The BBC released a completed version of Shada in 2017, with missing dialogue newly recorded by the original cast, using the same audio equipment employed in the initial shoot, and animated by the team that undertook the reconstruction of the 1966 serial The Power of the Daleks.
[2][3] This version was released on DVD and Blu-ray in 2017, and finally broadcast on television as a feature length TV movie – which was titled The Lost Episode rather than Shada – in 2018.
The Doctor retrieves the book while Chronotis dies after his mind is extracted by the sphere of a mad scientist named Skagra, living long enough to warn Romana, K9, and Parsons of them and Shada.
But the Doctor survives his ordeal with his mind intact and has the ship's computer release Chris and K9 and take them to a space station Skagra previously occupied.
Back on Earth, Clare Keightley accidentally revives Chronotis whose chambers are revealed as a TARDIS, the Professor explaining the book is a key to the prison planet Shada where Salyavin is held.
Under the original remit, Williams intended the story as a discussion about the death penalty, specifically how a civilisation like the Time Lords would deal with the issue and treat its prisoners.
[7] The strike was over by the onset of rehearsals for the third recording session, but ultimately the studio time was redirected to other higher-priority Christmas programming, leaving the serial incomplete.
[6] After the production halt, Adams expressed a low opinion of the script and was content to let it remain obscure, turning down offers to adapt the story in various forms.
A decade after the serial's abandonment, John Nathan-Turner set out to complete the story, in a fashion, by commissioning new effects shots and a score, and having Tom Baker record linking material to cover the missing scenes.
This VHS reconstruction, the 2003 BBCi/Big Finish adaptation, and the 1994 documentary More Than Thirty Years in the TARDIS,[10] were re-released together on DVD on 7 January 2013 as The Legacy Collection (UK) or simply Shada (North America).
The audio play was also broadcast on digital radio station BBC7, on 10 December 2005 (as a 2½-hour omnibus), and was repeated in six parts as the opening story to the Eighth Doctor's summer season, which began on 16 July 2006.
[citation needed] When Skagra is investigating the Doctor, clips from three other Big Finish productions can be heard, exclusively on the CD version – The Fires of Vulcan, The Marian Conspiracy and Phantasmagoria.
The original serial was to have used clips from The Pirate Planet (1978), The Power of Kroll (1978–79), The Creature from the Pit (1979), The Androids of Tara (1978), Destiny of the Daleks (1979), and City of Death (1979).
[citation needed] In Episode 2 of the webcast version, when Chris is in his lab showing Clare the book, a vending machine-like object in the background is labelled "Nutrimat", a reference to a similar device in Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
[6][20] J. R. Southall, writer for the science fiction magazine Starburst, reviewed the completed version at Levine's invitation and scored it 10 out of 10 in an article published on 15 September 2011.
Elements of the story were reused by Adams for his novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, in particular the character of Professor Chronotis who possesses a time machine.
[26] Paul Cornell, Martin Day, and Keith Topping gave the serial (at the time in the form of the 1992 VHS reconstruction) a mixed review in The Discontinuity Guide (1995), saying; 'I dunno, nowadays they'll publish anything.'