Missed a day yesterday, sorry. Paid the price today, sincerely sorry. I don't have any motivational thoughts. Much like Quint and Hooper, I'm tired and I want to go to bed. So let's get this done.

Scream of the Shalka

(TARDIS Data Core Recap)

To appreciate this one, you need to under stand the time and the context in which it appeared. Doctor Who debuted in November of 1963, and set a very high standard on its tenth anniversary with The Three Doctors. For its twentieth anniversary it swung for the fences with The Five Doctors, with mixed results. Then the show died in 1989, and there was nothing to celebrate for its thirtieth anniversary.

After the failed American relaunch in 1996, the show was well and truly in the wilderness at the turn of the twenty-first century. There was the very excellent comedic Children in Need special The Curse of Fatal Death in 1999, and there was the moderately successful line of audio adventures from Big Finish, but as the fortieth anniversary approached there was nothing new forthcoming from the BBC.

Into that void stepped this web animated story, animated by Cosgrove Hall (who would go on to do several animated reconstructions of missing episodes), and presented as a six-part serial on the official Doctor Who website. Noted actor Richard E. Grant (who had briefly played the Doctor in the last part of The Curse of Fatal Death) returned to the role in a much more serious manner, with a script by one of the best Who authors of the era, Paul Cornell. The BBC advertised this as being an official in-canon story, with Grant intended to be considered to be the true Ninth Doctor.

Between the time the story was commissioned and when it aired, however, the wheels were set in motion for the modern NuWho revival. As a result, Grant's Doctor was already known to be obsolete and non-canonical even before the first part was released to the world. Oops.

It's a shame, too, because Grant makes for an excellent Doctor and exists in a very interesting setup. As the story begins, the Doctor is apparently being compelled to do the bidding of the Gallifreyan High Council, being sent to solve crisis not unlike several of the Third and Fourth Doctor era stories. Also, interestingly, his companion is somehow an android incarnation of the Master. I suspect there is background there that came from the then-current line of novels, but I am not familiar with any of that. In any case, it is an interesting and compelling setup. If NuWho hadn't happened, I would have been fascinated to see more stories in this line. Instead, this is all we got.

The story involves a race of aliens, whom you will be shocked to know are called the Shalka. Also: they scream. More specifically, they have an entire technology built around manipulating matter and reality using the sonic properties of their voices. Here they have staged an invasion of Earth by burrowing under a small British village and using their sonic manipulation to control the populace. The Doctor arrives, there is much running and shouting, and there is a temporary companion voiced by Sophie Okonedo (who would alter play Liz Ten in The Beast Below and The Pandorica Opens, and who would also later be nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in Hotel Rwanda.) As one would expect from a Paul Cornell script, it is a properly good story, and I found the animation here to be far superior to either The Infinite Quest or the execrable Dreamland. 

Taken on its own it is a thoroughly enjoyable oddity. Taken in context, it stands as an entertaining hour to mark the fortieth anniversary of the program. It also marks the last official thing I had not yet watched in this ridiculous project.

Tomorrow I intend to start in on Sapphire and Steel on the recommendation of a fellow Whovian. Same production era, and although not quite as cross-pollinated as Blake's 7 it still features many familiar names both in front of and behind the camera. I literally have no idea what to expect.

STATS:

Doctor(s): Ninth (kind of)
Companion(s): (none)
Episode(s): Doctor Who Animated: Scream of the Shalka
Steps Walked: 6,878 today, 5,031,004 total
Distance Walked: 2.88 miles today, 2,595.49 miles total
Push-ups Completed: 0 today, 12,458 total
Sit-ups Completed: 0 today, 7,865 total
Weight: 276.12 lbs (five day moving average), net change -31.18 lbs