Sean Jumps the Shark: 'Scream of the Shalka' for October

Hello loyal listeners! Apologies for the lateness of this episode and this post. Still, if you've not yet listened, our September episode on Marc Platt's Downtime is still available for your listening delectation and amusement.

Marc Platt is not the only writer who novelized his own work for the book ranges, of course. Barry Letts did the same when he adapted The Ghosts of N-Space, and for our October episode, we'll be reading Paul Cornell's adaptation of his own script for Scream of the Shalka, which was recently released on DVD. From the back cover:

When the Doctor lands his TARDIS in the Lancaster town of Lannet, in the present day, he finds that something is terribly wrong. The people are scared. They don't like going out onto the streets at night, they don't like making too much noise, and they certainly don't like strangers asking too many questions.

Scream of the Shalka is something of an oddity, of course, as it was originally intended to be, for lack of a better term, canonical. The Ninth Doctor portrayed in the story was meant to carry on directly from the Eighth as seen in the 1996 TV Movie. However, the new series was announced before Scream of the Shalka went live, meaning that the "Shalka Doctor" was quickly forgotten in favor of the new canonical Ninth Doctor, played by Christopher Eccleston. But more to the point: is the book any good? We won't be watching the story itself beforehand, so, as with Downtime, we'll be judging the book as a book. We hope you'll read along and do the same.

For further reading (SPOILERS ahead, as always), you can check out:
Scream of the Shalka at the TARDIS Library
Friend of the show Robert Smith?'s review at The Cloister Library 
But it for your Kindle!

P.S.--In case you're confused as to why we're reading a Past Doctor Adventure when the rotor should have Sean selecting a Virgin New Adventure, well, it's mainly so we could do Shalka as soon as possible after it came out on DVD. For November, we'll do a NA, and December will see us reading an Eighth Doctor Adventure. However, it might be time to re-examine the rotor and see if it couldn't be tweaked...

Erik Cheats and Picks Downtime

As the headline makes clear, I (Erik here) have made a slight cheat in my selection for September. Oh, but before we get too far into that, here's where you can download our August episode on Trevor Baxendale's Fear of the Dark. Also, here's a complete list  of all the novels being reprinted as part of the 50th Anniversary Collection. Who knows? If they sell well enough, maybe more of these books will be brought back into print. Stranger things have happened, like that time I was in a completely black room and I thought I saw...

Where was I? Oh, yes--the cheat! Well, it's not really a cheat, I suppose, but we do tend to try to rotate through the various Doctors when we select our books for both the PDA and the VMA ranges. While we've done an equal number of books starring all of the previous classic Doctors (1-6), and I was technically free to pick a book featuring any of them, it's been a year since we've done a book featuring the Second Doctor, and I was leaning in that direction, until I got a mischievous twinkle in my eye and decided, instead, to pick Downtime. And I'm sure the silver control ball I found the other day in no way influenced my decision.

If you're unfamiliar with its history, Downtime was a direct-to-video, independently produced, Doctor Who spin-off made by some long-time fans that featured both actors from the series--Elizabeth Sladen, Nicholas Courtney, and Deborah Watling, among others--and behind-the-scenes people with experience of working on Who: director Christopher Barry and writer Marc Platt, plus Ian Levine, about whom, the less said, perhaps the better. It was not officially licensed by the BBC, however, and therefore couldn't feature the character of the Doctor or the TARDIS, which Platt worked around by focusing the story on other characters to which they could secure the rights. When the time came to novelize his script for the Virgin Missing Adventure range, Platt seemingly saw no reason to insert the Doctor, and so it is the only book in that range not to focus around any incarnation of the Doctor, though several apparently make cameo appearances.

From the back cover:

Across the room, in a high-backed leather chair, Victoria saw the old man from the reading room. His face was curiously young for someone so long dead.

In 1966 the Doctor defeated the Great Intelligence, but he knew it wasn’t a final victory. And his companion Victoria, whose mind had once hosted the evil entity, might still fall prey to its power.

Now it seems that his fears are justified. In a Tibetan monastery, the monks display unearthly powers - UNIT are investigating. A new university has opened in London with a secret agenda that may threaten the whole country. Victoria, abandoned in an age very different from her own, and haunted by visions of a father she refuses to believe is dead, is slipping into despair and madness. But are the visions which plague her really hallucinations? Or has the Great Intelligence once again made Earth its target for invasion?

So, join is for that discussion in September! Happy reading!

In the meantime, you can email us at dwbcpodcast@gmail.com & follow us on Twitter: the podcast--@DWBCpodcast, Erik--@sjcAustenite, and Sean--@tardistavern.

Episode 9 is Out, How the Master Turned Evil, and Marc Platt for October

Episode 9, in which we discuss David A. McIntee's The Dark Path is available now.  Special thanks to Graeme Sheridan of The2ndDoctors Podcast and Professor How!!!, a narrative podcast parodying our favorite show, for recording this month's dialogue-heavy reading; it was a challenge we knew he could take up!

October's release, as our rotation of the series' dictates, will be a Virgin New Adventure chosen by Sean: Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible by Marc Platt (ISBN: 0-426-20365-8).  Here's the blurb from the back cover:

You're on your own, Ace.

The TARDIS is invaded by an alien presence, and is then destroyed.  The Doctor disappears.

Ace, lost and alone, finds herself in a bizarre deserted city ruled by the tyrannical, leach-like monster known as the Process.

Lost voyagers drawn forward from Ancient Gallifrey perform obsessive rituals in the ruins.

The strands of time are tangled in a cat's cradle of dimensions.


Only the Doctor can challenge the rule of the Process and restore the stolen Future.


But the Doctor was destroyed long ago, before Time began.

Hmm, sounds mysterious.

If Marc Platt sounds familiar, you likely know him as the author of the Seventh Doctor's televised serial, "Ghost Light."  He also penned the Seventh Doctor's final adventure of the Virgin line, Lungbarrow, and Big Finish's Spare Parts.  All that being said, we have some rather high expectations for this book.

Don't forget to follow the podcast on Twitter via @dwbcpodcast, or follow Erik via @sjcaustenite or Sean via @tardistavern.  Feel free to contact us at dwpcpodcast@gmail.com.