In the Doctor Who world I don’t recall any other book that’s been anticipated or hyped as much as Gareth Roberts’ novelisation of Douglas Adams’ ‘lost’ story Shada. I don’t think there ever could be, either. It ticks so many huge boxes nothing else would ever come near. Not even the Time War.
Was the book
ever going to live up to expectation? Certainly in Roberts’ favour is the fact
the story is already known and has been made accessible both through the 1992
video release (complete with script book) and the Paul McGann 8th
Doctor audio / online animated version. Many of its readers (such as myself) would
come to it already knowing what it’s all about, therefore the focus would be
much more on how Roberts tells the
story rather than what the story is that he’s telling.
There’ll be
loads of us out there who’ll be wishing they could have written this book
themselves, and would no doubt have bricked it if asked, but the Big G must
have been the only real choice. Jonathan Morris’ Season 17 BBC ‘Past Doctors
Adventure’ Festival of Death is
rightly praised but Gareth Roberts had cleared the ground years before with his
acclaimed triumvirate of Virgin ‘Missing Adventures’ from this period. These earlier
triumphs could have proved a double-edged sword – not only did he have a
Douglas Adams story to live up to, but his own successes from fifteen years
ago. No need to worry though.
Short answer:
it’s amazing.
Gareth tells
the familiar story very well, with
wonderfully confident, flowing prose. You can picture everything perfectly as
befits the period in the show’s history; like with his 1995 MA The Romance of Crime it almost felt as if I had seen a complete televised version of this back in the day, so
vivid were the images and the character performances.
As noted in the
Afterword, there were opportunities to reflect on what was either lost or
forced in the haste with which the scripts were originally written. So he
introduces a few surprises, undertakes some tidying and adds a few
embellishments that build and improve on the original storyline without standing
out or contrasting awkwardly. Chris and Clare get a better slice of the action
and a properly defined and fulfilled subplot of their own. Skagra is more
rounded and less of a pimp-geared, carpet bag-handling enigma. Chronotis’
survival is more effectively handled and explained, and Salyavin is not quite
so clumsily signposted early on. A couple of cliff hangers change slightly, but
the essence is still the same even if the explicit action is different. And we
can’t be too precious over the original scripts anyway – Adams himself was
famously unhappy with them and plundered some of the story for his novel Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency
(St. Cedd’s college even featured on one of the recent BBC4 episodes).
I adore the
way it’s divided into the six ‘parts’ as it would have been on TV, with some
great cliff hangers. Doctor Who
novels are, essentially, prose melodramas and it can be a shame when authors
choose to write through obvious cliff hangers. I’m sure plenty of commuters
would love to be left on tenterhooks at the end of a chapter as they’re
approaching their stop. Shada is a
fine example in that respect – and even with additions to the action each
episode still works out pretty much the same length – not even Big Finish can always
manage that!
There’s no
escaping the fact that it’s a chunky, unwieldy book (I don’t have a Kindle) and
would be pretty daunting if the writing wasn’t so effortless and relaxed - and incredibly
funny. There’s plenty of humour in the script and Roberts adds more of his own,
but it’s always in context and never feels forced. Skagra’s positive misinterpretation
of the Cambridge locals’ responses to his ‘glam’ gear is a prime example. Overall
Shada is intelligent, witty and
sufficiently an homage to Adams
without desperately trying to emulate him. Thankfully it doesn’t fall into the
trap that Eoin Colfer did with the dreadful sixth Hitchhiker book And Another
Thing… which only still sits on my shelf because it was a present from my
sister.
I can’t say
the book is perfect, however. The cover is awful. Why doesn’t it at least show
the Doctor? There are enough images available from the existing filming to
create something eye-catching and dynamic like they do for the DVD covers, and
surely Tom Baker’s image sells - so why the odd Lego lettering sculpture? What
does it tell us about the story? Very little as far as I can see...
I also have a
niggle about the way the Kraags are finished off in this version. It feels too
convenient – almost as if Roberts had written himself and the characters into a
corner they couldn’t get out of without intervention from outside. We should be
used to coincidence saving the day though – it happens often enough in the modern
TV series. The artifice works in the book, don’t get me wrong, and it serves to
reintroduce Skagra’s Ship after an absence, but I miss Romana working out how
to deal with the Kraags and deliberately destroying them. Maybe these days it’s
felt inappropriate to have the goodies intentionally ‘doing over’ the monsters,
although this was definitely a do-or-die situation? Personally I think it would
show the characters in a proactive light, even if it’s not necessarily the
correct thing for them to do. But that’s my only ‘creative change’ gripe and
it’s a pretty minor one all things considered.
Not wanting
to sound sycophantic, but I felt a bit empty and lost once I’d finished Shada. It didn’t take me ages to read,
but I felt the same as I do when I get to the end of Lord of The Rings, or Ulysses,
or in fact Mostly Harmless. It’s like
‘Phew. OK. What now? Silence...’ Maybe it’s also because I don’t have to lug a
heavy book around with me wherever I go anymore..! But I can see myself reading
it over and over again - and that’s got to be a compliment to any author.
Surely with
the Time Lords no longer extant in the TV version these days it’s a great
opportunity for Skagra to escape from his cell to take control of time and have
his revenge on the Doctor, with a whole new CGI Kraag army in tow? I would!
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