Scream of the Shalka

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Scream of the Shalka

The Doctor confronts Prime, War Chief of the Shalka Confederation, and her minions
Cast
Doctor Richard E. Grant (The Shalka Doctor)
Production
Writer Paul Cornell
Director Wilson Milam
Script editor None
Producer Muirinn Lane Kelly
Executive producer(s) Martin Trickey
James Goss
Mario Dubois
Production code None
Series None
Length 6 episodes, 15 mins each
Originally broadcast 13 November – 18 December 2003
Chronology
← Preceded by Followed by →
Shada —

Scream of the Shalka is a flash-animated serial based on the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was produced to coincide with the 40th Anniversary of the series and was originally posted in six weekly parts from 13 November to 18 December 2003 on BBCi's Doctor Who website. Although it was intended to be an "official" continuation of the television series that had ended in 1989, the revival of the programme in 2005 relegated it, and its "Ninth Doctor", to unofficial status.

The serial was scripted by veteran Doctor Who writer Paul Cornell, with Richard E. Grant providing the voice for the Ninth Doctor and Derek Jacobi as the voice of an android made in the image of the Doctor's old enemy, the Master. This performance followed years of rumours that Grant would play the Doctor in a film or new series, and indeed he had appeared as the Tenth "conceited" Doctor in the Comic Relief special Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death in 1999. The Doctor's companion for this adventure, Alison Cheney, was voiced by Sophie Okonedo who a year later would be nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in Hotel Rwanda.

Previous Doctor Who webcasts had had limited animation and were little more than a series of illustrations. Earlier in 2003, BBCi had had some success with the original animated webcast Ghosts of Albion. The animation for that story was provided by Manchester-based animation studio Cosgrove Hall, who were also hired to animate Scream of the Shalka.

This story was the first officially-licensed, fully-animated Doctor Who story.

Contents

[edit] Synopsis

The TARDIS materialises in the village of Lannet in Lancashire, disgorging an annoyed Doctor, who has apparently been transported here against his will. He discovers the village silent, its inhabitants all living in fear except for a barmaid, Alison Cheney. An alien race calling themselves the Shalka have taken up residence beneath Lannet in preparation for a wider invasion. Despite his initial reluctance to get involved, the Doctor finds himself having to save the world again, aided by Alison and an old enemy who has become an ally.

[edit] Cast

[edit] Continuity

  • Grant's incarnation of the Time Lord (often referred to as the "REG Doctor" or the "Shalka Doctor" by fans) has since appeared in an online short story, The Feast of the Stone by Cavan Scott and Mark Wright, although no further stories are planned.
  • Major Kennet looks over a UNIT file with the Doctor.
  • Toward the end of the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel range, the "expanded canon" began to consciously diverge, with the audio plays and novels intentionally contradicting each other. In the final Eighth Doctor novel, The Gallifrey Chronicles, the idea is put forward that each of the separate narrative threads — presumably books, comics, and audios, as implicitly suggested in Zagreus — has led to a different ninth incarnation of the Doctor. The implication here, though not explicitly stated, is that the three Doctors are the televised Ninth Doctor, Rowan Atkinson's Doctor from The Curse of Fatal Death, and the Shalka Doctor. Some fans have used this "expanded timeline" theory to fit Scream of the Shalka into overall continuity.[citation needed] Despite this, while the BBC has generally not made any declaration of canonicity regarding non-televised Doctor Who spinoffs (including the audios and novels), leaving their canoncity status unclear, Scream of the Shalka is one of the only such spinoffs to have been explicitly declared non-canon by the BBC and the Doctor Who production team.
  • Two of the cast members would go on to play characters in the 'New' or 'Revived' series' of Doctor Who. Derek Jacobi played The Master in 2007 in the series 3 episode Utopia and David Tennant would go on to play the Tenth Doctor from 2006 onwards.

[edit] Shalka

Doctor Who race
Shalka, with the leader Prime on the left.
Shalka
Type Bioplasmic entities
Affiliated with Shalka Confederacy
Home planet Unknown
First appearance Scream of the Shalka

The Shalka appear to be a serpentine alien race made of living rock and magma, but they are actually bioplasmic entities, living plasma, their physical appearance merely a "crust" concealing their true forms. They breathe volcanic air and prefer high temperatures, being most comfortable underground where lava meets metamorphic rock. They communicate through high-pitched screaming, which they can use for a variety of effects, like tunneling through rock or mentally controlling other life forms. They also use sound as a part of their technology.

The Shalka arrived on Earth via meteorite, initially landing near Mount Ruapehu, New Zealand, subsequently establishing a beachhead for their planned invasion of Earth beneath the Lancashire town of Lannet. They also created a stable wormhole for landing their invasion force, which could also be converted into a black hole to dispose of their enemies, as they tried to do with the Doctor.

