Shada [TV/2018.7.18]

★★★★☆

  Right off the bat, I still prefer the 2003 Big Finish remake with the Eighth Doctor... but that's not important here. What's important is that I am so happy Season 17 (one of my comfort seasons) finally got its final serial made in its entirety for the small screen, with full contributions from Tom Baker and Lalla Ward. Not to say that Baker doesn't sound a little bit tired here, which isn't surprising with all the voicework he's given to do (considering his age and how Big Finish is practically bleeding him dry at this point), but he still puts in a lot of effort to make the transition between his recordings in 1979 and 2017 as soon as possible. That's good enough for me, plus it helps that they've made the blend of live-action and animation as seamless as it could ever have been. The original cast give their all in their old age, bless them all. 

  Shada is Douglas Adams unchained, full of his witty ideas and even wittier comedic one-liners. It's a giant adventure full of world-ending scenarios that happen right next to the calmest moments of tea drinking and biscuit enjoying, where the Doctor must outwit a spaceship interface to breathe air and Romana must decrypt Gallifreyan Morse code from a dying Time Lord's heartbeats. While this feature-length whopper of a serial gets a little slow during where Episodes 4 and 5 would typically be, even those moments where the momentum is slightly decreased are still full of the most sublime Dr. Who moments that it really doesn't matter in the long run. While I am a shameless Horns of Nimon apologist, it's pretty clear to me that Shada was always going to work better as a sendoff to the Graham Williams era -- so naturally I had a lot of fun watching the Who equivalent of a great big bag of the richest sweets. The Williams era as a whole has never been about taking itself seriously, but I'm constantly amazed by how some of the wittiest, most pleasurable stories have come from it. Shada is no exception; it's an incredibly clever piece of work from Douglas Adams at his prime, driven by two leading actors at their prime and madly in love with each other. The final note, specially filmed for this new release, is sweet indeed. Tom Baker, now a wizened old man with a walking stick, gets to have a proper goodbye to perhaps his most leisurely time on the show. Sometimes, just sometimes, indulging in nostalgia is a good thing.