The Scream Of The Shalka
The Doctor, now in his ninth generation, finds himself in 2003 England. The small town he has been sent to (by powers unknown) has been overcome by strange, ground-dwelling creatures known as the Shalka. The Shalka keep the townspeople under their thrall with the ever-present threat of destruction. The Doctor comes to realize that the Shalka use sound as their weapon and turns that weapon against them. What he doesn’t realize is that the plan is much bigger than simply taking over one small town in England. All over the world similar towns are being invaded, their populations being slowly, subtly altered. Once complete, these humans can be used as a conduit to bring about the destruction of the Earth by way of a scream that will alter the Earth’s atmosphere, making it habitable for the Shalka, but little else. While combating this latest threat to the Earth, the Doctor tries to deal with the demons of his past and find his way in the Universe.
written by Paul Cornell
directed by Wilson Milam
music by Russell StoneCast: Richard E. Grant (The Doctor), Sophie Okonedo (Alison), Craig Kelly (Joe), Andrew Dunn (Max), Anna Calder-Marshall (Matilda), Conor Moloney (Dawson / Greaves), Ben Morrison (McGrath), Derek Jacobi (The Master), Diana Quick (Prime), Jim Norton (Kennet)
Review: On July 11, 2003 the BBC’s Web Site, BBCi, made a stunning announcement: Doctor Who would be returning, but not in a way anyone had expected. Well, not anyone who wasn’t paying close attention to what BBCi had been up to over the last few years. Starting with Death Comes To Time in 2000, BBCi had been producing or commissioning a series of webcasts to be shown on the BBCi site. Death Comes To Time, a completed version of an aborted Seventh Doctor radio series, was followed by Real Time, an original Sixth Doctor adventure produced by Big Finish and then by another Big Finish product, Shada, modified from Douglas Adams’ fourth Doctor story into an eighth Doctor adventure.
In all of these, BBCi had not strayed far from the formula the other major Doctor Who outlets followed: new or re-worked tales of “past” Doctors. With the new webcast, entitled The Scream of the Shalka, they would finally advance the timeline: Richard E. Grant would step into the TARDIS as the ninth Doctor. (Side note: the earliest announcements concerning Shalka refer to Richard E. Grant as “the ninth Doctor.” Later announcements would amend this to say “BBCi’s ninth Doctor,” leaving Grant’s status as a “proper” Doctor unclear.) (more…)
The planet Santiny is overrun by a massive invasion by a Canisian fleet. Even suicide runs don’t prevent the Canisians, as their leader, General Tannis, seems to be able to forsee every possible tactic. Almost as if in answer to the prayers of the survivors on Santiny, the TARDIS arrives, and the Doctor and his blue-skinned companion Antimony emerge to begin helping Santiny’s resistance movement. Meanwhile, Ace - planted in a strategic position by the Doctor - has been rescued by a Time Lord named Casmus, who begins training her for the next step in her own evolution. Elsewhere, a group of Time Lords called the Fraction, dedicated to interference in time on the side of good, begin falling one by one to a stealthy killer. Finally, the string of deaths draws the Doctor’s attention away from the Canisian problem, and also gets the attention of Casmus. On Gallifrey, Casmus accelerates Ace’s training, speeding her evolution into a new breed of Time Lord. Time is running out, as Tannis is also revealed to be a Time Lord who is using his conquests to disguise his identity. But will Ace learn to use her powers for good soon enough to confront Tannis, or will the Doctor - having witnessed Antimony’s death at the general’s hands - be forced to use his Time Lord powers to a degree that will not only kill Tannis but himself as well?
Trapped by the Time Lords and tried for the crime of interfering in history, the Doctor is scheduled to be exiled to Earth - but he escapes into his TARDIS and leaves Gallifrey. Not that this really does him much good, as he winds up trapped on Earth anyway. A few incarnations later, the Doctor’s situation has become even more unsettling - he has not only changed bodies, but changed gender as well. Without her TARDIS, the Doctor becomes bored, listless, and - with the help of two friends she makes on a job she takes to eke out a meager existence - perhaps just a little bit alcoholic. Or perhaps a lot - the Doctor begins to see and hear her previous (male) incarnation, warning her of alien invasions and labyrinthine plots against modern-day Earth. When the Time Lords send two agents to track the Doctor down and bring her back to justice (though they don’t know that the Doctor is now a woman), the only thing standing between the Doctor and her doom is an increasing reliance on the bottle. When it comes right down to it, which oblivion will the Doctor choose?
Martin Bannister, in 1961, was voted one of the Times‘ ten most promising young writers for his innovative stage plays. But he tried to venture into television, and was recruited for a new BBC science fiction program called Doctor Who. Despite his extraordinary efforts to define the show’s characters, themes and parameters, Martin watched as Doctor Who made it as far as one failed pilot episode before being abandoned by the BBC. Now, 40 years later, Martin is confined to a nursing home, subjected to unsettling visits by his adult son, who’s still bitter that Martin divorced his mother when he was only six. Martin isn’t sure what is the truth and what isn’t from what his son tells him, and this isn’t the only place he’s having problems with reality - he imagines a burgeoning romance with a nurse, he imagines that he’s being tapped to write the celebratory 40th anniversary comeback of Doctor Who (but why celebrate a show that was never made?), and he imagines that he is the Doctor, that most mysterious traveler in time and space. Will Martin Bannister trade his unpromising reality for an unrealized fantasy?