarn and his pig-like servants, the Warmongers. And the name of that wilderness… is ‘Stevenage’.

Written By: John Dorney Directed By: Nicholas Briggs

Cast

Colin Baker (The Doctor), Lisa Greenwood (Flip Jackson), Julian Wadham (Augustus Scullop), Yasmin Bannerman (Dr Helen Shepherd), Hywel Morgan (Nick Kenton/Jack Laser), Martin Hutson (Matthew Howland/Lord Krarn), Tilly Gaunt (Olivia Sayle/Jancey), Kim Wall (Chimbly/Head Warmonger), Henry Devas (Junior/Warmonger)

During a storm that whips through the village of Devil's End in , a dog gets away from its owner. He pursues it into a graveyard, only to encounter something unseen and die. The local doctor says that it was a , but Olive Hawthorne, the local , insists that the man died of fright. She has cast the runes, and there is evil afoot.

Near the village, an archaeological dig is excavating the infamous Devil's Hump, a . The dig is being covered by Three. The interviewer, Alistair Fergus, speaks to the cantankerous Professor Horner, who claims that the Hump holds the treasure and tomb of a warrior chieftain, and that he plans to open the tomb at the stroke of midnight on April 30, the festival of .

The television coverage is being watched by the and at . While the Doctor scoffs at Jo's notions of the coming of the and the , he feels that something is wrong with the dig. On the television, they see Olive go to the dig to protest, warning of great evil and the coming of the horned one, but she is dismissed as a crank. The Doctor tells Jo that Olive Hawthorne is right — the dig must be stopped, and they start off to Devil's End.

Olive returns to the village, and a strong wind whips up out of nowhere. She raises her hands to dismiss it, not knowing that the local , PC Groom, has gone into a trance behind her and is about to strike her with a stone. The wind dies down as she chants, and PC Groom regains his senses before he lands the blow. Olive then goes to see the , but he has been mysteriously replaced with a new one, Rev. Magister. Magister — actually — tries to assure her that her fears are unfounded, but his fails to overcome Olive's will, and she says she will find someone who will believe her.

The Doctor and Jo, driving to Devil's End, get lost when a wind spins a signpost and points them in the wrong direction. Over at the Hump, tempers start to flare for no reason. When the Doctor and Jo stop by the village to get directions, one of the villagers goes and informs the Master of the Doctor's presence. The Master tells him to get dressed for the ceremony.

On the way to the Hump, the Doctor's car, Bessie, is blocked by a fallen tree. Unable to budge it, the Doctor and Jo rush to the mound on foot. The Master, dressed in ceremonial robes and with a coven of thirteen acolytes, starts a summoning ritual in the church catacombs. As his chanting grows more frenzied, the Doctor and Jo reach the mound and the Doctor rushes inside to stop Horner, but it is too late. The tomb door opens and icy gusts of wind rush out and the ground begins to shake, toppling the camera crew and even the coven in the catacombs. The Master laughs triumphantly and calls the entity's name — , and the eyes of a , , flare with a reddish glow. Jo enters the mound to find Horner and the Doctor motionless, covered with frost.

Horner is dead, and the Doctor seems dead as well. The Master uses a knife to indicate a stone covered in ritual markings as the "appointed place", dismissing the coven. Back at UNIT, and were watching the end of the broadcast as it went dead. They try to find out what's going on while attempting to contact the , who had earlier gone for a night at the opera. Meanwhile, the village doctor discovers that the Doctor may not be entirely dead after all, but is puzzled when he hears the beating of two hearts. Jo telephones Yates, who tells her he will be there by helicopter in the morning, just as the line is cut off from the outside. The Master prays in the church as Jo watches over the still unconscious Doctor in the pub. At the dig, the ground shakes and the constable on duty sees something gigantic with heavy footsteps, and falls.

In the morning, Yates and Benton fly by to Devil's End, and see burn marks on the fields before the village that resemble enormous footprints. Once in Devil's End, Benton decides to look around the village while Yates finally manages to contact the Brigadier, who is not pleased that Yates has commandeered his helicopter, and calls for a car. Benton, looking around in the church, finds Olive trapped in a cupboard, where the Master's , Garvin, had locked her. Down in the cellar to hide from Garvin, she tells Benton about Magister. Garvin comes down with a , and Benton tries to disarm him. In the ensuing fight, Benton falls on the marked stone and seizes up. Garvin holds both of them at gunpoint and moves them outside, just as the ground starts to shake. Garvin fires up at something gigantic, but is engulfed in a fireball. The heat wave extends even into the village, knocking Jo and Yates down, just as the Doctor awakens with a start. Olive and Benton make their way back to the pub, and the Doctor discusses the incident with Olive, who says that she saw the , 30 feet high and with horns. The Doctor is told of the new vicar, and realises who is behind this, as "Magister" is for "Master".

The Brigadier finds himself unable to enter the village, as there is a barrier surrounding it that causes anything trying to enter to heat up and burst into flame. He contacts Yates and is briefed on the situation while the Doctor and Jo return to the dig, an act the Master seems to be able to sense. They find the constable dead and a small in the mound the same shape as the Hump. Jo tries to lift it but cannot, as the Doctor explains that it weighs 750 tons. Suddenly, Bok leaps into the tent covering the entrance to the tomb, about to attack.

The Doctor wards him off with some words in a strange language and an iron trowel. The Doctor explains to Jo that it was actually the words of a lullaby — it was the gargoyle's own superstition that drove it back.

The Master, in the meantime, hypnotises the , Winstanley, as Olive and the Doctor debate about whether it is magic or science that is at work here. The Brigadier discovers that the heat shield is dome shaped, centred on the church, with a radius of ten miles out and one mile high. The Doctor shows the others pictures of various and from Olive's occult and history book collection, and explains that the creature Olive saw was an , one of the Dæmons from the planet Dæmos, 60,000 away, who came to one hundred thousand years before. The small spaceship's actual size is 200 feet long and 30 feet across, and the heat and cold waves they have been experiencing are the result of the energy displaced when the ship shrinks or grows. The Doctor further explains that the Dæmons have influenced Earth throughout its history, becoming part of human , and see the planet as a giant experiment. The Master has called the Dæmon up once, and right now, it is so small as to be invisible. The third summoning, however, could signal the end of the experiment, and the world.

The Brigadier contacts Yates and says he is about to try attacking the heat shield from the air. The Doctor warns him not to, saying that it would only strengthen it, and suggests they use a diathermic energy exchanger. When UNIT technician Osgood fails to understand what the Doctor is getting at, he says he will come out and explain. When he does so, Tom Girton, one the villagers working with Master, hijacks the UNIT helicopter and uses it to attack the Doctor. The Doctor manages to swerve Bessie out of the way and the helicopter explodes against the heat shield. As the Doctor relates his instructions to Osgood, who protests that it goes against the laws of physics, the Master summons Azal again. A heat wave and an once again sweeps through the village as Azal curses the Master for daring to summon him again.

The Master tries to dismiss Azal with an iron candlestick holder, but it does not seem to work. He demands that Azal give him the power that is his right, but Azal warns him that he is not the Master's servant. Azal also senses the presence of another like the Master, and wants to speak to the Doctor to see if he is worthy to take over the world. Azal says on his third appearance, he will decide if Earth deserves to continue existing. If so, he will give it to the Master. Azal then vanishes in another heat wave.

