shalkaBy Jon Arnold

Obverse Books, out now

The story of the (animated) Ninth Doctor…

Jon Arnold is making 21st century reboots of Doctor Who something of a specialist subject – I’m looking forward to his volume on Justin Richards’ BBC Book The Burning in due course – and there are, perhaps not too surprisingly, a few references back to his opening Black Archive on Rose along the way, particularly with regard to the ways in which Scream of the Shalka (hereafter Shalka) dealt with the issues regarding bringing back a show that had been off the general public radar for rather a long time. Unusually what makes this volume really invaluable is its Appendices, or rather the third of them…

After a scene-setting introduction to the state of play of Doctor Who in 2002 (basically – as far as said general public was concerned – dead; fans had Big Finish, BBC Books and DWM), Arnold starts by looking at the reinvention of the Doctor in this new animated incarnation, noting how writer Paul Cornell and the team looked backwards to the show in the 1970s (and at Victorian heroes) for inspiration. He then examines Richard E. Grant’s performance, comparing the descriptions of the man in studio with the less than favourable response from some key audience members (notably a future showrunner).

Chapter 2 deals with Sophie Okenedo’s character, Alison Cheney, with some interesting material on how her character developed, and how – like the Doctor – she’s somewhere between “classic” Doctor Who and what would become established in the new series. Chapter 3 examines the Derek Jacobi version of the Master, or rather the Mark 1 version we meet in Shalka, which Arnold successfully argues is a logical extrapolation of the relationship between Pertwee and Delgado’s incarnations.

shalka-ba2Chapter 4 picks up on Paul Cornell’s line about Shalka being the “John the Baptist” of Doctor Who – not that Richard E. Grant was decapitated at the whim of a dancing girl – and deals with all three of the 21st Century proposed revamps of the show (including the 2001 variant from Mark Gatiss, Clayton Hickman and Gareth Roberts – I meant it when I said Arnold was the expert on such reworkings!). He makes the case for the influence Cornell had as a result of his New Adventures (Timewyrm: Revelation and Human Nature – I’m not so sure No Future or Happy Endings were so important), and then looks at the ways in which the story was able to use animation to get over budgetary problems a live action series would face. This leads neatly into a discussion of the Shalka themselves, and some of Arnold’s most incisive criticisms of Cornell.

The book – or the main part of it – concludes with a discussion of the way in which Shalka quickly became overlooked as a result of the announcement of the Russell T Davies all-singing, all-dancing, made in Wales reinvention, and how it’s worth a second look.

And that takes us to page 78 of 130 which seems odd – what more could there to be said in appendices? The answer is, quite a lot. The first appendix is a traditional Black Archive one, dealing with a thorny canonical question – could this be made to fit? Well, yes there are ways, and at least one of them is blindingly obvious and you’ll probably kick yourself when you read Arnold’s argument for it… Appendix 2 deals with Cavan Scott and Mark Wright’s short story, the only officially published continuation of the Shalka Doctor.

Even if you’re not interested in arguments to make you watch Scream of the Shalka again, you’ll still want a copy of the book for Appendix 3, which contains a detailed episode breakdown of Simon Clark’s proposed script, Blood of the Robots. This is one of the Doctor Who stories that “got away” – cancelled mid-writing when the decision came down not to continue with the Shalka Doctor. While at least one of the other proposed stories finally saw life as a Big Finish adventure, this has not – yet – turned up in any other medium, and while you have to suspect that quite a bit of further editing would have happened once the full scripts were delivered, based on this, it would have been an interesting animated story.

Overall, as has become my expectation for this range, this is a well-argued tome. Arnold mines the various sources – DVD infotext, DVD interviews, Cornell’s essay in the novelisation and interviews from the time, as well as new interviews and material – to very good effect: I think I’ve read or heard nearly everything that’s referenced at some point but not put the pieces together, and it makes for a fascinating read.

Verdict: A spotlight on a sometimes overlooked part of Doctor Who history. 9/10

Paul Simpson