Lalla Ward and Tom Baker, on location in Cambridge to film Shada in October 1979.
Photo © Cambridge News.
The day after we finished filming Shada,” Tom Baker once claimed, “it was already mythology to me.”
Baker recorded his final scenes for the ill-fated serial on 5 November 1979. They weren’t supposed to be his final scenes, of course: with work scheduled to run into December, there was still plenty to be done. But when the cast and crew arrived at Television Centre for the next studio session they found the doors locked. Production had been halted by an industrial dispute which, depending on who you believe, may have boiled down to a row about whose job it was to move the hands on the Play School clock.