After explaining the process of creating the exchanger to Osgood, the Doctor returns to the village. However, the Master's agents are at work, and he is soon captured by a mob of villagers and tied up to a , about to be burned alive. Olive goes to the mob and tells them that the Doctor is a mighty , and with some help from Benton's and a remote controlled Bessie, convinces the mob that the Doctor does indeed have magical powers. Jo and Mike, meanwhile, have returned to the church cellar and watch, hidden, as the Master gathers his coven to summon Azal one last time. Jo tries to interrupt the ritual, but it is too late.

With another rush of heat, Azal manifests himself and Jo and Yates are taken prisoner. Outside, the Doctor explains that to the now calmer villagers that his "magic" was due to science, and so is the Master's trickery. The rituals are merely used to focus the psychokinetic energy of humans that the Master needs to summon the Dæmons. As Jo is prepared as a sacrifice to Azal, the exchanger finally works and UNIT forces go through the gap created in the heat shield, but the gap only lasts a few minutes and the exchanger soon overloads. Mike manages to escape and tell the Doctor about Jo, but Bok is guarding the entrance to the catacombs. The use of the exchanger momentarily weakens Bok and Azal, and the Doctor manages to rush by the gargoyle. He makes it down to the cellar, where the Master is expecting him.

Outside, UNIT troops start firing at Bok, who can disintegrate objects and people with a wave of his hand, but he is also bulletproof. Even a does not work, as the pieces of the gargoyle reform almost instantly. Inside the church, the Master makes his case to the Dæmon that he will rule the Earth experiment's people for their own good. The Doctor argues that Man should be given a chance to grow up. Azal finally decides to give his power to the Master, and fires at the Doctor to kill him. However, Jo, steps in front of the Doctor, asking Azal to kill her instead. This act of self-sacrifice does not make sense to Azal, and the confusion sends him into an agony. He shouts for all of them to leave as he is dying. Bok reverts to his stone form, and as everyone runs out of the church, it blows up. The Master tries to escape in Bessie, but the Doctor's remote control brings the car back, and the Master is taken into custody, to be put in maximum security.

Olive Hawthorne hears the sound of bird songs and the smell of flowers once again, as the Earth is reborn each . Olive takes Benton to dance around the with the rest of the townsfolk, while Yates and the Brigadier go off to the pub for a drink. The Doctor and Jo join the dance, as the May Day celebrations continue and the Doctor remarks to Jo that perhaps there is magic in the world after all.

Continuity

The television news programme filmed at Devil's End was depicted as broadcast on a fictional channel called BBC Three. Since 2003, has been an actual digital BBC channel.

The Doctor uses the words of a Venusian lullaby to ward off Bok. He uses the lullaby again in & , singing the words to a tune which is actually the "". is the title of a 1994 novel by featuring the .

In the 2007 episode "", two sound clips from this story ("Destroy him!" & "Then you will give your power to me!") were used when professor Yana prepares to open his .

Fan myths associated with this story include the rumour that there was a sixth episode where the Master escaped from UNIT, recalled Azal, and killed everyone in Devil's End including the Doctor. This was actually an joke in the fan magazine .

Guy Leopold, who is credited with writing the story, is a pseudonym for Robert Sloman and Barry Letts.

Production

Serial details by episode

EpisodeBroadcast dateRun timeViewership (in millions)Archive

"Episode One"

22 May 1971

25:05

9.2

PAL D3 colour restoration

"Episode Two"

29 May 1971

24:20

8.0

PAL D3 colour restoration

"Episode Three"

5 June 1971

24:27

8.1

PAL D3 colour restoration

"Episode Four"

12 June 1971

24:25

8.1

PAL 2" colour videotape

"Episode Five"

19 June 1971

24:04

8.3

PAL D3 colour restoration

Working titles for this story included The Demons.

Much of the serial was filmed on location in , .

The last episode of the story contains footage of a model church being blown up, the scene was realistic enough to lead many viewers to believe that the BBC had actually blown up a church as part of the filming. The BBC received a number of letters complaining about this.

Cast notes

Features an appearance by television presenter and puppeteer, . See also .

Outside references

The clip of the Brigadier's helicopter blowing up as it crashes into the heat shield is borrowed from the James Bond film .

Many have noted the similarities between this story's plot and that of the 1958 BBC serial and 1967 film . Both involve the unearthing of an extraterrestrial spaceship, an alien race that has interfered with human evolution and is the basis for legends of devils, demons and witchcraft, and places with "devilish" names - Devil's End in this case, and in Pit.

The Master actually (and possibly deliberately) misquotes the occultist at one point saying "To do my will shall be the whole of the law". Crowley is famous for the similar "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law."

The incantation that uses in summoning Azal is actually the nursery rhyme "" said backwards.

The Doctor is briefly given the alias of "the Great Wizard Qui Quae Quod." This is actually the masculine, feminine, and neuter forms of the relative pronoun "who", in .

At one point the Doctor refers to the laws of aerodynamics proving that bumble bees should be incapable of flight, which is an urban legend.

Broadcast and reception

The story was repeated on BBC One as a condensed omnibus edition over Christmas 1971 (28/12/71 at 4.20pm). The omnibus's opening credits gave the title as Doctor Who and the Dæmons. The closing credits used were for those of episode 5, necessitating the BBC1 continuity announcer naming the cast and crew from earlier episodes.

Of the original 625-line colour videotapes as an example of 1970s Doctor Who, all except Episode Four were wiped for reuse. However, a converted 525-line colour version recorded off-air from an broadcast was made available to the BBC. This version was abridged and unsuitable for transmission as it was not of broadcast standard (the original US recordings were made on a domestic Betamax VCR). In 1992 the colour signal from the NTSC tapes was used as the basis for restoring the colour to the of episodes one, two, three and five. These versions were subsequently repeated on on consecutive Fridays in November/December 1992 (20/11/92 to 18/12/92 at 7.15pm).

Jon Pertwee stated numerous times over the years that this was his favourite Doctor Who serial. In 1993, Pertwee, along with several members of the cast and crew including , , and director returned to Aldbourne for the reunion documentary Return to Devil's End. Nicholas Courtney titled his 1998 volume of Five Rounds Rapid after a line from this story:

“

Jenkins. Chap with the wings there. Five rounds rapid.

”

Reviewing its DVD release, Ian Berriman of was more critical of the serial, giving it three and a half out of five stars. He derided it for being an "awful mess" with a plot that "doesn't make a shred of sense". Despite praising the "magnificent" characters of Hawthorne, Horner, and Fergus, he thought that other characters including the Doctor and the Master were "continually acting in a completely absurd way".

In print

book

Doctor Who and the Dæmons

Series

Release number

15

Writer

Publisher

Cover artist

ISBN

Release date

17 October 1974

Preceded by

'

Followed by

'

A novelisation of this serial, written by , was published by in October 1974. There have been and editions. An unabridged reading of the novelisation by author Barry Letts was released on CD in August 2008 by BBC Audiobooks.

VHS and DVD releases

The final episode of this story was also issued as a b/w film recording on the VHS release The Pertwee Years, along with the final episodes of and

In 1993, the episodes with restored colour (see "Broadcast and reception", above) were released on .

