Tom Baker returns as the Fourth Doctor for the first time on screen for 36 years in the finally completed ‘lost’ ‘Doctor Who’ story ‘Shada’.
The 83-year-old actor left the TARDIS in 1981 after seven years portraying the Time Lord in the BBC One sci-fi show, the longest run of any actor in the role.
Tom did make an appearance in as the mysterious curator character in the 50th anniversary special ‘The Day of the Doctor’, which was broadcast in November 2013 but he has once again donned his famous oversized striped scarf for one last outing as the Gallifreyan runaway.
‘Shada’ – written by Douglas Adams – was set to be the celebratory end to the 17th series of ‘Doctor Who’ but was left incomplete due to strike action at the BBC in 1979.
Producer Charles Norton was tasked by BBC Worldwide with the job of finally completing the serial and got Tom to appear in a newly shot final scene which takes place in his original TARDIS from 1979 – which was sourced from the now-closed ‘Doctor Who Experience’.
In the scene, Tom appears from underneath the TARDIS controls to utter the lines from the original script on screen for the first time, saying: "I expect that sometime in the future – in about 200 years’ time – someone will meet me and say, ‘Is that really the Doctor? He seemed such a nice old man.’ "
Charles brought together all of the surviving original cast, including Daniel Hill as scientist Chris Parsons and Christopher Neame as villain Skagra, to record the necessary dialogue for his animated scenes that were required to complete the adventure and Tom admits he was thrilled to get the chance to be the Doctor again and finally finish ‘Shada’ for the fans and as a tribute to Douglas, who passed away in May 2001 at the age of just 49.
Tom said: "It was a matter of regret that I couldn’t finish it, I regretted it very much. There were other aspects. This was because we loved Douglas. Douglas was a very, very, lovable fellow … When I was doing ‘Doctor Who’ it was the realisation of all my childhood fantasies, so I took to it like a duck to water, as they say. And I still do."
Revealing why he jumped at the chance to appear on screen as the Doctor once more, the acting legend added: "I love doing ‘Doctor Who’ because it was life to me. It’s an amazing thing to be in … It probably has never left me, and that’s why I can’t stay away from it. It was a lovely time of my life."
‘Shada’ is set in Cambridge and showed the Doctor, his robot dog K9 and his companion Romana team up with retired Time Lord Professor Chronotis to defeat the evil alien Skagra who is attempting to steal the secrets to the prison planet Shada.
Charles and his team – who were behind the hugely successful and critically acclaimed animation of lost ‘Doctor Who’ story ‘The Power of the Daleks’ and lost ‘Dad’s Army’ episode ‘A Stripe For Frazer’ – were granted access to nearly seven hours of raw footage from the original 1979 ‘Shada’ shoot and they edited the new production from scratch with all the original film negatives re-scanned in full HD and digitally remastered.
‘Shada’ is released as a digital download via iTunes on Friday November 24, and then is available on DVD and Blu-ray from Monday, December 4.
Tom Baker makes screen return as Doctor Who in Shada
