N.B. there might (or might not) be spoilers in this article!
Scream of the Shalka, the last of Doctor Who‘s four animated webcasts, is the only one to benefit from actual proper animation, courtesy of Cosgrove Hall, and as such was the most fully realised of Doctor Who‘s (and the BBC’s) attempts at using the web in the nascent days of the twenty-first century.
It helps, for me at least, that I really like Cosgrove Hall’s style of animation (which is probably why The Invasion remains my favourite of the fill-in-the-blanks missing episode animations).
Like the previous webcasts, it’s well-acted all-round and also has a lovely score from Russell Stone. It has something of a Roger Limb feel to it.
“They keep putting me in places where terrible things are going to happen.”
Doctor, Scream of the Shalka, Episode One
But what of the so-called Shalka Doctor?
As we know Richard E Grant (REG) does vanity, disinterest and sardonic disdain well and indeed in the early episodes to me the Doctor comes across a little like a less drunk Withnail. (Although he does like his wine!) The performance softens as the story goes on — in keeping with the events and the influence of new companion-to-be Alison Cheney.
Interestingly, all four webcasts present a challenge to Doctor Who continuity buffs — the endings of Death Comes to Time and Real Time, the re-working of Shada as an Eighth Doctor story and this alternative Ninth Doctor – our second “Ninth” Doctor (after Rowan Atkinson in The Curse of Fatal Death) — with another “official” Ninth Doctor still to come. The events of The Night of the Doctor might provide us with a clue as to why this is so, but that of course is a discussion for another day.
(One final aside, though — why does the android Master have Professor Yana’s voice, I wonder.)
“Ship rules. No running, no jumping, no pushing and no slapping.”
Doctor, Scream of the Shalka, Episode Six
As DVD extra Carry on Screaming (how could they resist that title!) informs us, the “rights issue”, which was often trumpeted as a reason why Doctor Who had taken so long to return (and in fact was a barrier to its return), was investigated by the Shalka team. They were able to tell Lorraine Heggessey that there were no rights barriers to Doctor Who‘s return to television. And within a few weeks, the show was announced as coming back.
This resulted in Scream of the Shalka being superseded before it was even finished, but, in a sense, without it there would be no new Who — so, if for nothing else, we can thank it for that!