A DVD of the serial was released on the 19th March 2012.

References

; (1998). . Doctor Who: The Television Companion. London: . p. 211.  .

. Outpost Gallifrey. 2007-03-31. Archived from on 2008-05-18. Retrieved 2008-08-31.

. Doctor Who Reference Guide. Retrieved 2008-08-31.

Sullivan, Shannon (2008-08-31). . A Brief History of Time Travel. Retrieved 2008-08-31.

^ p196, Peter Haining, Doctor Who - A Celebration, W.H. Allen, 1983

. Doctor Who Classic Episode Guide. BBC. Retrieved 22 October 2009.

John H. McMasters (March/April 1989). "The flight of the bumblebee and related myths of entomological engineering". 77: 146–169. cited in Jay Ingram (2001). The Barmaid's Brain. . pp. 91–92.  .

See also .

Doctor Who: The Daemons (2012). BBC Warner DVD. ASIN: B0072BNJGC

Berriman, Ian (17 March 2012). . SFX. Retrieved 6 April 2012.

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

at

at

at the

Reviews

reviews at

reviews at

156. The Curse of DavrosSynopsisIt's been a year since Philippa 'Flip' Jackson found herself transported by Tube train to battle robot mosquitoes on a bizarre alien planet in the company of a Time Lord known only as 'the Doctor'.Lightning never strikes twice, they say. Only now there's a flying saucer whooshing over the top of the night bus taking her home. Inside: the Doctor, with another extraterrestrial menace on his tail – the Daleks, and their twisted creator Davros!But while Flip and the fugitive Doctor struggle to beat back the Daleks' incursion into 21st century London, Davros's real plan is taking shape nearly 200 years in the past, on the other side of the English Channel. At the battle of Waterloo...  Written By: Jonathan MorrisDirected By: Nicholas BriggsCastColin Baker (The Doctor), Lisa Greenwood (Flip Jackson), Terry Molloy (Davros), Ashley Kumar (Jared), Jonathan Owen (Napoleon Bonaparte), Rhys Jennings (Captain Pascal), Granville Saxton (Duke of Wellington), Robert Portal (Marshal Ney), Christian Patterson (Captain Dickson), Nicholas Briggs (The Daleks)

Dirk Gently (TV series)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: ,

Dirk Gently

Titlescreen of series 1, based on Gently's painted whiteboard.

Genre

/

Created by

()

Written by

Howard Overman Jamie Mathieson

Directed by

Damon Thomas

Starring

Composer(s)

Country of origin

United Kingdom

Language(s)

English

No. of series

1

No. of episodes

3 (+ pilot) ()

Production

Executive producer(s)

Howard Overman Saurabh Kakkar () Brian Minchin () Eleanor Moran (BBC - Pilot) Jamie Laurenson (BBC - Pilot)

Producer(s)

Chris Carey

Editor(s)

Matthew Tabern

Cinematography

Ole Bratt Birkeland

Camera setup

Running time

60 minutes

Production company(s)

The Welded Tandem Picture Company

Distributor

Broadcast

Original channel

(repeats)

Picture format

Audio format

Original run

16 December 2010 – 19 March 2012

Chronology

Related shows

External links

Dirk Gently is a comedy detective drama TV series based on characters from the Dirk Gently novels by . The series was created by and stars as detective and as his Richard MacDuff. Recurring actors include as MacDuff's girlfriend Susan Harmison, as Dirk's nemesis DI Gilks and as Dirk's receptionist Janice Pearce. Unlike most detective series Dirk Gently features broadly comic touches and even some themes such as and .

Dirk Gently operates his Holistic Detective Agency based on the "fundamental interconnectedness of all things", which relies on methods to uncover connections between seemingly-unrelated cases. He claims that he follows the principles of , and although the majority of his clients suspect he may be a conman he often produces surprising results. With the help of his assistant, Richard MacDuff, Dirk investigates a number of seemingly unrelated but interconnected cases.

An hour-long loosely based on plot elements from Adams' 1987 novel was broadcast on on 16 December 2010 and was watched by 1.1 million viewers. Critical reception was generally positive. A full series of three one-hour episodes was subsequently commissioned in March 2011 and was broadcast on BBC Four in March 2012. The series is the first continuing drama series produced for the digital channel.

The series is produced by and The Welded Tandem Picture Company for and shot in . The pilot was written by Howard Overman and directed by Damon Thomas. The full series was written by Overman, and Jamie Mathieson and directed by . The series along with the pilot episode was released on DVD on 26 March 2012 by ITV Studios Home Entertainment. An original television soundtrack album featuring music from the series composed by was released by 1812 Recordings on 5 March 2012.

Contents

Production

Background

The novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency has its origins in the incomplete 1979 television serial , featuring as the . Location filming in Cambridge had been completed, but a studio technicians' dispute at the BBC meant that studio segments were not completed, and the serial was never transmitted.

As a result of the serial's cancellation, Adams reused a number of ideas from this script and his other Doctor Who scripts as the basis for a new novel, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, published in 1987. Adams published another, in 1988 and at the time of his death in 2001 was working on a third installment to be titled , fragments of which were published posthumously. Each novel features new characters and scenarios, although Dirk (real name Svlad Cjelli), his "ex-secretary" Janice Pearce and Sergeant, later Inspector, Gilks recur in each.

The first Gently novel had previously been adapted into a stage play, and a BBC Radio 4 series by which was first broadcast in October 2007 and featured comedian in the title role. According to James Donaghy, Douglas Adams was frustrated that his Dirk Gently novels were never adapted for the screen.

Announcement

During - a convention - Ed Victor, a literary agent who represents Adams's estate announced that a television adaptation of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency was in production. was announced to be playing Gently, with as MacDuff and as Susan. It is the first television adaptation of Adams' Dirk Gently series, although characters from the books had appeared in a 1992 episode of .

Shooting on the pilot commenced early in October 2010 in Bristol. The director was Damon Thomas and the producer was Chris Carey. Although it was commissioned by the BBC, it was produced by with The Welded Tandem Picture Company. The pilot was first broadcast on on 16 December 2010 and was repeated a number of times during the next month.

The pilot gained a commission on 31 March 2011 for a three-part series of one hour-long episodes broadcast on BBC Four in March 2012. The series is the first continuing drama series commissioned by BBC Four.

Adaptation

The screenplay of the pilot by is not a direct adaptation of the novel, but uses certain characters and situations from the novel to form the basis of a new drama centred around Dirk. Speaking about his interpretation, Howard Overman stated in an interview with Benji Wilson "I'm not even going to try to adapt the book: you can't adapt this story. Especially not on a BBC Four budget. We made the deliberate decision not to do a straight translation of the books. If we'd done that the fans would have felt badly let down, because you can never portray that world on the screen as well as it's been done in people's own imaginations...If you just do a straight adaptation like , people are always going to be quite brutal about it because it's never going to live up to their expectations."

Dirk drives an old brown in the production.

Stephen Mangan, writing a BBC blog on the programme stated "In my opinion, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time Of The Soul are unfilmable as written...too much happens, there are too many ideas".

