Composer Mark Ayers's page about this video is located at http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Mark_Ayres/Shakedwn.htm . Also, if you want to hear many real audio files from the score, please visit http://www.tunes.com/release/default.asp?from=from&relid=153246 .
By the way, if you've not yet bought the videotape, the Sontarans don't sound similar to the Ice Warriors because they don't talk in a loud whisper! They sound normal! I don't have the novel or the soundtrack.
Unfortunately, this story and DOWNTIME don't specifically mention the Doctor. In this story, he's called the Dentist! Give me a break! I'd prefer Steve Martin's dentist from LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS!
Well, I haven't seen the video but I rather liked the way the adapted section of the book managed to avoid mentioning the Doctor - 'What was his name again? The physician...? The Dentist...?' It wasn't the video-maker's fault that the BBC are insane, refusing to restore Our Hero to us and thus necessitating rubbish spin-offs forbidden to mention his very name. (Not that I'm implying Shakedown is rubbish, but Downtime is pretty bad and that Benton one is unspeakable.)
I preferred the Shakedown approach to what the Benny NAs have managed. In Dead Romance the Doctor is known as the Evil Renegade. (Lies! Lies!!!) And in Mean Streets Chris and Benny mention that they used to work for 'someone with unlimited financial resources'. Yeah, right, that's the first thing that springs to mind when you're thinking of the Doctor.
Huh. Thought watching the video and then flicking through that section of the book would be quicker and less painful than rereading the whole novel. Might have been wrong.
Why doesn't Lisa try winning a race with a proper crew instead of a bunch of rich useless people? Can't she get sponsorship or something?
Could that virtual reality solar-sail stuff BE more blatant padding? Hmm, maybe this was made during the height of the VR obsession, as evidenced by several early NAs (as the Completely Useless Encyclopedia put it, 'make sure you include a cyberspace/computer-based subplot. It might be tricky to insert it into your fifteenth-century historical, but in the long run it'll be worth the effort...').
'I'm going to deal with this matter myself' - the stinking-rich clothes-designer is gonna put herself in the firing-line WHY, exactly? Especially as half an hour later she's selling out her fellow humans to the Sontarans in order to survive.
Why doesn't Lisa think to order the crew to resist or NOT to resist - one or the other, for heaven's sake!
'The faint glow about his body-armour might have come from the corridor lights' - not unless they're GREEN it wouldn't. But at least this is an ATTEMPT to cover up the video's most gaping plot-hole. People also, on the printed page, react a lot quicker to grenades/fellow Sontarans being attacked/Sontarans attempting to leave, etc.
Why haven't Sontarans developed some Rutan-detecting equipment?
Could whatshisname BE any slower to tell people about the whole BACK OF THE NECK thing?
'You are our prisoner' - surely they'd say 'You are the prisoner of the glorious Sontaran Empire' before throwing in a few Sontar-HAs?
Kurt has never HEARD of Sontarans until he happens to be on a planet that THEY'RE INVADING?
The Doctor and Kurt were the ONLY two prisoners awaiting trial? On the whole newly-conquered planet?
'Few people' know the Doctor's name?! My god, how many people has he SLEPT with?! Or shown his cot to...?
'For some reason [Sontaran] prisoners are always shot at dawn' - what rubbish! Strax didn't wait till dawn to shoot that horse!
'Now, what do we do during our first few days on a strange planet? We have our shots, we swallow our pills, we eat bland foods till our system settles down and acclimatizes' - Roz. Since WHEN!
Why keep referring to an Alpha Centaurian as 'he'?
'Last time I was there I felt like a lad of a hundred' - since when has the Seventh Doctor talked like that?
'Its walls lined with books - not discs or tapes or holovid reels but actual books!' - how amusing that in the almost-twenty-years since this was published, the thought of discs or tapes or holovid reels has become so much more quaint than that of books.
Hang on - the Doctor actually EARNED his Master of Arts degree from Antares...?
Great. First Blood Harvest flatly contradicted State of Decay, now Horror of Fang Rock appears to have been merrily rewritten. The Doctor admits to being 'responsible for the destruction of a Rutan' - an argument accepted by the Rutan group mind. He seems to have forgotten - and they don't seem to have noticed despite the fact that WE ARE RUTAN, WE ARE ONE, TO HARM ONE IS TO HARM ALL - that he blew their mothership to smithereens too.
