List of unmade Doctor Who serials and films

List of unmade Doctor Who serials and films

During the long history of the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who, a number of stories were proposed but, for a variety of reasons, never fully produced. Below is a list of unmade serials which the BBC had intended to produce, were submitted by recognised professional writers, or had been the subject of a feature in Doctor Who Magazine or other professional periodicals or books.

Such serials exist during the tenure of each of the previous ten incarnations of the Doctor. The reasons for the serials being incomplete include strike action (which caused the partially-filmed Shada to be abandoned), actors leaving roles (The Final Game, which was cancelled after Roger Delgado's death), and the series being put on hiatus twice—once in 1985, and again in 1989—causing the serials planned for the following series to be shelved.

The plots of the unmade serials also vary. A theme of a civilisation where women are dominant was proposed twice—once for The Hidden Planet, and again for The Prison in Space. In some cases, elements of unmade serials were adapted, or were moved from one serial to another; for example, The Song of the Space Whale was intended to be the introduction of Vislor Turlough until it was repeatedly set back, leading Mawdryn Undead to be Turlough's first appearance.

Some unused stories have found use in other media. Shada was made into an audio play of the same name, while several unmade serials have been compiled into an audio series released by Big Finish called The Lost Stories.

Contents

First Doctor

The Giants

The first serial of the series was originally to be written by C. E. Webber,[1] and would concern the four main characters (at that point named as the Doctor, Cliff, Lola, and Biddy) being shrunk to a "miniature size" and attacked by giant animals. The episode would have revealed that the Doctor had escaped from "his own galaxy" in the year 5733, seeking a perfect society in the past, and that he was pursued by agents from his own time who sought to prevent him from stopping their society from coming into being.[2]

The story was rejected in June 1963 on the grounds that the story was too thin on characterisation and that the giant monsters would be clichéd and too expensive to produce. Much of the setup was retained for An Unearthly Child, though the details about the Doctor's home were removed. The story's premise was reused for a submission by Robert Gould which was to be the fourth serial, but this story was dropped in January 1964.[3] The third attempt to use a miniaturisation story was accepted for the second series opener, Planet of Giants.[4]

The Masters of Luxor

The Masters of Luxor was a six-episode story submitted by Anthony Coburn for Series 1, but never produced, in which the Doctor faces a self-aware robot which is trying to gain a soul. Titan Books published the unused scripts in 1992.[5] Major differences in style between these scripts and the transmitted series include a religious subtext, with the Doctor clearly presented as a believer.[5]

Farewell Great Macedon

Farewell Great Macedon (also known as Alexander the Great in the script's early stages) was a six-episode story pitched for Series 1 and was written by Moris Farhi. In the story, the Doctor and his companions are framed for murder as part of a conspiracy to kill Alexander the Great and must pass a number of trials, including walking on hot coals, to gain the trust of his bodyguard Ptolemy.[6][7]

The script was published by Nothing at the End of the Lane in October 2009.[8]

Big Finish Productions released an audio adaptation, an enhanced audiobook, performed by William Russell and Carole Ann Ford as Ian Chesterton and Susan Foreman. This was the first in their second series of Lost Stories, released in November 2010.[9]

The Fragile Yellow Arc of Fragrance

The Fragile Yellow Arc of Fragrance was the first script sent by Moris Farhi. It was one episode long and was a calling card piece never seriously pitched for production. This story never made it to the production stage, and was included in the 2009 publication of Farhi's script for Farewell Great Macedon.[8]

Big Finish Productions have released an enhanced audiobook adaptation, performed by William Russell and Carole Ann Ford as Ian Chesterton and Susan Foreman. It was released with Farewell Great Macedon as part of their Lost Stories series, in November 2010.[9]

The Red Fort

Terry Nation had intended for his second serial to be set during the British Raj in India, but the story was ultimately abandoned as the Daleks became a success, and demand for further adventures grew.[10]

The Hidden Planet

The Hidden Planet by Malcolm Hulke was at one point to be the second serial of Series 2.[1] The story would have concerned a planet in an orbit opposite Earth's, with a parallel but in some ways opposite society to ours; for example, women were to be the dominant sex. The original script was sent back for rewrites, and due to a pay dispute the rewrites were not made until after Susan had left the series; this necessitated further rewriting. A third submission was similarly rejected as Ian and Barbara were due to leave, and the script was dropped.[1]

The story has at times also been stated to have had the title Beyond The Sun; however this was actually a working title for The Daleks, an early serial from season 1 of Doctor Who. Later in the 1970s it would be used for The Edge of Destruction. The idea of a "twin planet" for Earth was used in The Tenth Planet, which was another suggested title for this story, while a female-dominated society was used as background for the Drahvins in the 1965 serial Galaxy 4 (and would be proposed again for The Prison in Space).[11]