The pilot concentrates on two relatively minor plot strands in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency: the disappearance of a cat, and the simultaneous disappearance of millionaire Gordon Way. Although time travel is involved in the solution, the novel's entire St Cedd's College / Electric Monk / Coleridge strand is omitted, although key words relating to these elements do appear on Dirk's whiteboard when it is first seen, though they are never subsequently referred to. Other elements from the book, such as the trapped sofa, are also absent and the setting is updated to 2010, with and replacing the answering machine messages in the book. There are changes to the characters too, one notable one being that Susan is Gordon's ex-girlfriend rather than his sister.

Several additional elements from Adams's novels, in particular St Cedd's College, were later to appear in the full series. Interviewed about the series, Stephen Mangan noted that "All three episodes are very different in tone and you get a different Dirk with each one...He's on the run from the police in one of them and in another there's a bit of romance in the air, which for Dirk is a surprise because he's probably the most asexual character on TV... There seems to be a vogue for dark, realistic, gritty detective series, apart from perhaps . Dirk has so much humour in it. How many other detectives mix detection with quantum mechanics or drive a 30-year-old brown ?"

Each episode of series one was written by different writers, who are mostly known for their contributions to science fiction and fantasy programmes; series creator Howard Overman also created and has written for , has previously written the Doctor Who stories ""/"" and wrote the film and has written scripts for .

Cast

, best known for his role in the television series , and subsequently , was cast in the main role as holistic detective . Mangan already knew the novel and the author's works, stating in a press release "I've been a fan of Douglas Adams ever since the Hitchhiker's radio series which I used to record as a child and listen to over and over again in my bedroom. It's such a thrill to now be playing one of his brilliant characters. Dirk is a chaotic, anarchic force of nature with a totally unique take on the world. He is described as 'lazy, untidy, dismissive and unreliable'. I've absolutely no idea why they thought I'd be right for the role." Cast alongside him were and , both of whom had previously worked with Mangan in Green Wing and respectively. Darren Boyd and Helen Baxendale returned for the full series, with the character of Richard MacDuff becoming Dirk's "partner/assistant" for each of the episodes. Other regular cast members are as Detective Inspector Gilks and as Dirk's secretary Janice Pearce.

The programme pilot featured appearances from , , , . Episode one saw guest appearances by , , Ken Collard, and . Episode two featured roles for , , , Andrew Leung, and Bethan Hanks. Episode three features and .

Filming

at the was used as the fictional .

Although the series is set in the London boroughs of and , the series was shot entirely in . Areas and buildings featured in the programme included the Guildhall, the Bottle Yard, St Thomas Street and the Greenbank area. The second series episode also featured extensive filming around the , with doubling as the fictional Cambridge College .

The production's location manager, Rob Champion, noted that each location had to be chosen carefully to avoid featured giveaway clues to Bristol, in particular any building made of the local building material, limestone. He noted that "Episode 2 was the greatest challenge as it included two days material in a Robotic Laboratory. Bristol has such a thing...a joint venture between the two universities, with a very helpful professor, but its landlord was an American corporation with the most unimaginably anal restrictions on access. They basically didn't want us there and took the best part of two weeks to say so...We eventually settled upon a brand new building at the Bristol-Bath Science Park where they could not have been more helpful. All this on a BBC4 budget."

Music

The series's soundtrack was composed by . In creating the distinctive sound for the main titles and incidental music, Pemberton made use of a , a which is a cross between a and a piano. These instruments were produced in America between 1927 to 1972. The soundtrack also mixes in a harpsichord, synth, bass guitar and drums. A soundtrack album featuring music from the series was released by 1812 Recordings on 5 March 2012.

Plot

Dirk Gently (real name Svlad Cjelli) operates a Detective Agency based on the "fundamental interconnectedness of all things". To solve cases, Dirk relies on methods for example " navigation" (following people or vehicles who look like they know where they are going, in the hope that they will lead somewhere you want to be) or throwing a dart at a board of words to select the direction of his detection. By following up on apparently random occurences and whims, Dirk discovers connections between seemingly unrelated cases and often produces surprising results. He claims that he follows the principles of (although it is implied when he speaks to an expert in these fields that he doesn't really understand them); most people suspect he is just a conman and he rarely gets paid by clients and is therefore in almost permanent financial difficulty.

In the pilot episode, Dirk bumps into a former university friend, Richard MacDuff, who has been made redundant from a job at an electricity board, and takes on a case for him. During the course of his investigation, Dirk hypnotises MacDuff and persuades him into investing his £20,000 redundancy money in his failing detective agency. MacDuff therefore becomes Dirk's partner in the business and "assistant" on investigations. Richard MacDuff's girlfriend, Dr Susan Harmison, was also at university with the pair and is deeply sceptical about Dirk's abilities. Also present at the Agency is Dirk's receptionist Janice Pearce, whom Dirk has not paid for years and who therefore refuses to do any work.

Episodes

No.TitleDirectorWriterViewing figuresOriginal air date

0

""

Damon Thomas

943 000

16 December 2010

When sets out to solve an apparently simple and harmless disappearance of a cat from an old lady's house, he unwittingly uncovers a double murder which, in turn, leads to a host of even more extraordinary events. 

1

"Episode 1"

Howard Overman

844 000

5 March 2012

Dirk discovers the connection between two unrelated cases - a client who believes are trying to kill him and another whose horoscopes appear to be coming true. 

2

"Episode 2"

Tom Shankland

561 000

12 March 2012

Dirk is called back to his old university to protect a valuable robot but within 24 hours it has been stolen and a dead body discovered, with Dirk and MacDuff the prime suspects. 

3

"Episode 3"

Tom Shankland

Jamie Mathieson

592 000

19 March 2012

Dirk’s old clients are being randomly murdered with Dirk as the only link. Rather than talk to the police, Dirk elects to leave the country but is waylaid by a series of seemingly unconnected events. 

Reception

Pilot

Stephen Mangan plays the titular holistic detective in the series.

The pilot episode gained 1.1m viewers (3.9% share) on BBC Four, which was over three times the channel's slot average. Critical reception for the pilot was largely positive. Several mentioned that it was only a loose adaptation of the novel, although the general consensus was that the essence of the original was maintained. Sam Wollaston in stated "Coming to it fresh, it's a neat story about aforementioned missing cat and time travel, with a smattering of quantum physics and the fundamental connectedness of things. With a lovely performance from Doreen Mantle as the old lady/murderer. Stephen Mangan's good in the title role, too – a teeny bit irritating perhaps, but then Mangan is a teeny bit irritating. So is Dirk Gently, though – it's perfect. Funny too. Quite funny." James Donaghy, also writing in The Guardian stated "Personally I hope Dirk Gently gets made into a full series. The programme shows promising glimpses, has a strong cast and Misfits already proves Overman can write. And a BBC4 adaptation feels like a good fit – Gently being exactly the kind of playground-of-the-imagination curio the BBC made its name indulging."

published two reviews. Alice-Azania Jarvis was extremely positive, writing "...there wasn't very much you could fault about the production at all. Right down to the quirky camerawork and youthful, poppy soundtrack (who would have thought the Hoosiers could be so right in any situation?), the director, Damon Thomas, got it pretty spot-on. The result was a pleasingly festive-feeling adventure; part , part , part . And the best thing? There wasn't a Christmas tree in sight. Douglas Adams once claimed that Gently would make a better film character than his more famous hero, . Based on last night's experience, he may well have been right." John Walsh's review for was cooler about the adaptation, although he praised Mangan's performance: "Given the talent and style on display, it should have been a scream. In fact it all seemed a little moth-eaten. Though set in the modern day, it was staggeringly old-fashioned...You could overlook these faults, however, for the joy of Stephen Mangan's performance as the titular gumshoe. With his alarmed-spaniel eyes and jutting-jawed stroppiness, his geography teacher elbow-patches and Medusan hair, he radiates mess...His ineptness as a sleuth provided some fine comic moments.

