By Paul Cornell
Starring Richard E. Grant, Sophie Okendo
and
Derek Jacobi
Way
back in 2003 there were two Doctor Who things going on. Firstly and the one most people remember is
the news that Doctor Who will be returning to television being helmed by
Russell T. Davies in a 13 episode series.
What a way to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Doctor Who
with the news that the show was returning and would begin filming sometime in
2004. The other was the BBCi planned
Doctor Who series of webisodes featuring a Ninth Doctor. Scream of the Shalka was supposed to be the
beginning of a new series and was all set to go but well a certain piece of
news derailed it and Scream of Shalka would end up being a one shot and well it
was new Doctor Who for the 40th but just not what we really wanted
but that would come in a few years.
Scream
of Shalka debuted on 13th November and ran to December 18th running
for 6 episodes. It was released to
coincide with the 40th and be a continuation of the series which
ended in 1989. This DVD release collects
the six episodes and the usual extras that we generally get with Doctor Who DVD
releases. There were some pretty
interesting extras that dealt with the making of Shalka the one I liked was
“Keeping on Screaming” which was the best extra to watch as you get a sense of
how this story became to fruition.
“Interweb of Fear” was a pretty good history of the BBC Doctor Who
website through the years and most notably the input from Russell T.
Davies. It was pretty interesting to see
Doctor Who’s involvement with the internet especially when the show was off the
air that makes this documentary a must watch.
Now
the story of Scream of the Shalka isn’t all that good. In fact, I find it to be quite boring and
just does not have the feel of a Doctor Who story. The plot is interesting having an alien race
control the humans by using a sonic scream. But after a while the scream just
got annoying. The problem I have if the
Shalka was in the ground why couldn’t the people just get in a car and drive
away. It seemed simple enough when it
was suggested by The Doctor. If they
were attracted by noise couldn’t you have made a distraction and then make your
get away. The story to me just seemed too
choppy and didn’t really explain much. Like why was The Doctor traveling with a
robot Master. Why was he yelling at the Time Lords when he arrived on Earth and
so on?
Scream
of the Shalka is a pretty boring story and well the performances are not up to
snuff. Richard E. Grant as The Doctor
just does not work and he just does not win me over. In
fact his Doctor is really grumpy and not that likeable and pretty rude. He tries to be Doctorish with the eccentric
way he acts but it just does not seem convincing. Sometimes I wonder if he is just reading the
script and not really trying. He is a
lot better as The Great Intelligence in Series 7 of Doctor Who and you can tell
he is into that part. But while he is
doing Shalka it just doesn’t come across all that good at all and is a really
disappointing performance. Derek Jacobi
is alright as the robot Master and I often wonder why The Doctor is traveling
with a robot Master. He doesn’t really
add anything to the story and just seems to be a novelty rather than anything
important. But I did find it funny that
Derek Jacobi was the voice of The Master and then would play him proper in
Utopia in 2007.
For
those who are a completest then go ahead and buy Scream of the Shalka. For those who aren’t and are curious go to
Netflix or Amazon streaming video service and watch it there. If you like it go ahead and buy it if not at
least you did not waste your money.
D
+ overall story
B+
Extras
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