'He checked up on the details of their execution, and discovered that it had never taken place. They had escaped' - but no one on the newly-efficient Sonataran-run planet thought to report the escaped prisoners earlier?
'Until both priorities are dealt with [i.e. the Rutan spy and the Doctor], we dare not strike' - that's insane. For starters, a Sontaran would never ADMIT that he DARE not do something. For another, surely the more afraid you are of the Doctor and Karne, the more you should strike RIGHT NOW before either of them have the chance to warn the Rutans that their back door has been discovered...
So there's no CCTV on crime-ridden Megacity? Certainly Roz and Chris and Garshak don't mention CHECKING THE CCTV when looking for a suspect of whom they have an excellent and very distinctive description.
Garshak isn't nearly as much fun as I remember. I suppose once you've encountered Strax, an augmented Ogron pales in comparison.
'Someone answering Sakis's description turned up at the spaceport...They noticed him becaue he looked odd' - and not because said description of the MURDER SUSPECT had been CIRCULATED TO THE SPACEPORT or anything...?
'When we saw her intention we drew back our guards and opened the way to the Temple. Now she has condemned herself by her own actions' - yes, it would make TOTAL SENSE that you'd DELIBERATELY PERMIT the Blasphemer to profane your Sacred Temple...IF ONLY you actually NEEDED some evidence before condemning her. Alas, you don't. You've tried to kill her before on mere suspicion alone, for heaven's sake! ('We sought to destroy her, but she evaded us with her cunning.') You dismembered her new pal for just MENTIONING the temple!!
We never DO find out why they were planning on killing Benny before she'd ever set foot on their planet, do we? Who tipped 'em off? Is there a spy IN THE TARDIS?
Ah, poor dear Uncle Terrance. He really is making HEROIC attempts to portray Lisa Deranne as an Alpha Female. Yet she STILL can't get a bartender's attention without a man to do it for her...And by the end of the book said man owns her entire ship and he's made it quite clear he'll be sleeping with her and her very protestations have made it quite clear that yes, he will be. So maybe a BIT more work needed on that 'Women's Lib' thing, Terry...
'Using everything that money could buy in the way of clothes and make-up to fight off the years' - but not plastic surgery? Why not?
Roz didn't think to ask 'How do you kill them? Could be a very useful piece of information' BEFORE she went on her Rutan-hunt rather than afterwards?
Leela dispatched her Rutan 'with a rocket-launcher stuffed with bits of old iron, a sort of improvised blunderbuss'?
'There were no ships leaving...there were no departures between the two shuttles' 'Well, only the space yacht...But they don't take passengers, we checked' - and it didn't occur to you two EX-COPS that THE RUTAN GOT ON THE SPACE-YACHT ANYWAY....???? By stowing away? Or by signing up as crew? Or by killing and dismembering one of the crew, imitating their form and taking their place?
If I was Carole Ann Ford I'd be a wee bit pissed off at being portrayed as a raddled old hag while luscious peach Sophie Aldred is being DROOLED over. (Scratch that - given the choice I think I'd RATHER be the hag.)
'The Sontaran trooper had little experience of this particular alien species. Otherwise he might have noticed that its features were impassive, its eyes dead, and that it gave off a curious green glow' - surely he ought at least to have been trained in clone-school to shoot ANY impassive, dead-eyed, green-glowing thing on the grounds that IT WAS BLATANTLY OBVIOUSLY A RUTAN?
'Kurt realised that he even knew this particular Sontaran' - OK, I'm used to implausible coincidences in Who, but this is such a STUPIDLY UNNECESSARY one. And anyway, HOW THE HELL did Kurt know it was Steg and not one of his million-strong clone-batch?
To be continued...
'For some reason [Sontaran] prisoners are always shot at dawn' - what rubbish! Strax didn't wait till dawn to shoot that horse!
The horse was not a prisonner, it was guilty of gross dereliction of duty. 
Leela dispatched her Rutan 'with a rocket-launcher stuffed with bits of old iron, a sort of improvised blunderbuss'?
I believe that the only thing one would achieve by doing that is blow themselves up.
The horse was not a prisonner, it was guilty of gross dereliction of duty.
Ah!
Leela dispatched her Rutan 'with a rocket-launcher stuffed with bits of old iron, a sort of improvised blunderbuss'?
