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Douglas Adams' Doctor Who
Blue Stone writes "As you probably know, the "Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" author, Douglas Adams, wrote a number of Doctor Who episodes. The BBC in its wisdom has turned one of his stories "Shada" into a Flash animation. Although the animation is rather primitive, I found the story very entertaining (you can always minimize the window and just listen.)"
Instead of re-creating existing episodes, why not create new episodes. There are tons of scripts available (not fanfic, actual scripts written and submitted by Dr Who writers) that were never produced.
I used to be a hardcore Whovian, and I still enjoy watching it on PBS. However, how about some new Red Dwarf or Blackadder episodes? I'd be willing to pay for flash animated new Red Dwarf episodes. And it would work very well with Red Dwarf too.
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I have the Shada VHS, it wasn't worth the effort for the BBC to scrape the pieces of video they did have and compile them together. I just viewed the Flash version, and it still wasn't worth the effort to animate the fragments of video footage for Shada.
There are other Dr. Who's (I was thinking of some of William Hartnell's episodes) that are in worse condition, that could use such a gift, I think the only reason this one was done in Flash was due to the fact the name "Douglas Adams" was sprinkled around.
The Beeb didn't get to transmit Shada. They then did a made for video release, with Tom Baker linking the bits they had in the can. Now the Beeb makes it again but not for tv, recasting the Doctor and some others! Like, what the..?! :-)
Meantime, some of us are awaiting new episodes! Yet in the 40th anniversary year, we are offered the audio remake of a so-so story that was never broadcast, but which has been accessible for some time now. DW's been off the air for years, and this was considered just what the fans want?! How many remixes of the same damn thing do we need?!
So will the 8th Doctor (the Paul McGann version, last seen on screen in the '96 telemovie) already recall having been in this adventure when he was Tom Baker? Maybe they should rename the show Doctor Which?!
It'd be interesting to learn what Adams made of McGann's Doctor. I know he thought highly of Baker's portrayal...but would he have felt #8 was right for this story, especially when it had already seemed a finished product to many of us for some time? Given Adams's own views on "Shada" itself, it's a point to ponder.
I was actually fortunate enough to be lent a copy of Shada. Basicly there was so much film footage missing that Tom baker read the script. It was *enjoyable* but rather difficult to watch.
Fortunatly they have a time travel machine to cover the inconsistancy with Ramana being with the 8th doctor Paul McGann traveling back to 1979, understandable that Tom Baker is dead as a can of spam. (I can't rightly remember if the VHS edition took place shortly after the "Keys of Time" sequence)
The animation is a touch static, no attempt to make mouths move, but as with most doctor who stuff, video was secondary to the audio effects which was something the BBC was always briliant at. Should be BBC actually decide to go over their old scrips of eps that they lost their masters to, i'd be MOST happy to watch the flash animation. Hell in my region, the local PBS station took 10 years to actually repeat the 7th doctor stuff, and the first time around, they skipped many episodes.
Not to speak of the radio only productions they have done
I'd be happier if the bbc in their wisdom decided to continue the series primetime, real life or animated.
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I'm curious to know what you think Adams' views on Shada were.
He didn't want Shada to ever be aired in any form by the BBC (after the strike had happened, etc), and was pretty annoyed (to put it mildly) when the BBC got the rights to do it (basically via an error/misunderstanding in a later contract).
Tim
For one thing the Flash 5 Linux player had a lot of stability problems so it ticked off a lot of Linux users. The Flash 6 player is a lot better, though it still needs audio work, but many people wrote it off during the Flash 5 era. For another thing a lot of clueless advertising droids misuse Flash and tick people off with it which gives it a bad rep that all the entertaining and interesting uses don't compensate for. And, of course, its not open source which qualifies as a fact of life at the moment so the Slashdot crowd turns to SVG instead, but for some reason no one seems to produce much interesting content in SVG, yet.
@de_machina