Doctor Who's Scream of the Shalka deserves to be celebrated
It's been 20 years since the great Doctor Who revival that wasn't.
You'll have been hard-pressed to miss the news that November 2023 will see Doctor Who celebrate six decades since it first materialised on our television screens, but this year also marks another anniversary for the series, one far less likely to generate news headlines or even prompt much fan discussion.
On 13th November 2003, Scream of the Shalka debuted its first episode on the BBC's official Doctor Who website.
Two decades on, Shalka has been, if not entirely forgotten, then certainly consigned to obscurity – alongside Peter Cushing's 1960s big-screen Dr Who, it's become a byword for spin-off minutiae that only the hardcore completists care much about.
But to remember it only as a curio (if you're feeling generous) or a failure (if you're not) is a massive disservice – not just to the story itself, but to how immensely exciting its existence felt at the time.
Scream of the Shalka was a victim of circumstance. When it was announced in July 2003, the prospect of Doctor Who ever returning to television in live-action felt like the stuff of fantasy – it had been seven years since the Paul McGann-starring TV movie had failed to initiate a series, and fans had more or less come to terms with the fact that we'd have to make do sustaining ourselves on novels, comic strips and audio plays (which were, at least, plentiful).
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So the announcement of a new "series" of Doctor Who – albeit an animated series, streamed on the web – was hugely thrilling.
From writer Paul Cornell, who'd penned a number of acclaimed spin-off novels during the show's so-called "wilderness years", this was billed as the next chapter in the show's history, the first since the McGann movie, 100% canonical and featuring an official Ninth Doctor, played – again, thrillingly – by Richard E Grant. It all just felt so... real.
The pedigree of Scream of the Shalka – the inaugural six-part story which, we all felt sure, would be the first of many such adventures – didn't stop there, either.
Sophie Okonedo – who the following year would be nominated for an Oscar for her performance in the film Hotel Rwanda – played the Doctor's companion Alison Cheney, Derek Jacobi was cast as The Master (four years before he would play the part in live-action), and the supporting cast included the likes of Queer as Folk's Craig Kelly and one David Tennant (who was coincidentally recording a Radio 4 play in a neighbouring studio and, as a lifelong Doctor Who fan, convinced Shalka director Wilson Milam to give him a cameo role).
But then, something very unexpected happened. In September 2003 – two months after Shalka had been announced, but also two months before it was due to be released – the BBC announced that Doctor Who was returning... again, but this time it was the live-action revival we'd all given up hoping for. With award-winning screenwriter Russell T Davies attached to script and executive produce!
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Suddenly, what had seemed so shiny had now been outshone. Before its tale of worm-like aliens residing in an eerie English village and plotting to terraform the Earth had even been released to the world, Scream of the Shalka had been gazumped.
Its legacy would only be further diminished when it was announced that, contrary to what the early publicity had stated, Richard E Grant's Time Lord would not in fact be the "real" Ninth Doctor, with Christopher Eccleston's new TV incarnation taking that title, relegating Grant to unofficial status.
With all attention now turning to the BBC One series, breaks were quickly pulled on plans to develop further adventures featuring the Ninth(?) Doctor and Alison Cheney.
The Shalka faithful would have to make do with a one-off mini-sequel – short story The Feast of the Stone by Cavan Scott and Mark Wright, published again on the BBC's Doctor Who site – and a novelisation of the original story, both released in early 2004.
For the very patient, the animation itself was released on DVD in 2013 to mark its 10th anniversary, complete with archival interviews with the cast, a making of and an audio commentary featuring writer Cornell, director Milam and producer James Goss.
Another decade on and it's hard to imagine many fans wishing we'd been gifted more stories set in the Shalka-verse in place of what we got – a spectacular live-action revival that utterly transformed Doctor Who's fortunes and guaranteed it a place in the schedules now, 18 years later. All the same, Shalka's status as a "false start" doesn't mean we shouldn't celebrate it for what it was, and how it made us feel.
Regardless of the fact that we knew in vague terms that Doctor Who was returning to television, there was still something electrifying about sitting down (albeit in front of a computer, not a television) on 13th November 2003 to watch what was effectively the first new episode of the show to be broadcast in seven years.
I can still remember the buzz I felt as the animated opening titles, accompanied by a remixed theme tune, stuttered into life, my modest broadband connection struggling to keep pace with the Flash animation.
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Confirmation that it would be Eccleston and not Grant anointed as the one true Ninth Doctor wouldn't actually arrive until April 2004 – via a Doctor Who Magazine interview with Russell T Davies – so on first watch, this new version of our hero still felt every bit like a bona fide successor to McGann's Eighth.
Certainly, there were no last-minute edits made to swerve that implication. ("He must've used up his nine lives – rather like me," the Shalka Doctor at one point muses of a deceased cat, later telling Alison that Andy Warhol wanted to paint "all nine" of him.)
It's understandable given the sheer amount of live-action Doctor Who (and spin-offs) we've been treated to since then that this animated webcast featuring a not-quite-proper Doctor has come to be regarded as niche spin-off ephemera. But it didn't feel like that at the time. It felt like our show was back.
New Doctor. New companion. New monsters. New adventures every week, with a cliffhanger each time leaving us on tenterhooks for seven days. With its Cosgrove Hall-produced visuals – a significant step up from the limited animation seen in previous Doctor Who webcasts – it was the closest we'd come to the 'real thing' in what felt like an age.
So, at a time when we're celebrating the series as a whole, let's not forget to commemorate the comeback that wasn't quite. For a brief period, 20 years ago, Scream of the Shalka didn't feel like a forgotten oddity from Doctor Who's past.... it felt like the future.
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