Book Review - Shada

Doctor Who: Shada: The Lost Adventure by Douglas Adams by Gareth Roberts

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

For fans of the classic Doctor Who, Shada was a story of legend, even before this novelization. Written by Douglas Adams and intended to be a six part series for Tom Baker’s fourth Doctor, the series was never finished because of a strike. Some of the footage shot for the series did eventually surface as part of The Five Doctors special.

Now, thanks to Gareth Roberts, himself a veteran of the new Doctor Who series, we can finally see what this unfinished series might have looked like.

The story, in six parts (just as the televised series would have aired) is brilliant, twisting and turning about as few other Doctor Who stories of that era have done. At times, it seems that Roberts almost channels the original scriptor with passages that reminded me of so much of Douglas Adams’ own Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, so much so that I feel that Roberts would have been a worthy successor to keep the adventures of Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect going after Adams’ untimely passing. He captures the mannerisms of both Baker’s Doctor and Lalla Ward’s Romana that is becomes hard pressed for this Doctor Who fan to not read this book without hearing their voices. Shada pulled me in, keeping me turning page after page, through cliffhanger after cliffhanger.

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