Paul Whitelaw in was also positive, although he noted "At times it felt forced, with a sense of trying slightly too hard when a touch more subtlety would have brought out the essential Adamsian eccentricity." Dan Owen of Obsessed with Film noted that the adaptation played with the idea of inexplicable situations: "Purists may grumble this isn't the Dirk Gently they wanted to see, but it's more accessible and practicable. And while Dirk Gently is certainly another gimmicky detective series (yawn), its details are unique and engrossing enough to shrug off the genre's clichés. In some ways it's a pastiche of whodunits, taking the genre's often tenuous explanations to an outrageous extreme."

Paul Whitelaw in noted that "Although Adams's more ambitious concepts are sidelined in favour of a more prosaic - if nonetheless enjoyable - sci-fi mystery, Overman captures at least some of the wit and whimsy of his distinctive comic voice" going on to suggest "This modestly-budgeted pilot suggests potential for a series, so the deviation from Adams's originals makes sense. It also adds yet another very British oddball to the pantheon currently occupied by and .

Series One

Critical opinion to the full series was mildly positive. The adaptation from the Adams' novels was the focus of several reviews. Jane Simon, writing in The Mirror stated "It's just a shame creator Douglas Adams isn't around to see how Howard Overman has ­transferred Dirk to the screen. He'd definitely approve. Mark Braxton in the Radio Times likewise agreed that "Overman has plucked the comic essence of Adams from his novel...and worked it into a digestible, enjoyably eccentric format."

AA Gill writing in the Sunday Times March 11, 2012 wrote 'Who'd have guessed that this would ever get recommissioned?...It has to get a nomination as the greatest waste of the most talent for the least visible purpose or reward."

Others complained that the series was not an exact adaptation of the novels. Nigel Farndale in The Telegraph stated "I struggled with Dirk Gently...It had nothing to do with Stephen Mangan's considerable comedic talents, still less with Darren Boyd who plays MacDuff, the Dr Watson to Dirk's Holmes. It is more to do with my devotion to Douglas Adams, upon whose comic novel this series is based...in Douglas Adams, 90 per cent of the pleasure is in the prose, the narration, the felicities of language."

Tom Sutcliffe in The Independent felt that the programme's qualities were "spread a little too thinly over a nonsensical thriller plot' and that "laughs... were far too widely spaced in a script that could have done with a lot more editing."

Several critics compared the production with the big-budget BBC One detective series Sherlock, the second series of which was broadcast in January 2012. Writing in Metro, Keith Watson said "There's no doubt Sherlock has raised the detecting duo bar on TV...it's more than a match for Sherlock on the dialogue front, neatly catching the surreal humour that was the Adams trademark...but there was no disguising the fact that Dirk Gently was a five-star script being filmed on a one-star budget, making it look like a designer label knockoff when set against the production values lavished on Sherlock. Stuart Jeffries in , meanwhile, found a comparison between the tone of the series and 1960s spy/detective ; "Never since has there been anything so unremittingly silly on British television as Dirk Gently...Dainty harpsichord music tells us we're back in an era of TV misrule, in whose glory days John Steed, Mrs Peel and played fast and loose with viewers' intelligences."

The first episode had 737,000 viewers and a 3% audience share but this fell to 415,000 and 2% share for the second episode.[] Series one, including the pilot episode, was released on DVD on 26 March 2012 by ITV Studios Home Entertainment.

References

^ James Donaghy "", The Guardian, 16 December 2010

^ Helena Cole, , SFX, 17 February 2012

^ "", BBC Press Release, 31 March 2011

^ Jason Deans, "", The Guardian, 31 March 2011

^

"", BBC Cult, accessed 19 March 2012

^ Chris Harvey, "", Daily Telegraph, 16 December 2010

. Retrieved 14 August 2007.

News and New Projects page

July 2007 of radio version

Rob Hastings, "", The Independent, 6 October 2010

at the

listing

. 6 October 2010. Retrieved 10 October 2010.

^ . Retrieved 10 October 2010.

^ Benji Wilson, , The Telegraph, 5 March 2012

Mangan, Stephen (16 December 2010). . . Retrieved 20 December 2010.

^ Tom Chivers, "", Daily Telegraph, 17 December 2010

^ "Stephen Mangan speaks about the return to our screens of Dirk Gently", Northampton Chronicle & Echo, 8 March 2012

Helena Cole, "", SFX, 17 February 2012

^ , British Comedy Guide

, Bristol Film Office, accessed 18 March 2012

, Bristol Film Office, accessed 18 March 2012

^ , thecallsheet.co.uk, accessed 19 March 2012

, Daniel Pemberton's Twitterfeed, accessed 22 March 2012

^ Stuart Jeffries, "", The Guardian, 5 March 2012

, accessed 22 March 2012

^ , BBC Four, accessed 19 March 2012

. BARB. Retrieved 4 April 2012.

Sam Wollaston "", The Guardian, 16 December 2010

Alice-Azania Jarvis "", The Independent, 17 December 2010

John Walsh, "", The Independent, Sunday, 19 December 2010

Keith Watson, "", Metro, 16 December 2010

Dan Owen, "", Obsessed with Film, 17 December 2010

Paul Whitelaw, "", The Scotsman, 13 December 2010

Jane Simon, "", The Mirror 12 March 2012

Mark Braxton, Radio Times, 5 March 2012

Nigel Farndale, , Daily Telegraph, 9 March 2012

Tom Sutcliffe, " ", The Independent 6 March 2012

Keith Watson, , Metro' 6 March 2012

, Digital Spy, 7 March 2012

External links

,

at the

at the British Comedy Guide

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: ,

For the United States Navy ship, see ; for the Arabic emphasis sign, see ; for the village in Azerbaijan, see .

Shada

Serial

Shada, the prison planetoid of the Time Lords.

Cast

()

()

(Voice of )

Others

— Skagra

–

– Chris Parsons

– Clare Keightley

– Wilkin

– Dr Caldera

– Police Constable

– Passenger

– Voice of the Ship

– Voice of the Krargs

, , , – Krargs

Production

Writer

Director

(original)

Script editor

Douglas Adams

Producer

(original) (video)

Production code

5M

Series

Length

Incomplete (original) 6 episodes, 25 minutes each (intended)

Originally broadcast

Unaired (original) 6 July 1992 (video release)

Chronology

← Preceded by

Followed by →

Shada is an unaired serial of the series . It was intended to be the final serial of the 1979-80 season (Season 17), but was never completed due to a at the during filming. In 1992, its recorded footage was released on video using linking narration by , the Doctor to complete the story.

The script, with adaptions, was later produced by as an , with animation and was made available on and the BBC website in 2003. This version saw take on the role of the Doctor, with reprising her role as , with an otherwise different cast.