I believe that the only thing one would achieve by doing that is blow themselves up.
Oops.
Great. Even Lisa hasn't heard of Sontarans. Is the human race just in denial?
Vorn actually says 'You gave your word of honour' and needs explaining-to that 'Promises made to inferior species have no validity'?
'We're not going to hunt the Rutan?' 'Hunt it? We're going to help it!' - sure, it dismembered your oldest friend but let's not hold a GRUDGE...
Why not tell Lisa about the probic vent sooner?
Lisa's SEEN Robar's dismembered-by-a-Rutan corpse. She knows they can take on the form of anyone they've dismembered. Yet she needs the Rutan-Robar to say 'My dear' to realise he's a Rutan...?
Zorelle's 'body glowed with power and she looked taller, statelier, more beautiful than ever before.' BEAUTIFUL? You kept telling us what a raddled old hag she was!
'They can probably get away with a few missing ships, especially if there's no real proof. Accidents happen in space. Missing space stations are rather harder to explain away' - even if said space station is packed with witnesses that angry Sontarans set off in pursuit of each and every one of those mysteriously missing ships...?
Why the hell should all Lisa's crew agree to leave all their money to a suspicious ex-criminal character anyway?
'The forests are almost completely re-established' - in a few years? Those are some SERIOUSLY fast-growing forests.
'What does it matter if the Sontarans wipe out the Rutans? I'd say it was good riddance' - but it's already been EXPLAINED to her in words of one syllable that the only thing stopping the Sontarans overrunning her galaxy is...the Rutans.
'They've been fighting a war with the Rutans for hundreds of years' - only HUNDREDS?! I thought Infinity Doctors said 50,000 (or something)?
'Not for the first time, she wondered exactly what the Doctor's resources were and where they came from. They were certainly adequate all right. Wherever he needed to go, wherever he needed to send his unfortunate assistants, the necessary funds were available, immediately, and without fuss' - since when! And Roz isn't the only one wondering...HOW. (There's some excuse in Happy Endings about the Doc letting planets pay him for saving 'em if they've got an unfortunate financial surplus, and then there's that time-travelling-restaurant investment in Crystal Bucephalus but frankly I don't believe a word of any of it.)
How can the Doctor possibly say there's 'no danger' when they're chasing a homicidal Rutan?
'Sometimes I think I'm just a meddler who does more harm than good.' - the HELL he does! 'But I have to try...I was brought up with an idea of service. In time I learned that the system I served was hopelessly corrupt. But somehow the ideal stayed on. You could call it the Gallifreyan work ethic!' - sorry, just not swallowing this.
Why are Roz, Chris and Kurt 'stretched out on the long benches, trying to relax' when it turns out there are plenty of bunks in the room?
'The dead Sontarans' weapons had been neatly stacked on a [morgue] shelf' - still fully armed. How stupid ARE these people!
So basically...the Rutan had a baby and Steg's death was greatly exaggerated. In case anyone was wondering how the Shakedown video was elongated quite so drastically.
'Even if you succeed in evading them here and escape from the Temple they will follow you and kill you - anywhere on the planet. Even if you manage to leave Sentarion, their emissaries will follow you and track you down' - funny, cos I don't remember any homicidal religious insects popping up in Benny's several hundred subsequent novels, novellas, short stories, audios, etc.
So, all of thirty seconds after saving her own skin by successfully arguing that 'Laws must be obeyed in spirit as well as in letter', Benny persuades the Chancellor to recite the Sacred Texts to her - a blasphemous unbeliever - on the grounds that 'Doctrine states that only the eyes of the Sentarrii may behold them' but says nothing about hearing them...
'Some scientists had come up with the theory that the gods of these curiously common myths were in fact space travelling aliens...the hypothesis had originated long ago on Old Earth' - oh, surely SOME other planet graced by Exxilons or Osirians or whatever would have come up with this blindingly obvious 'theory' first?
'He glanced around the room and saw the humans watching him eagerly, waiting for him to succumb to the rising tide of weakness' - even though he'd made it crystal clear that he'd sent for the Sontaran War Wheel and if he wasn't alive and well when it arrived they'd all be slaughtered?
'I hate violence myself, and my two friends here hate it even more' - the HELL they do! Roz n'Chris LOVE a bit of violence!
