Adrian Salmon’s “Steelbook” Shada Art – a Doctor Who delight

By John Freeman on November 10, 2017

One marvellous extra to the upcoming release of the “missing” Doctor Who story Shada is Doctor Who Magazine illustrator and comic artist Adrian Salmon’s art for the limited edition Steel Box Blu-Ray – but this isn’t his only contribution to the release.

Last month, the BBC announced Doctor Who star Tom Baker had returned to complete Shada, an unfinished story, 36 years after it was abandoned.

Shada, which was filmed in Cambridge, was written by Douglas Adams, the creator of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy back in 1979, intended as the finale to the show’s seventeenth season. The story finds the Doctor in Cambridge working alongside Romana and a retired Time Lord, Professor Chronotis, to defeat the evil alien Skagra who is attempting to steal the secrets to the prison planet, Shada.

Sadly, strike action at the BBC meant studio scenes were never completed and the episodes were abandoned. The handy video below explains things more…

The story will be released on BBC Worldwide on Blu-Ray and DVD with the original footage combined with new colour animations and voiceovers to complete the story in December – and will get a big screen outing on 24th November in Australia, the same day as its digital release.

One of the animated scenes from the new version of Shada from BBC Worldwide © BBC

The new animated sequences are the work of the same team who brought us Doctor Who: The Power of the Daleks and the animation of lost Dad’s Army episode “A Stripe For Frazer”. Producer and director Charles Norton headed up the team, assisted by comic book artists Martin Geraghty and Adrian Salmon, both well known and much admired for their work for Doctor Who Magazine.

Adrian was hired late last year as head colourist on the production which meant he oversaw all colour aspects of the new animated sequences of the story – specifically the characters and lighting options.

“In April I was additionally hired as lead storyboard artist and worked for six weeks with producer Charles Norton on all the big sequences before starting colour work,” he reveals on his blog. “The rest of the boards were done by various hands including lead character designer Martin Geraghty.

“Finally, I created the cover for the steelbook.”

This isn’t the first time the Shada story has had an animated makeover of course. In 2003, the BBC commissioned Big Finish Productions to remake Shada as an audio play which was then webcast in six episodic segments, accompanied by limited Flash animation, on the BBC website using illustrations provided by comic artist Lee Sullivan. The play starred Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor and Lalla Ward as Romana. The audio play was also broadcast on digital radio station BBC 7, and you can watch it on YouTube.

Doctor Who producer John Nathan-Turner also completed the story (so far as was possible) by commissioning new effects shots and a score, and having Tom Baker record linking material to cover the missing scenes, creating six shortened episodes of between 14 and 22 minutes each. These were given a 111-minute VHS release in 1992.

• You can order the Doctor Who Shada limited edition Steelbook here on amazon.co.uk (using this link helps support downthetubes)

Doctor Who © BBC

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John Freeman

John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.

Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.

He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.