A novelisation of the story written by and returning the action to the Fourth Doctor and Romana was released in March 2012.

Contents

Synopsis

The story revolves around the lost planet Shada, on which the built a prison for defeated would-be conquerors of the universe. Skagra, an up-and-coming would-be conqueror of the universe, needs the assistance of one of the prison's inmates, but finds that nobody knows where Shada is anymore except one aged Time Lord who has retired to , where he is masquerading as a professor at . Luckily for the fate of the universe, Skagra's attempt to force the information out of coincides with a visit by the professor's old friend, .

Continuity

In an unfilmed scene in Episode 5, a listing of prisoners kept on Shada included a , a , and a . Instead of these, aliens bearing resemblance to were seen.

In 1983, clips from Shada were used in , the 20th-Anniversary special. , the fourth actor to play the Doctor, had declined to appear in the special, and the plot was reworked to explain the events in the clips.

In the book, various references are made to past and future Doctor Who. In particular past rebellious Time Lords are mentioned including, , , the and .

For the Big Finish version, Tom Baker was originally approached to reprise the role of the Doctor, but declined. The Eighth Doctor was then substituted and the story reworked accordingly.

Although working from the original Adams script, portions of the Big Finish version were reworked by to make the story fit into Doctor Who continuity. This included a new introduction, and a new explanation for the Fourth Doctor and Romana being "taken out of time" during the events of The Five Doctors; the has come to collect Romana and K-9 because he has begun to have a feeling that there was something they should have done at that time. In addition to this –

is referred to as Madam President by Skagra in Episode 5.

In Episode 6 it is Romana, using her Presidential powers, who decides that Chronotis should be allowed to return to Cambridge.

When the policeman enters Chronotis' room, the Doctor can be heard talking about a "terrible way to see in the New Year" in a possible reference to that Doctor's .

Various other minor dialogue changes throughout, mostly relating to the Eighth Doctor reflecting that he has missed Romana and since they left him and how much he enjoyed their company in the past.

When Skagra is investigating the Doctor, clips from three other Big Finish productions can be heard, exclusively on the CD version – , and . The original serial was to have used clips from , , , , , and . The webcast features outlines of the first eight Doctors' faces.

Production

Original television version

The original story, as written by Adams, was scheduled to be 6 episodes. It is estimated that only about 50% of the story was filmed. Location filming in and the first of three studio sessions at were recorded as scheduled. The second studio block was affected by a long-running technicians' dispute. The strike was over by the time rehearsals began for the third recording session, but this was lost to higher-priority Christmas programming. Attempts were made by new producer John Nathan-Turner to remount the story, but for various reasons it never happened and the production was formally dropped in June 1980.

Nathan-Turner was eventually able to complete the story (so far as was possible) by commissioning new effects shots, a score and having Tom Baker record linking material to cover the missing scenes to create six shortened episodes of between 14 and 22 minutes each. The result was released on video in 1992 as a 111 minute VHS tape, but has never been aired on television—making Shada the only Doctor Who television story never to be broadcast.

Douglas Adams himself did not regard the story highly and was content for it remain permanently unseen in any form. He once claimed that when he had signed the contract allowing the 1992 release, it had been part of a pile of other papers presented to him by his agent to sign and he wasn't fully aware of what he was agreeing to.

Levine animated version

In 2010, decided to fund a project to complete the original Shada story using animation and the original voice actors, minus Tom Baker and David Brierley, to complete the parts of the story that were never filmed. John Leeson would replace Brierley as the voice of K9 and Paul Jones, impersonating Baker, would replace him as the Doctor. In October 2010, Dan Hall of confirmed that a DVD release of Shada was in production and intended to release it with another title.

The completed story was finished in late 2011 and announced by Levine, via his Twitter account, on September 8, 2011. J. R. Southall, writer for the science fiction magazine , reviewed Levine's completed version and scored it 10 out of 10 in an article published on September 15, 2011. On October 26, 2011, 2 Entertain announced that only the Shada framgents would be released on DVD, along with the 1993 documentary 'Doctor Who': Thirty Years in the Tardis and other items, possibly sometime in 2012. Southall confirmed the news that same day writing that Dan Hall, 2 Entertain's comissioning editor, was not going to release Levine's completed version.

Big Finish version (2003)

Shada

Series

Release number

II

Featuring

Writer

,

Director

Producer(s)

Gary Russell

Set between

and

Length

150

Release date

December 2003

The Cast

The Doctor – ()

–

–

Skagra –

–

Chris Parsons –

Clare Keightley –

Wilkin –

Dr Caldera –

Motorist/Constable –

The Ship –

Think Tank Voice –

Broadcast date: 10 December 2005

In 2003, the BBC commissioned to remake Shada as an audio play which was then webcast in six episodic segments, accompanied by limited animation, on the using illustrations provided by comic strip artist . The play starred as the and as . The audio play was also broadcast on digital radio station BBC 7, on 10 December 2005 (as a 21⁄2-hour omnibus), and was repeated in six parts as the opening story to the 's summer season which began on 16 July 2006.

Lalla Ward (Romana) is the only actor to appear in both the original television version and the subsequent Big Finish remake.

Outside references

In Episode 2 of the webcast version, when Chris is in his lab showing Clare the book, a vending machine-like object in the background is labelled "Nutrimat", a reference to a similar device in Adams' . Two other references are a sequence where Skagra steals a and when images of Hitchhiker's Guide characters appear as inmates on Shada itself.

In print

book

Doctor Who – Shada

Writer

Gareth Roberts

Publisher

Release date

15 March 2012

Preceded by

'

Followed by

'

book

Doctor Who and Shada

Writer

& Jonathan Preddle

Publisher

(unofficial novelisation)

Cover artist

Alistair Hughes

Release date

March 1989

Preceded by

'

Followed by

'

Elements of the story were reused by Adams for his novel , in particular the character of Professor Chronotis who possesses a time machine. Adams did not allow Shada, or any of his other Doctor Who stories, to be novelised by . It is, therefore, one of only five serials from the 1963–1989 series not to be novelised by Target – along with Adams' other stories and , plus 's two stories ( and ).

A six-part adaptation of the story by Jonathan V Way appeared in issues 13-18 of Cosmic Masque, the 's fiction magazine. Douglas Adams granted permission for the adaptation on condition that it was never published in collected form.

A fan group in New Zealand published an unofficial adaptation in 1989, later republishing it as an online eBook titled Doctor Who and Shada.

published a novelisation of this serial on 15 March 2012, written by . Roberts has drawn on the latest versions of the scripts available, as well as adding new material of his own to "fix" various plotholes and unanswered questions.

VHS, Webcast and DVD releases

VHS release: The original televsion version of Shada was released in 1992 on VHS and featured linking narration by Tom Baker and was accompanied by a facsimile of a version of 's script (except in North America). The release was discontinued in the UK in 1996.

Webcast: The webcast version (originally broadcast via BBCi's "Red Button") remains available from the BBC Doctor Who "classic series" website, and an expanded audio-only version is available for purchase on CD from Big Finish. This expanded version was the one broadcast on BBC7.

