5M1 - Shada 1

I thought long and hard about including Shada in this Chronic Hysteresis, but was eventually swayed by two things. One, Shada has an official BBC production code, therefore it's canon, in my eyes, and two, I realized that I mentioned that I would definitely review this story way back in the very first article written for this site...

In watching Shada, I concentrated only on the 1992 BBC Video release that tied together the existing footage with narration from Tom Baker, who filled in what happened in the scenes that were, sadly, never shot before a union strike halted the production story partway through production in 1979. I purposely did not reference the superb 2003 BBCi production starring Paul McGann as, lovely though it may be, it was not the Shada that was supposed to have been seen in early 1980, even if it did use virtually the same scripts that the 1979 production had to work with.

Also, I will try not to comment on Tom Baker's narration or Keff McCulloch's supposedly Dudley Simpson-esque score, as these were elements that weren't supposed to be in the original version, either. I also realize that some episodes will be harder to review than others given the amount of scenes that were never shot for some episodes (Romana doesn't feature on screen at all in Episode Five, for instance), but I will try and make do.

On with the show...