![]() ![]() ![]() Extraordinarily enough, all of the surviving cast agreed to return. Pennant Roberts died in 2010 and so Charles Norton took over directing duties. They have been married for 34 years.Įarlier this year, it was announced that Shada would finally be remounted using animated sequences to fill in the gaps that had been left by industrial action. He had met Bazalgette and although they lost touch after Doctor Who, a chance encounter two years later proved rather fruitful. Hill may have been devastated but there was one positive outcome from the whole sorry state of affairs. “I did not expect a Doctor Who story of that calibre to lose six episodes and found it extraordinary, not just because of the accountability issue, but because as an actor you think you are going to get extra money – that you will get another six weeks’ pay. “I went into a deep depression,” recalls Daniel Hill. In the end, Roberts circumvented the issue by filming the sequences during the day – even recruiting Tom Baker’s singing chums from the pub. This rather elaborate request had alerted the electricians’ unions who saw it as their big chance to disrupt a high-profile programme and remind the BBC of its power. Pennant Roberts, the director of Shada, had decided to book two lighting crews for an elaborate night-time chase sequence through Cambridge. If it was installed by the carpenters and wired by the electricians, who was supposed to turn the hands? ![]() In a classic demarcation issue, the Play School clock became the subject of a dispute. Even that gentlest of kids’ TV shows Play School wasn’t immune. The Seventies was, of course, a period of intense industrial unrest and the strife that had contributed to Labour’s defeat and the Conservatives’ victory was continuing within the BBC. Aware that he is being pursued, Chronotis calls on his old friend the Doctor.īut if love was blossoming between Doctor Who’s two leads, things were less harmonious elsewhere behind the scenes. But the Time Lords have hidden the planet and Skagra believes that a Cambridge professor, Chronotis (in fact a Time Lord), may know of its location. The story is fiendishly complex and deals with Skagra (played by Christopher Neame), a dangerous criminal who wishes to pool the knowledge of the universe’s most diabolical minds (located in a high-security prison on the planet Shada) and take control. Today, for the first time, Doctor Who fans can see Shada in its entirety. ![]() Only 50 per cent of the serial was filmed but, recently, it was completed using animation and voiced by the majority of the original cast. Oddly, this is linked to the Doctor Who story Shada, scheduled for transmission in the following January and scrapped half way through due to industrial action. Margaret Thatcher had been elected Prime Minister in May and the country looked towards free enterprise and a fight against unionisation. Producer Graham Williams, disliked by many fans because of his introduction of zany humour and robot dog K9 to the show, was working on his last story, as was script editor Douglas Adams who, off the back of his radio show The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, was about to become very famous.īritain was also changing. Behind the scenes, things had already changed. Tom Baker, who had become, by this time, the definitive Doctor, was thinking of moving on after five years in the role. In the autumn of 1979, Doctor Who was approaching the end of an era. ![]()
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