BBCi Website – Thursday 23rd October, 2003

Further details of our special anniversary full-animated story featuring Richard E Grant.

It’s not only cats that have nine lives… Doctor Who is back! As the cult series prepares to celebrate its 40th birthday, Richard E Grant, star of films such as Withnail And I, Jack And Sarah and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, steps out of the TARDIS as the ninth incarnation of the Doctor – only on BBCi.

The new, animated Doctor Who series, Scream Of The Shalka, premieres on BBCi on Thursday 13th November.

Grant, who is joined by an all-star cast including Sir Derek Jacobi, Sophie Okonedo and Diana Quick, describes his interpretation of the much-loved Time Lord as ‘something of a Sherlock Holmes in space’.

The six-part drama, animated by Cosgrove Hall and posted on BBCi at lunchtime on Thursdays, follows hot on the heels of the success of previous BBCi web dramas, including Shada, a lost Doctor Who script written by the late Douglas Adams, and the Prix Europa-nominated Ghosts Of Albion, starring Leslie Phillips, written by Amber Benson (who plays Tara in Buffy The Vampire Slayer).

Scream Of The Shalka has been scripted by established TV writer Paul Cornell, who has worked on series including BBC One’s Casualty and has written a number of science fiction novels.

BBCi’s Martin Trickey says: “We are delighted to be able to bring another fantastic series of Doctor Who to a whole new generation of people. Broadcasting the series via the BBCi website means that people can watch it whenever they want to, so they’ll never have to miss a minute!”

The series begins as an unexplained meteor crashes into the side of a New Zealand volcano, unleashing the snake-like Shalka, an alien species with a deadly scream.

Thousands of miles away in a Lancashire town, the TARDIS materialises on a Saturday night. The streets are empty, the pubs are deserted and random, unexplained pools of lava keep appearing on the ground.

Time isn’t on the Doctor’s side and neither, it seems, are the town’s inhabitants – with the possible exception of feisty barmaid Alison. When the TARDIS disappears in a pool of lava and the Doctor and Alison are confronted by the hunting Shalka, it seems that there’s just no way out.