As they claimed to have done to billions of planets before, they intended to implant Shalka larvae into key segments of the population, mind controlling them into emitting a scream that would destroy the ozone layer. In this way, the Shalka intended to raise the surface temperature of the planet to the point where the human race would perish but the Shalka could thrive. The Shalka would then live beneath the surface, with the rest of the universe believing that Earth's inhabitants had died of self-inflicted ecological damage. The Doctor defeated their plans with the help of the British military and a Lannet barmaid named Alison.

[edit] Production

Doctor Who had suspended production in 1989, and aside from charity specials, had only resurfaced as an American-funded television movie in 1996, which did not garner enough ratings to go to a regular series. When Shalka was announced in July, 2003 for planned broadcast in November, the possibiliy of Doctor Who returning to television screens still seemed remote and BBC Worldwide were continuing to shop around for another possible movie deal. As a result, BBCi announced, with BBC approval, that the Doctor appearing in Shalka would be the "official" Ninth Doctor. However, events rapidly overtook this.

In September Lorraine Heggessey, the Controller of BBC One, managed to persuade BBC Worldwide that as their plans for a Doctor Who film were nowhere near fruition, BBC television should be allowed to make a new series. A deal with Russell T. Davies to produce the new series was quickly struck, and on September 26, the BBC announced that Doctor Who would be returning to BBC One in 2005, produced by BBC Wales. As a result, the "official" nature of the Shalka webcast was in doubt from even before it was webcast.

After the webcast, in February 2004, plans for sequels or a DVD release were indefinitely shelved. For a period, it was unclear if the new television Doctor would be the Ninth or Tenth Doctor, but this was ultimately settled in April 2004 when in an interview with Doctor Who Magazine, Davies announced that the new television Doctor (played by Christopher Eccleston), would be the Ninth Doctor, relegating the Richard E. Grant Doctor to unofficial status. Davies later commented that Grant had never been considered for the role in the television series, telling Doctor Who Magazine: "I thought he was terrible. I thought he took the money and ran, to be honest. It was a lazy performance. He was never on our list to play the Doctor."[1]

[edit] Production notes

  • The working title for this production was Servants of the Shalakor. This original story outline is included in the BBC Books novelisation (see below).
  • Appearing in an uncredited cameo role in the serial as a caretaker was actor and Doctor Who fan David Tennant, who in April 2005 was announced as the Tenth Doctor in the television series proper. He was not originally cast in the production, but Tennant happened to be recording a radio play in a neighbouring studio, and when he discovered what was being recorded next door managed to convince the director to give him a small role.
  • Derek Jacobi would later play the Master again in the 2007 episode "Utopia".
  • In the pub scene, the Cosgrove Hall Studios logo can briefly be seen on beermats, advertising "Volunteer Ale."
  • The font used in titles and end credits (Industria) was the one used on the BBC's lines of Doctor Who video releases and spin-off novels at the time. It continues to be used on the classic series DVD releases in Region 1.
  • In 2006 Cosgrove Hall was again to create a Doctor Who related animation, the two missing episodes of The Invasion for that serial's DVD release. In 2007, some of the animation staff from these two productions went on to develop The Infinite Quest, a 13-part serial to be aired as part of the second series of Totally Doctor Who. A behind-the-scenes documentary on the making of the Invasion episodes entitled Flash Frames includes footage from Scream of the Shalka -- the only footage from the production to see DVD release.
  • It has been suggested that Paul Cornell could adapt this adventure for the New Series (as has previously been done with his novel "Human Nature"). However, no plans have been announced.

[edit] In print

Doctor Who book
Book cover
Scream of the Shalka
Series Past Doctor Adventures
Release number 64
Featuring Shalka Doctor
The Master and Alison
Writer Paul Cornell
Publisher BBC Books
ISBN ISBN 0-563-48619-8
Set between Unknown
Number of pages 288
Release date February 2004
Preceded by 'Deadly Reunion'
Followed by 'Empire of Death'

The novelisation of Shalka was written by Paul Cornell, the first novelisation of a Doctor Who serial (the 1996 television movie notwithstanding) in nearly a decade (and the last until novelisations based upon episodes of the spinoff The Sarah Jane Adventures commenced in 2007 with Invasion of the Bane). The book also includes a feature on the making of the webcast, as well as the original Servants of the Shalahoa story outline. Given that the BBC and the producers of the televised Doctor Who have discounted Scream of the Shalka as being part of the franchise's continuity, this is one of the few Doctor Who novels for which the canonicity (or in this case, lack thereof) has firmly been established.

[edit] DVD release

The British Board of Film Classification has cleared all six episodes of the serial for release on DVD, but the BBC has made no announcement about release of the story. As of March 2007, only clips from the serial have been released to DVD, as part of Flash Frames, a documentary on the DVD release of the restored The Invasion.

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ Cook, Benjamin (2005-09-14). "Tooth and Claw". Doctor Who Magazine (360): 17. Panini Comics. 

[edit] External links

[edit] Scream of the Shalka webcast

[edit] Reviews

[edit] Scream of the Shalka novelisation

[edit] Reviews

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