In 1979, the production team for a Doctor Who episode titled "Shada" traveled to Cambridge, England, to film a storyline written by Douglas Adams, best known for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The episode was meant to conclude the 17th series of the long-running British sci-fi show, but filming was interrupted by a BBC strike. This prevented the completion of the studio scenes, leaving the episode unfinished. The story features Tom Baker as the fourth Doctor, who teams up with his companion Romana and a retired Time Lord, Professor Chronotis, to battle the villainous alien Skagra. Marcus Hearn, editor of Doctor Who Magazine, shared that his father, who worked as a porter at Clare College, saw challenges faced by the production crew and Tom Baker during filming. Hearn noted that Baker had difficulty learning how to punt—a traditional Cambridge activity—on the River Cam, and he often fell into the water. His father helped calm him down during these incidents. Hearn described the unfinished episodes of Shada as a kind of myth and legend among Doctor Who fans, adding to its mystique. Douglas Adams was a student at St John's College in Cambridge during the early 1970s, but the college did not allow the BBC to film there. As a result, the Shada production took place at Emmanuel and Clare Colleges instead. Richard Bignell, author of Doctor Who on Location, noted that the crew also filmed at Grantchester Meadow, a nearby area, and had to improvise in some scenes to adapt to the locations. Les McCallum, a design assistant on Shada, explained that most of the filming took place in Cambridge, with the remaining scenes scheduled for London studios. However, the BBC strike disrupted this plan, and the studio doors were locked and chained, preventing further filming. The actors had also been contracted to other projects, making it impossible to reassemble the cast. As a result, the episode was left incomplete and never officially released. In 1983, the BBC tried to bring together past Doctors for a special episode called The Five Doctors, but Tom Baker refused to participate. Later, fragments of Shada were discovered in the BBC archives and used in the 1996 Doctor Who TV movie. Thirty-six years after the original storyline was abandoned, Baker and Lalla Ward, who played Romana, recorded the missing lines from Adams’ script. These were combined with animation to create a partially animated version of the episode, which was finally released in 2017, giving fans a glimpse of what might have been.