A little while ago, it was brought to my attention in the pages of the DWC that the 2003 webcast of Shada was present in the Shada Blu-ray steelbook edition. More significantly, it was presented on a separate Blu-ray disc which was playable on a Blu-ray player. As it features the Eighth Doctor, I was immediately interested.

Around the time I found out about the steelbook release, I did a search on eBay to find out if any of the steelbooks were for sale at a reasonable price. I didn’t hold out much hope as the title had been released a few years earlier.

Oh my giddy aunt! I know that the steelbook releases are limited editions, but I just wasn’t prepared for the prices that sellers wanted: in excess of £100 in many cases. I decided that was a bit too much and subsequently forgot all about it for a couple of years.

That was until very recently when I ventured onto CEX’s website (a high street store that buys “pre-loved” tech) as I had some Sonos speakers going spare. While I was on the site, I did a search of Doctor Who merchandise available: it was pretty much all Blu-rays, DVDs, and the odd Nintendo DS game, but there on page two of the listing was a copy of the Shada steelbook and it was available at my local branch. Oh, and at a much more affordable price of £32. Result and purchased!

For those who weren’t there in 2003, the Shada webcast was effectively a Big Finish re-imagining (or sequel according to the steelbook), starring the Eighth Doctor and President Romana, with visuals provided by the artist Lee Sullivan. The webcast itself, presented on the official BBC Doctor Who website, was quite static (i.e. small amounts of movement) because it was designed for low bandwidth internet connections of the day.

Those of us who were there had to deal with dial-up 56k modems and getting charged one penny per minute on the telephone bill for internet access with painfully slow download speeds. A penny a minute may not sound much, but phone bills could certainly rack up if the clock wasn’t watched! Did anyone else use the BBC’s own provider service (and short lived) Beeb.net? Just me then…

There were four webcasts – Death Comes to Time; Shada; Real Time; and Scream of the Shalka – three of which are still showing a presence on the BBC Doctor Who website with Death Comes to Time now missing.

In their day, the animations were all presented using Flash Player. Adobe Flash (also known as Shockwave Flash) was an application that many websites used to present animations and games.

Unfortunately, Adobe no longer supports Flash Player which has now been shut down because its widespread use made it a security target and it could also be very resource heavy on personal computers. This means that the webcasts from those days, sadly, no longer work via the site.

Therefore, unless the webcasts have been specifically released on DVD (or the webcast has found its way onto some other video site) then there is no easy way to currently see the webcast versions.

However, with a little effort and investigation I was able to download a copy of the original video (.SWF files) of Shada from the website, but it was an incredible faff and it only plays via one app (Ruffle) that I can find for my iMac. Windows users may have better luck.

So, of the four main BBCi webcasts, what is available and what isn’t?

Death Comes to Time (2001)

Featuring an alternative version of the Seventh Doctor, and with special guests John Sessions and Stephen Fry, this received two separate releases. The first, and most significant, was one of the very few Doctor Who MP3-CDs which featured the webcast as CD-ROM content.

The second release, under the BBC Radio Collection banner, was a soundtrack only CD and is now much easier (and affordable) to find on eBay than its more expensive and rarer MP3-CD version.

However, the easiest way to view the visual webcast of Death Comes to Time is far likely to be on YouTube where it appears occasionally under a guise of a high-definition upscale or other such tinkering.

Shada (2003)

As mentioned above, the Shada webcast made its way onto the Shada reconstruction steelbook. It also appeared on the 2012 DVD release but this, like Death Comes to Time’s CD-ROM, was only accessible via a PC and not playable on a DVD player.

The soundtrack was also issued by Big Finish in 2003 as a special release (still available), but the cover doesn’t feature Lee Sullivan’s artwork; rather a photographic collage. 

Scream of the Shalka (2003)

This was the webcast that introduced Richard E Grant as the original Ninth Doctor, featered Derek Jacobi as the Master, and had an uncredited appearance by David Tennant in a bit part.

This was also the only one of the four webcasts to receive its own DVD release in 2013. To my knowledge, this may have even been shown on television, albeit via the BBC’s Red Button service. This even got its own BBC Books novelisation and an audiobook! Definitely the most well-served of the webcasts. No audio-only release, however.

Real Time (2002)

Famous for the first appearance of the Sixth Doctor’s blue coat and featuring the Cybermen, Maggie Stables as the great Evelyn Smythe and Doctor Who: The TV Movie actor Yee Jee Tso, the quite brutal Real Time has only been released (and still downloadable) by Big Finish as an audio only.

But this singles out Real Time as the only webcast not to get some kind of visual release. At least the artwork used on Big Finish’s CD cover is by Lee Sullivan and appears to be lifted from the animation itself.

But as far as I can find, the visual version of Real Time has not been made commercially available at all. Like Death Comes to Time, it is far more likely to be able to see Real Time via YouTube.

The problem here is that Death Comes to Time and Real Time’s availability are a bit tenuous. The versions on YouTube are not on any official Doctor Who or BBC channel, but on fan channels. As a result, at any point, the BBC could raise a copyright strike and get them removed. However, as I type this, both are still there.

There is no reasoning that I can think of that indicate why there is no release consistency within the different webcasts: two were BBCi only and two were BBCi in conjunction with Big Finish, yet only three got a soundtrack release, only two have appeared on DVD/Blu-Ray, only one on a CD-Rom… It’s enough to cause a collector a few sleepless nights!

For what it’s worth, what is left on the old Doctor Who webcasts site are the galleries and wallpapers and all in the old computer screen resolutions of days gone by. No gigantic 4k pictures to be seen here!

Now… spare a thought for the (non-Doctor Who) fifth webcast, The Ghosts of Albion, of which the BBC Cult site produced two stories of the Victorian supernatural adventures: Embers and Legacy. They just sit there forgotten, unloved and unplayable…