The Doctor agrees to help the Sontarans so they won't kill him n'chums. 'Chris was horrified by his sudden surrender. "Doctor!" "Don't look so shattered," said the Doctor. "What do we care what happens to a faraway planet of which we know little?" "What about the broad picture?" asked Roz. Like Chris, she had no answer, but she felt curiously let down.' - They actually SWALLOW the Doctor's capitulation?
And Steg not only swallows it, he...DOESN'T NOTICE the Doctor slipping back to the Rutan console and working at frantic speed to reverse its polarity...
Remarkably prescient - Steg has WAY too much personality for an Old Who Sontaran, but post-Strax no one is in a position to complain. (Though saying 'Good fortune to you' to his comrades is going a bit far.)
If the cover's supposed to be portraying Jekkar (and it's got to be, hasn't it - not nearly pretty enough for Sentarion) what the hell's the Tiger Moth doing in the sky?
Lisa's SEEN Robar's dismembered-by-a-Rutan corpse. She knows they can take on the form of anyone they've dismembered. Yet she needs the Rutan-Robar to say 'My dear' to realise he's a Rutan...?
Who, or what the hell did she think she was talking to if she had already seen the guy's dismembered corpse?
the necessary funds were available, immediately, and without fuss' - since when! And Roz isn't the only one wondering...HOW.
Since he has a time machine, the Doctor could use a trick seen in Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Put a small sum in a bank, then move foward in time by a few centuries and collect the resulting fortune after the compound interests have worked their magic. Or he could go back in time and buy a few shares of Microsoft, before it became the software juggernaut it is today.
Who, or what the hell did she think she was talking to if she had already seen the guy's dismembered corpse?
Sadly it wasn't quite explained. Lisa just 'stared at him unbelievingly' and 'seemed paralysed'. Presumably she thought that her old chum might have...got better or something. She's a woman, her mental processes obviously aren't that sharp, bless her little cotton socks.
Since he has a time machine, the Doctor could use a trick seen in Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Put a small sum in a bank, then move foward in time by a few centuries and collect the resulting fortune after the compound interests have worked their magic.
But that's what the MEDDLING MONK does. And he's EVIL! Our Doctor would NEVER stoop to such tactics! (As well as simply being unable to steer his TARDIS that well.)
Or he could go back in time and buy a few shares of Microsoft, before it became the software juggernaut it is today.
Are you accusing THE DOCTOR of being some sort of...capitalist?
She's a woman, her mental processes obviously aren't that sharp, bless her little cotton socks.
I consider women to be equal or superior to men in all domains, except sheer physical strength, which is the only reason they are not in charge at this time.
But that's what the MEDDLING MONK does. And he's EVIL!
The fact that one guy who does it is evil doesn't make it a bad idea.
Are you accusing THE DOCTOR of being some sort of...capitalist?
And what would be wrong with that? Capitalism, applied with appropriate moderation, is an awsome system.
I consider women to be equal or superior to men in all domains, except sheer physical strength, which is the only reason they are not in charge at this time.
Me too, obviously, but this is TERRANCE DICKS we're talking about. Credit where it's due, he TRIED to get the hang of this weird concept of 'Women's Lib' (as he put it) but boy did he fail...
Are you accusing THE DOCTOR of being some sort of...capitalist?
And what would be wrong with that? Capitalism, applied with appropriate moderation, is an awsome system.
But it's just not a DOCTORISH system.
He needs to pay for something, he sonics a cashpoint or produces some metal beetle that's currency halfway across the galaxy or nips back in time to buy a lottery ticket. He doesn't INVEST MONEY in a BANK ACCOUNT.
But it's just not a DOCTORISH system.
Exactly. You just can't imagine the DOCTOR in a cellar in Yekaterinburg in July 1918....
You just can't imagine the DOCTOR in a cellar in Yekaterinburg in July 1918....
You don't have to imagine it. That's what First Doctor audio Last of the Romanovs is for.
Bookwyrm:
Re Garshak: 'Being a large and stocky man who's smarter than everyone around him, you can't help but wonder if Terrance is Mary-Sueing his way into the novels' - what I'm thinking is no cos, smart as he is...Garshak's AN OGRON.
'An odd little story, produced out of a desperate clinging to the past, called into existence as a novel out of some old-time belief that all Who stories should be novelised, written around, fleshed out, disjointed, hilarious and non-stop fun, all at once' - awwww...