Since moving into my new house its not an exaggeration to say that my DVD collection has been a little disorganised. I have no shelving units of any kind in my room and as such the DVDs tend to be piled up around the wall. Its a general rule that no matter which DVD I decide to watch, it will be right at the back and at the bottom of a pile!
When it came to watching Shada, I knew it was a DVD that I had had out recently and to my horror I could not find it anywhere. This has happened a couple of times during the challenge and I can't begin to describe the blind panic that begins to set in when I can't find the story that I'm looking for! It can't be doing my sanity much good! The irony of nearly misplacing this story is that Shada has the unfortunate distinction of being one of the legendary lost stories of Doctor Who. Initially meant to be the final story of Season 17, it was scrapped halfway through production when strikes at the BBC made the completion of the story impossible.
It wasn't a complete loss though as large chunks of the story do exist and were released on VHS in the 90s with linking narration from Tom Baker for the missing sections. I'm a bit of a veteran when it comes to reconstructed stories by now having sat through all the ones for the missing 60s stories so this wasn't too bad. At first it can be quite misleading though as most of episodes 1 and 2 do exist so it leads you into a false hope that things are not as bad as they seem. However by episodes 5 and 6, most of the time is taken up by Tom Baker describing the action to us. It's very sad as having read the novelisation of this story it seems like it would have been brilliant!
We have some lovely scenes of the Doctor and Romana punting along the Cam. I really like seeing the Doctor and his companion(s) taking time out and enjoying themselves, whether this be the Doctor and Romana sightseeing around Paris or The Doctor and Barbara sunbathing in The Chase (one of the only good parts of The Chase!)
I usually watch my Doctor Who episodes in an afternoon (I'm not sure why but it just doesn't seem right watching them in the morning) but the last episode of Shada was watched fairly early in the day which was fortunate as I ended up spending a great deal of time in the pub. (Don't judge me for it! It's a bank holiday and they were having a Star Wars day!). We watched all 6 Star Wars movies back to back. Whilst I missed little bits here and there whilst I went to get food etc I did manage to sit through the majority of them. Clearly watching 531 consecutive episodes of Doctor Who over the last 531 days has had some impact on me. Some people just didn't have the staying power!
It was a great day but I must say the highlight of it was when a couple of girls and what could quite loosely be described as a "man" stormed past us shouting "What are you watching that shit for? You wankers!" I'm actually smiling now at the memory of it. Good grief! They think we are wankers for watching Star Wars?? If only they knew...if only they knew...
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