DVD: announced on 8 September 2011 that his personally-funded reconstruction of all six episodes of the serial, using animation and recently-recorded vocal tracks to fill in missing parts of the story, had now been completed. However, the animation was rejected by , and it has been announced that the shot footage for the story will be released in 2012 with assorted Doctor Who material, including the 1993 documentary More Than 30 Years In The TARDIS.

References

Sullivan, Shannon (September 23, 2008). . A Brief History of Time (Travel). Shannon Patrick Sullivan. Retrieved June 9, 2009.

^ Southall, J. R. (September 12, 2011). Jordan, Royce. ed. . (, ).  .  . Retrieved April 1, 2012.

^ (September 11, 2001). Doctor Who: The Five Doctors (DVD). London, England: . Event occurs at 12:45.  .

Ley, Shaun (December 12, 2009). . . . Retrieved April 1, 2012.

(2005). Hitchhiker: A Biography of Douglas Adams. Boston, Massachusetts , US: Justin, Charles & Co..  .  .

Wilson, Marcus (October 25, 2010). . The Doctor Who News Page. Doctor Who News. Archived from on December 1, 2010. Retrieved October 25, 2010.

^ Burk, Graeme (September 16, 2011). . Doctor Who Blog. Doctor Who Information Network. Retrieved April 1, 2012.

Southall, J. R. (September 15, 2011). Jordan, Royce. ed. . (London. England).  .  . Retrieved April 3, 2012.

^ McArdell, Ian (October 28, 2011). . Regent Times. Alwyn Ash. Retrieved April 1, 2012.

Southall, J. R. (October 26. 2011). Jordan, Royce. ed. . (London. England).  .  . Retrieved April 3, 2012.

. . . 2003. Retrieved November 19, 2010.

Sullivan, Lee (2008). . Lee Sullivan Art. Lee Sullivan. Retrieved November 19, 2010.

. Amazon. . 2012. Retrieved April 1, 2012.

Foster, Chuck (February 13, 2012). . Doctor Who News. News in Time and Space. Retrieved April 3, 2012.

Scoones, Paul (2006). . The New Zealand Doctor Who Fan Club. Tetrap.com. Retrieved November 19, 2010.

Berriman, Ian (March 6 2012). . SFX. Future Publishing Limited.

Bibliography

Howe, David J; Stammers, Mark; Walker, Stephen James. Doctor Who: The Seventies (1994) (London: Doctor Who Books)

External links

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The Fourth Doctor, traveling alone in the TARDIS, arrives on a mysterious jungle planet. He soon encounters Leela, a savage from the local tribe, who denounces him as the Evil One of fable amongst her people. She has been exiled from her tribe, the Sevateem, for profaning their god, the mysterious , which speaks to them through the tribe’s , Neeva. Her father, tribal elder Sole, tried to intervene to protect her but died when taking the Test of the Horda on her behalf. Now Leela is an outcast beyond the invisible barrier around her tribal home. Neeva, meanwhile, has sent two men to murder her, an action witnessed by Leela's friend Tomas, who kills one of the men as Leela dispatches the other. In the jungle beyond that she encounters the Doctor soon wins her over by defending her from invisible monsters that rampage about, attracted by vibration of any kind. Exploring further, the Doctor finds a sophisticated sonic disruptor which creates the forcefield that keeps the creatures from attacking the village itself. Leela regales him with more folklore of her people: the god Xoanon is kept prisoner by the Evil One and his followers, the Tesh, beyond a strange black wall.

The Sevateem have meanwhile decided to launch an attack on the domain of the Tesh to free their god. They are led by the combative Andor, who is determined to free his god, and also believes that an attack will unite the people. Andor suspects Neeva of being a false prophet, and Tomas tells him of Neeva's assassination attempt against Leela. Still, Andor believes the attack will succeed and is prepared to go ahead.

Two warriors are scouring the jungle when they find the Doctor, and they too call him the Evil One, making a protective hand gesture which the Doctor interprets as the sequence for checking the seals on a Starfall Seven spacesuit. The warriors seize the Doctor, but not Leela, and take him to the village council, where his face is shown to all the tribe. Andor is convinced the prisoner is the Evil One, and has him confined. However, Leela manages to free him by using poisonous Janis thorns, which paralyze, then kill the victim. The Doctor is horrified by this and instructs her "No more Janis thorns, Ever".

The pair flee the village and head to a clearing beyond, in which the Doctor is greeted with a stunning sight: carved into a mountain nearby is an impression of his own face. The Doctor cannot recall clearly why his face is depicted so, and persuades Leela to return to the village to find out more, despite the death sentence upon them. They return to Neeva’s holy tent and the Doctor inspects the ancient tribal relics, recognising them as artifacts from an Earth survey expedition. He also finds a transceiver used by Neeva to hear the commands of Xoanon. It speaks with the Doctor’s own voice, conveying exhilaration on hearing the Doctor that "At least we are here. At last I shall be free of us."

They then head off to inspect the dark Wall that stands at the entrance to the realm of the Evil One. The Doctor deduces it is a primitive time barrier, and is convinced the Sevateem warriors will be massacred if they attack the fortress of their enemy, the Tesh. From a distance they see the massacre unfold, as laser beams cut down warriors armed only with crossbows and other basic tribal weapons. Half the tribe is lost in the assault and one of the elders, the devious Calib, is first back at the camp where he finds the Doctor and Leela. He is evidently intent on using the Doctor to break Neeva’s hold on the tribe by exposing the faith in Xoanon as misplaced mythology. Leela’s friend Tomas also arrives, and is appalled to find Calib has stabbed Leela with a Janis thorn to prevent her exposing his schemes. The Doctor gets Tomas to help him move Leela to Neeva’s tent, where he uses a bio-analyzer to synthesise an antidote to the poison.

When the surviving warriors return, the Doctor, Leela and Tomas are invited to address the tribal elders in defence of their lives. Leela makes matters worse when she accuses Xoanon of causing the trap at the Wall. Calib intervenes to suggest the Doctor is not the Evil One, and this can be proven by getting him to take the fabled Test of the Horda. In the centre of the village is a pit full of Horda, two-foot-long worms which hunt in packs and react to the movements of their prey. They are reputed to strip flesh from a man in an instant. The Sevateem evolved the Test of the Horda as a measure of justice and bravery. It involves suspension on a rope above the pit, and accused characters are gradually lowered into the pit by means of a rope. The Doctor is given a which has to be fired at the exact moment to sever the rope without causing him to fall into the pit – which is, of course, the fate of the guilty. The Doctor succeeds, and is therefore presumed to be a non-malign influence and freed. He proceeds to examine some relics of the tribe and repairs a disruptor gun. He also tells some of the tribe that the Sevateem are the descendants of a “survey team” which left a Starfall Seven Earth colony ship. The Doctor and Leela then go to examine the face in the mountain, and they climb into the face by scaling the Doctor’s teeth.

Neeva returns to his tent, where the voice of Xoanon tells him that the tribe will be destroyed, and the mysterious being then causes the sonic disruptor to shut down, leaving the village open to attack from the invisible beings. These descend on the village, killing indiscriminately, including crushing Andor to death. Tomas uses the disruptor gun built by the Doctor to expose the true appearance of the invisible beings: they are ferocious, angry depictions of the Doctor’s own face as shown in the picture.