Other First Doctor stories

  • The Living World, by Alan Wakeman
  • The Miniscules (first version), by Robert Gould
  • The Miniscules (second version), by Margot Bennett
  • The New Armada, by David Whitaker
  • Untitled Egyptian storyline, by Dennis Spooner
  • Untitled American Civil War storyline, by unknown author
  • The Face of God, by John Wiles
  • The White Witch, by Brian Hayles
  • The Hands of Aten, by Brian Hayles
  • The Big Store, by David Ellis & Malcolm Hulke
  • The Heavy Scent of Violence, by George Kerr
  • The Hearsay Machine, by George Kerr
  • The Man from the Met, by George Kerr
  • The Ocean Liner, by David Ellis
  • The Clock, by David Ellis
  • The Evil Eye, by Geoffrey Orme
  • The Nazis, by Brian Hayles
  • The Herdsmen of Aquarius, by Donald Cotton
  • The People Who Couldn't Remember, by David Ellis
  • The Mutant, by Barry Letts
  • Britain 408 AD, by Malcolm Hulke
  • The Dark Planet, by Brian Hayles
  • Nothing at the End of the Lane, by C.E. Webber
  • The Son of Doctor Who, a story idea originated by William Hartnell

Second Doctor

The Imps

Planned as the fifth or sixth serial of Series 4, The Imps by William Emms was to concern a space station overrun by Imp-like aliens and aggressive alien vegetation.[1] The script had to be rewritten to accommodate new companion Jamie; due to sickness on the part of Emms, this took so long that further rewrites were needed to explain the loss of Ben and Polly.

Emms reused elements of the story in Mission to Venus, a Choose Your Own Adventure-style story featuring the Sixth Doctor.[1]

The Prison in Space

The Prison in Space by Dick Sharples returned to the idea of a female-dominated planet.[11] The Doctor and Jamie were to be imprisoned, and Zoe was to start a sexual revolution and then be brainwashed. The story was intended to inject humour into the show, and was to feature Jamie in drag and end with the Doctor deprogramming Zoe by smacking her bottom.

The serial was rewritten to accommodate Frazer Hines' desire to leave, and again when he decided to stay. The production team became unhappy with the serial, and when Sharples refused to perform further rewrites, the serial was dropped and replaced by The Krotons.[11]

Big Finish Productions have released an audio adaptation as part of their Lost Stories series.[9] The adaptation, an enhanced audiobook, is performed by Frazer Hines and Wendy Padbury as Jamie and Zoe.

In 2011, an illustrated scriptbook was released by Nothing at the End of the Lane which included the original story and behind the scenes material.[12]

The Impersonators

The Production Notes commentary on the 2009 DVD release of The War Games references a serial entitled Doctor Who and the Impersonators which was scheduled to precede The War Games. The serial was cancelled and its production budget allocated to The War Games, allowing it to be expanded to 10 episodes.[13]

Other Second Doctor stories

  • The Eye in Space, by Victor Pemberton
  • The Rosemariners (aka The Rosacrutians), by Donald Tosh
  • The Dream Spinner, by Paul Wheeler
  • The Aliens in the Blood, by Robert Holmes
  • Untitled story, by Derrick Sherwin
  • The Ants, by Roger Dixon
  • Bar Kochbar, by Roger Dixon
  • The King's Bedtime Story, by Roger Dixon
  • The Laird of McCrimmon, by Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln
  • The New Machines, by Roger Dixon
  • Operation Werewolf, by Douglas Camfield and Robert Kitts
  • The Return of the Neanderthal, by Roger Dixon
  • The Sleepwalkers, by Roger Dixon
  • Twin World, by Roger Dixon

Third Doctor

The Daleks in London

The Daleks in London was to be the final story of season 9 in 1972, re-introducing the Daleks after a five year absence. Little is known about the exact storyline of the Robert Sloman serial, other than the fact that it would have had some similarities to The Dalek Invasion of Earth, except set in contemporary London.

