YMMV / Doctor Who S17 E6 "Shada"

• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: At the very end of the 2017 version, when the Doctor and Romana are discussing the Doctor's desire to retire and just be seen by others as a nice, old man like Professor Chronotis, the final few seconds reveal the Doctor is now being played by an elderly Tom Baker in 2017! Justified because while the Doctor aging significantly doesn't make sense in-universe, it was filmed because it was a Visual Gag in the context of their discussion, and because the director and Tom thought it was a cool idea. It also raises many Epileptic Trees about a certain Curator.
• Fan Wank: Did the story actually happen, and if so, which version? The audio drama takes the view that it was cosmically retconned out by "The Five Doctors" and shoehorns the Eighth Doctor into the story, but the novelisation presents it with the Fourth Doctor as originally intended. The book A Brief History of Time Lords takes the view that both versions happened.
• Fashion-Victim Villain: Skagra dresses in a spectacularly tasteless disco outfit — a belted white tunic, a sparkly fedora, a glittery silver cape, a v-neck and shiny white high-waisted trousers tucked into silver platform boots — while carrying around a carpetbag. In the university district of Cambridge. In 1979, which is when the disco era had just started its terminal decline. Script notes indicate that he was supposed to look utterly ridiculous.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • All three versions end with the Doctor musing on how Salyavin turned out to be much less evil than official Time Lord history claimed, and speculating on how he himself might be remembered by future Time Lords as a monstrous criminal. This became much more serious after the apparent destruction of Gallifrey, especially since until retcon of "The Day of the Doctor" most fans assumed that the Eighth Doctor had been responsible for it. (And the Eighth Doctor had also been responsible for destroying Gallifrey in the prose Eighth Doctor Adventures and Doctor Who and the Time War).
  • A Time Lord criminal hiding out by posing as a professor. "Utopia" would later have a much darker take on that idea.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The Doctor ponders a future in which he retires and everyone assumes he's just a "nice old man". This just might come to be, according to the end of "The Day of the Doctor". This is later referenced by the completed 2017 version, when The Doctor delivers the line (and only that line)... while being played by an 83-year-old Tom Baker! It's cemented by the revelation at the end of "The Giggle" that the bigenerated Fourteenth Doctor settles down to a quiet life as part of the extended Noble-Temple family, with David Tennant saying that Fourteen is permanently retired.
  • In Series 10 of the revived show, the Doctor becomes a university professor just like Chronitis, complete with the TARDIS in his office.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: In the 2017 reconstruction, the model shots look like bog-standard effects shots that obviously were completed in 1979 before the strike, right? Wrong. All of those shots were done in 2017, painstakingly using period model styling, practical effects techniques and film equipment. They went the extra mile to make it look seamless with the 70s footage, when they could have just used CG and called it a day.
  • The Sphere taking off from and returning to Skagra's hand was a practical effect involving a car radio's antenna, shot at just the right angle to obscure the antenna. It is utterly convincing.

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