Leela and the Doctor notice a figure in a space suit in the “mouth” entrance and follow it through a projection of a wall. Beyond this barrier is a rocket, which the Doctor recalls as belonging to the Mordee Expedition, his memory of events earlier in his regeneration now returning. Xoanon has detected the Doctor nearby, and when he reaches the ship the god-creature is both ecstatic that "We are here” while also manically pledging that "We must destroy us."

The Doctor and Leela now meet three representatives of the Tesh, who serve and worship Xoanon. They are human too, but technologically advanced and possessing telepathic abilities. The Doctor deduces both Sevateem and Tesh are descendants of the same crew from the Mordee Expedition, with the Tesh (or technicians) involved in the same deadly exercise as the Sevateem (or survey team).

The invisible creatures that attacked the Sevateem are also part of the same deranged scheme: Xoanon is a highly sophisticated computer, designed to think independently. The Doctor had once repaired Xoanon but forgot to wipe his personality print from the data core, leaving the computer with a split personality. The Doctor and Leela are soon imprisoned but evade their captors and find the remote communications device used to communicate with Neeva. The Doctor, speaking as Xoanon, instructs Neeva to tell Calib, who is now tribal leader, to lead the Sevateem survivors through the mouth of the carved face in the mountain. Calib accepts this instruction and leads them into the safety of the mouth, where the invisible beings can no longer threaten the tribe.

With Leela keeping guard and holding the Tesh at bay with a disruptor gun, the Doctor ventures into the computer room of the ship to confront Xoanon. He blames himself for creating the maddened split personality of the computer and now attempts to persuade it to shut down. When Xoanon refuses it channels a vicious mental assault at the Doctor, causing him to collapse. As the Doctor writhes on the floor, Xoanon booms: "Who am I?"

Leela rescues the Doctor from the mental assault, and as he recovers he warns her of Xoanon’s power. Moments later they realise the computer has electrified the walls to try to kill them, and the Tesh become more purposeful in tracking them down within the spaceship. The Tesh also come under attack from Calib, Tomas and the survivors of the Sevateem, who now reach the spaceship too. This diverts the Tesh while the Doctor and Leela return to the computer room, where Xoanon briefly takes control of Leela’s mind. Most of the Sevateem come under the telepathic control of the computer too.

The Tesh and Sevateem soon converge on the computer room too and interrupt the Doctor as he tries to repair Xoanon, realising the computer has now triggered the countdown to an atomic explosion. Elsewhere in the ship Neeva is alone but crazed, his faith in Xoanon shattered. The shaman uses the disruptor gun against one of the images of Xoanon/the Doctor projected through a wall. The ensuing blast kills Neeva but also interrupts Xoanon’s control of its subjects, allowing the Doctor to resume and complete his repairs. Xoanon’s circuits explode, knocking the Doctor out.

Two days later the Doctor wakes up to find himself aboard the spaceship in the care of Leela. She explains Xoanon has been quiet and he interprets this as success for his extraction experiment. They visit the computer room and find Xoanon’s identity and sanity restored. The computer confirms it was running a eugenics experiment and thanks the Doctor for his repair work. The Doctor then contacts the survivors of the Tesh and Sevateem and tells them Xoanon is now cured and able to support their new society. He then heads off to the TARDIS followed by Leela. She insists she join him on his travels, and when he refuses she jumps into the TARDIS with him and starts the dematerialisation process.

[] Continuity

The story does not explicitly explain when the repaired the Starfall Seven's computer. The novelisation suggests that the earlier visit to the planet of the Sevateem took place during the story , in the moment when sees him begin to leave in the but calls for him to stay.

[] Production

Serial details by episode

EpisodeBroadcast dateRun timeViewership (in millions)

"Part One"

1 January 1977

24:58

10.7

"Part Two"

8 January 1977

24:58

11.1

"Part Three"

15 January 1977

24:40

11.3

"Part Four"

22 January 1977

24:46

11.7

Working titles for this story included The Day God Went Mad.

[] Cast notes

See also:

The actors credited as Xoanon do not appear onscreen; only their voices were used.

Features guest appearances by Pamela Salem (voice only) and Leslie Schofield.

later played Generalleutnant Tendexter in the audio play .

[] In print

A novelisation of this serial, written by , was published by in January 1978.

book

Doctor Who and the Face of Evil

Series

Release number

25

Writer

Publisher

Cover artist

ISBN

Release date

19 January 1978

Preceded by

'

Followed by

'

[] DVD & VHS release

This story was released on in May 1999

The story was released on on 5 March 2012

[] References

Shaun Lyon et al. (2007-03-31). . Outpost Gallifrey. Archived from on 2008-07-31. Retrieved 2008-08-30.

. Doctor Who Reference Guide. Retrieved 2008-08-30.

Sullivan, Shannon (2007-08-07). . A Brief History of Time Travel. Retrieved 2008-08-30.

[] External links

at

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Fan reviews

reviews at

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Target novelisation

reviews at

[]

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Blake's 7 CD Box Set 1(Duration: 180' approx)CAST:Gareth Thomas (Blake), Paul Darrow (Avon), Michael Keating (Vila), Anthony Howell (Nyrron)SYNOPSIS:Three enhanced audiobooks performed by the stars of the classic BBC television series. These stories are set during Series 1.The Turing Test by Simon GuerrierStarring Paul Darrow as Avon and Michael Keating as VilaAfter evading an attack by Cassini pirates, the Liberator heads to the rogue moon of Quentil, where Avon and Vila infiltrate a top secret Federation science facility.Vila assumes the guise of Doctor Yarding Gill, an expert in digital memory. And Avon is his 'creation' - a super-advanced android that could pass for human. In fact, he does...Can they maintain the ruse for long enough to complete their mission? And will the Cassini pirates catch up with them?Solitary by Nigel FairsStarring Michael Keating as Vila and Anthony Howell as NyrronVila is in solitary confinement. His friends have abandoned him; his only contact with the world outside is Nyrron, a scientist from the planet Auron.Amnesiac and confused, Vila attempts to piece together recent events... A mission to Dulcimer 4. An important meeting. And a visit to the jungle world of Terrulis Major.In the depths of the foliage, the truth is waiting. And it's more terrifying than Vila could possibly have imagined...Counterfeit by Peter AnghelidesStarring Gareth Thomas as Blake and Paul Darrow as AvonThe Bovee Mining Facility: a Federaqtion slave camp worked by disgraced scientists.The planet shouldn't be of interest but is it: Avon's investigations reveal that it's rich in Illusium, a mineral that can change from one substance to another. With it, the Federation could be invulnerable...Blake teleports down to Bovee, but gets more than he bargained for. There's another visitor to the facility - and his presence changes the whole game...AUTHORS:     Simon Guerrier, Nigel Fairs and Peter Anghelides     DIRECTOR:    Lisa BowermanSOUND DESIGN:    Alistair Lock     MUSIC:    Alistair LockCOVER ART:    Anthony Lamb    NUMBER OF DISCS:    3RECORDED DATE:    23 September 2011     RELEASE DATE:    28 February 2012PRODUCTION CODE:    BFPB7BOX001     ISBN:     978-1-84435-624-9            CHRONOLOGICAL PLACEMENT:These stories are set between Project Avalon and Breakdown.