The BBC announced this week that next year they'll publish a novel based on a "lost" Douglas Adams 4th Doctor story. The late Hitchhiker genius was script editor in 1979 and the filming of this, his final Dr Who story, was hit by a strike.
The novel will be written by Gareth Roberts, who wrote The Lodger episode last season (the one in which the Doctor lived a normal life with James Corden) as well as the excellent Shakespeare story from Tennant's second season.
So why am I not excited?
I think it's a hard era to recreate on the printed page. Roberts wrote some novels in the 90s set during Adams tenure that were raved about by others but for me were much weaker than his other Who novels.
And also well, it's Shada and this isn't exactly virgin territory.
Some of the location footage was incorporated in The Five Doctors because Tom Baker didn't want to reprise his role so soon. So we saw him and Romana mucking about on the river in Cambridge.
Then in 92 the BBC released a video of surviving footage with Tom Baker narrating.
And then there was this with the 8th doctor instead: http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/webcasts/shada/
Yes, it's easy to be intrigued by a story set in both Cambridge and a secret Time Lord prison planet. And there's some witty lines (it's Douglas Adams after all).
But, surely, everyone who would have experienced it has done so by now.
Me, personally, I would be more excited by darker original stories along the lines of the 1990s New Adventures published by Virgin.
Though if it introduces younger fans to Adams, that would be a good thing.
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