Douglas Adams’ lost Doctor Who story is becoming a book at last

Hitchhiker ’s Guide to the Galaxy creator Douglas Adams wrote three Doctor Who stories in the late seventies , but only two of them made it to the blind . The third , “ Shada , ” was never fill in due to a strike .

Now , at last , a Koran adaptation of “ Shada ” is coming from BBC Books in 2012 . And the good news is , it ’ll be drop a line by one of the few writers who stands a hazard of doing jurist to Adams ’ genius . Gareth Roberts , author of some of the most inventive Doctor Who novels including The Highest Science as well as three Who episodes — most recently “ The Lodger . ”

In “ Shada , ” the Doctor and Romana are come up to Cambridge University to see a retired Time Lord , who ’s living incognito as Professor Chronotis . It turns out Chronotis has kept one very special book that he hire from the Time Lords ’ planet , Gallifrey , and an evil , mind - steal alien named Skagra wants the book for himself . The leger will expose the location of the prison world Shada , home of Gallifrey ’s most notorious criminal , Salyavin .

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“ Shada ” has had a weirdly checker life since it failed to come along on television in other 1980 . John Nathan - Turner , who take over as producer early that year , reportedly asked the BBC for money to finish “ Shada ” as a one - off tale , but was move around down . A few snippet of the tale were used in the 1983 particular “ The Five doctor ” after Tom Baker wane to return to Doctor Who . subsequently , “ Shada ” was released in VHS tape with Baker narrating the un - filmed scenes . Mount Adams , meanwhile , used many of the ideas in “ Shada ” for his novel Dirk Gently ’s Holistic Detective Agency . finally , an audio interlingual rendition of “ Shada , ” starring the Eighth Doctor , Paul McGann , instead of Tom Baker , was let go . There ’s also been an unofficial novelization by Paul Scoones and Jonathan Preddle . plainly aDVD version is coming at some point .

But there ’s never been a straight - up book variant of “ Shada ” — and it ’s perhaps in record book form that this stillborn serial has the beneficial hope of achieving some color of its real potential as a Doctor Who fib . Sadly , unlike Adams ’ other story from that same year , “ City of Death , ” “ Shada ” is n’t actually all that great a tarradiddle — like a lot of six - sequence story , it ’s blow up and full of frivolity — but it does have many flash of brilliance and moment of extreme cleverness . ( Especially the morsel where the Doctor charge that that ruling the population just does n’t make any sense — how would you handle it once you had it ? )

It ’ll take some dextrous treatment to impart out the quintessential Douglas Adams - ness in “ Shada , ” but if anybody can do it , it ’s Gareth Roberts . [ Guardian ]

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