Season 17

Season 17 of Doctor Who ran from 1 September 1979 to 12 January 1980. It starred Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor, Lalla Ward as Romana II and David Brierley as K9 Mark II. The season opened with Destiny of the Daleks and concluded with The Horns of Nimon. The season was supposed to conclude on Shada, but that story would not be finished until over 37 years after Season 17's conclusion.

Overview
It consisted of five stories comprised of twenty episodes, plus the incomplete Shada, unfinished as a result of an industrial strike. Lalla Ward joined as Romana II, and the season is notable for the involvement of Douglas Adams in the writing department. This was the last season to use the traditional Delia Derbyshire "Doctor Who theme" arrangement.

A trailer for this season was released.

Cast

 * Doctor Who - Tom Baker
 * Romana II - Lalla Ward
 * K9 (voice) - David Brierley

Guest

 * Tyssan - Tim Barlow
 * Commander Sharrel - Peter Straker
 * Agella - Suzanne Danielle
 * Lan - Tony Osoba
 * Davros - David Gooderson
 * Dalek Voices - Roy Skelton
 * Count - Julian Glover
 * Countess - Catherine Schell
 * Duggan - Tom Chadbon
 * Kerensky - David Graham
 * Hermann - Kevin Flood
 * Soldier - Peter Halliday
 * Art Gallery Visitors - John Cleese, Eleanor Bron
 * Adrasta - Myra Frances
 * Karela - Eileen Way
 * Torvin - John Bryans
 * Edu - Edward Kelsey
 * Ainu - Tim Munro
 * Organon - Geoffrey Bayldon
 * Rigg - David Daker
 * Tryst - Lewis Fiander
 * Dymond - Geoffrey Bateman
 * Della - Jennifer Lonsdale
 * Stott - Barry Andrews
 * Fisk - Geoffrey Hinsliff
 * Costa - Peter Craze
 * Soldeed - Graham Crowden
 * Sorak - Michael Osborne
 * Seth - Simon Gipps-Kent
 * Teka - Janet Ellis
 * Voice of the Nimons - Clifford Norgate
 * Professor Chronotis - Denis Carey
 * Skagra - Christopher Neame
 * Chris Parsons - Daniel Hill
 * Clare Keightley - Victoria Burgoyne
 * Wilkin - Gerald Campion
 * Voice of Ship - Shirley Dixon

Stories set before this season

 * AUDIO: Tales from the Vault (Romana's involvement)
 * AUDIO: The Auntie Matter
 * AUDIO: The Sands of Life / War Against the Laan
 * AUDIO: The Justice of Jalxar
 * AUDIO: Pantoms of the Deep
 * AUDIO: The Dalek Contract / The Final Phase

Stories set during this season

 * PROSE: The Lying Old Witch in the Wardrobe (concurrent with Destiny of the Daleks)
 * COMIC: Victims (after Destiny of the Daleks)
 * PROSE: The Final Analysis (somewhere between Destiny of the Daleks and The Leisure Hive)
 * PROSE: The End of Now (between City of Deathand The Creature from the Pit)
 * PROSE: The Romance of Crime (between The Creature from the Pit and Nightmare of Eden)
 * PROSE: The English Way of Death (after The Romance of Crime)
 * AUDIO: The Beautiful People (between Nightmare of Eden and The Horns of Nimon)
 * PROSE: Festival of Death (Set between City of Death and The Horns of Nimon)

VHS releases

 * Destiny of the Daleks (1994/2001)
 * City of Death (1991/2001)
 * The Creature from the Pit (2002)
 * Nightmare of Eden (1999)
 * The Horns of Nimon (2003)
 * Shada (with extra post-production work and linking narration of unfilmed sequences) (1992)
 * The Tom Baker Years (extracts from all stories) (1991)

DVD & Blu-ray releases
All serials of season 17 were released between 2005 and 2013.

In 2017, Shada was officially completed using newly recorded dialogue from the surviving original cast and specially animated footage to fill in the unfilmed missing segments. The animated sequences were completed by the same team that undertook the 2016 animated edition of The Power of the Daleks. It was released on DVD and Blu-ray as a feature-length edition of the story in the UK on 4 December 2017. It was later released in Australia on 10 January 2018 and in the US on 4 September 2018.

The complete Season 17 was released on Blu-ray on 13 December 2021 as the tenth entry in The Collection Blu-ray range. This included the animated reconstruction of Shada, presented as six individual episodes for the first time as well as in its previous feature-length form.

Novels

 * Doctor Who and the Destiny of the Daleks
 * City of Death
 * Doctor Who and the Creature from the Pit
 * Doctor Who and the Nightmare of Eden
 * Doctor Who and the Horns of Nimon
 * Shada

Target Books was unable to come to an agreement with Douglas Adams for novelising the televised story City of Death (which Adams co-wrote) and the untelevised Shada. An agreement with Adams' estate eventually allowed BBC Books to publish an adaptation of Shada in 2012. City of Death remained one of a handful of classic-era serials that had still to be officially novelised; however, in October 2013, Gareth Roberts confirmed on Twitter that he was currently writing a novelisation of City of Death, with a release date of 14 May 2015. One year later, in October 2014, Roberts announced (again via Twitter) that the book was now instead being written by James Goss; the novelisation was eventually released on 21 May 2015.