of BBC One, managed to persuade BBC Worldwide that as their plans for a Doctor Who film were nowhere near fruition, BBC Television should be allowed to make a new series. A deal with Russell T Davies to produce the new series was quickly struck, and on 26 September, the BBC announced that Doctor Who would be returning to BBC One in 2005, produced by BBC Wales. As a result, the status of the Shalka webcast was in doubt even before it was released. After the webcast, in February 2004, plans for sequels were indefinitely shelved. For a period, it was unclear if the new television Doctor would be the Ninth or Tenth Doctor, but this was ultimately settled in April 2004 when in an interview with Doctor Who Magazine, Davies announced that the new television Doctor (played by Christopher Eccleston), would be the Ninth Doctor, relegating Grant's Doctor to an alternate Doctor. Davies later commented that Grant had never been considered for the role in the television series, telling Doctor Who Magazine: "I thought he was terrible. I thought he took the money and ran, to be honest. It was a lazy performance. He was never on our list to play the Doctor." The working title for this production was Servants of the Shalakor. This original story outline is included in the BBC Books novelization (see below). In print The novelization of Shalka was written by Paul Cornell. The book also includes a feature on the making of the webcast, as well as the original Servants of the Shalakor story outline. Critical analysis A book length study of the serial, written by Jon Arnold, was published as part of The Black Archive series from Obverse Books in 2017. This detailed the story's key points and the production process, and featured an in depth look at the unmade sequel story Blood of the Robots. This book also revealed that the Big Finish audio drama Immortal Beloved was originally intended as a Shalka sequel before being adapted to feature the Eighth Doctor. DVD release The British Board of Film Classification cleared all six episodes of the series for release on DVD. In March 2007, clips from the series were released to DVD, as part of Flash Frames, a documentary on the DVD release of the restored The Invasion. The story was released on DVD in Region 2 on 16 September 2013.