Douglas Adams’ Lost Doctor Who Episode To Be Made A Book (Again)

Years ago, the venerable and sorely missed Douglas Adams wrote three episodes for the BBC series Doctor Who. Two of those episodes aired, but the third, Shada, never completed filming due to a production workers strike. Once the strike was over, Christmas programming had to take priority and Shada was abandoned.

But the story of Shada, the lost prison planet of the Time Lords, sought after by the prospective universe-ruler Skagra is being revisited in a novelization by Gareth Roberts, who, according to io9, is a “writer of some of the most inventive Doctor Who novels including The Highest Science as well as three Who episodes — most recently ‘The Lodger.'”

But this wouldn’t be the first time that Shada saw novelization, really: Douglas Adams used ideas that had been abandoned in Shada to craft his lesser known (than The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) series of books that began with Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. Like Shada, Dirk Gently includes a Professor Chronotis with a time machine (instead of an early model TARDIS).

Obviously there’s no way we’re getting a Douglas Adams novelization of Shada, but if there’s a veteran Doctor Who writer who wants to take a crack at it, it’s hard to argue with that. Seems like a boon for Doctor Who and Douglas Adams fans alike.

And I mean, it’s not like those two communities have any overlap.