This similarity caused the production team some concern, and producer Barry Letts eventually decided that he would rather start the series with a Dalek adventure instead of ending it with one. An unrelated submission by Louis Marks was therefore rewritten into Day of the Daleks, and The Time Monster was commissioned to replace the original series finale.[6]

The Final Game

The Third Doctor's final story was to be The Final Game by Robert Sloman.[6] The story was to feature the Master, and to reveal that he and the Doctor were two aspects of the same individual—the Doctor being the ego (the intellectual part), while the Master was the id (the instinctive, violent part).[citation needed] The story was to end with the Master dying in a manner which suggested that he was trying to save the Doctor's life.[14]

The actor who played the Master, Roger Delgado, was killed in a car accident in Turkey in mid-1973, forcing the scrapping of the story.[15] The story was replaced by Planet of the Spiders.[6]

Other Third Doctor stories

  • The Mists of Madness, by Brain Wright
  • The Shadow People, by Charlotte and Dennis Plimmer
  • The Harvesters (aka The Vampire Planet), by Williams Emms
  • The Cerebroids, by Brian Wright
  • The Spare-Part People (aka The Brain Drain, The Labyrinth), by Jon Pertwee & Reed de Rouen
  • The Mega, by Bill Strutton
  • The Space War (aka The Furies), by Ian Stuart Black
  • The Brain-Dead, by Brian Hayles
  • The Shape of Terror, by Brian Hayles
  • Multiface, by Godfrey Harrison
  • The Automata, by Robert Holmes

Fourth Doctor

Killers of the Dark

Following the successful realisation of the Doctor's home planet of Gallifrey on screen in The Deadly Assassin, producer Graham Williams commissioned another Gallifrey story from writer David Weir. Weir's script, a six-part story entitled Killers of the Dark, would have concluded Series 15 in 1978. Weir's script had elements drawn from Asian cultures, and included a race of cat-people native to Gallifrey. Scenes included a gladiatorial duel in a stadium filled with cat-people.

Script editor Anthony Read and director Gerald Blake, upon reading the finished script, determined that the story would be impossible to shoot on Doctor Who's budget. With only two weeks to spare before filming, Read and Williams quickly co-wrote a replacement script—The Invasion of Time.

When asked about Weir's story at a fan convention years later, Williams could not recall its title and made up the name The Killer Cats of Geng Singh, by which title the story became widely known in fan circles.[1]

The Doomsday Contract/Shylock

For Series 17, John Lloyd, a frequent collaborator with script editor Douglas Adams, adapted material from his unpublished science fiction story GiGax and in October 1978 submitted The Doomsday Contract, a four-episode serial written in Adams' light-hearted style. In it, the Doctor is called to intervene when a corporation tries to buy Earth in order to obtain a matter-transmutation device.[6]

Lloyd was asked to modify several elements of the script, and in January 1979 was forced to abandon the project in order to fulfil his commitments as producer of Not The Nine O'Clock News. With Lloyd's permission, Adams brought in Allan Prior to complete the project, but his scripts were rejected. Adams contacted another writer to complete the story for Series 18 under the title Shylock, but no progress had been made by the time Adams left the series.[6]

Shada

Shada was a six-episode serial written by Douglas Adams that was to have concluded Series 17 in 1980. Production was halted during filming due to a strike and never resumed, although a reconstruction of the serial using narration and existing footage was later released on VHS.

The story was later remade as a webcast production featuring Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor and a Big Finish audio story (also featuring the Eighth Doctor),[16] while Adams himself reused elements from the serial for his first Dirk Gently book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.[17]

The Divided

On 8 November 1977, Moris Farhi, author of the unproduced Farewell Great Macedon script, was officially commissioned by producer Graham Williams to write a four-episode teleplay entitled The Divided. The script was not produced and Farhi no longer recalls what it was about; the script itself is lost.[18]

Other Fourth Doctor stories

Fifth Doctor

Project Zeta Sigma

The Fifth Doctor's first story was to be Project Zeta Sigma, written by John Flanagan and Andrew McCulloch. It was not intended to follow on directly from the events of Logopolis; instead, the Doctor and his companions would have already left Earth. The story was to concern nuclear disarmament.[19] The script proved unworkable, and producer John Nathan-Turner commissioned Logopolis writer Christopher H. Bidmead to write a replacement, Castrovalva. This also disrupted the shooting schedule, and Castrovalva was the fourth serial filmed, though it was the first transmitted.[19]

The Song of the Space Whale

The Song of the Space Whale was intended to introduce new companion Vislor Turlough in the third serial of Season 20. The story concerned a group of people living in the belly of a giant whale in space.[20] The Doctor would find this out while attempting to protect the creature from being slaughtered by a rusting factory ship. The castaways living in the whale, as well as the ship's captain, would be working class characters, with the former's dialogue being based on that of a working-class Northern Irish family that 2000 AD author Pat Mills knew.[21]

The script was originally pitched by Mills and his writing partner John Wagner in 1980 as a Fourth Doctor story. Although the script editor at the time, Anthony Read, was not interested in the story, Mills and Wagner continued to update the script. The script was commissioned as a Fifth Doctor story in December 1982, but Wagner left the project and Mills' disagreements with new script editor Eric Saward led to the script being delayed until it was too late to serve as Turlough's introductory story. The script was considered for Series 21 and 22, and was at one point in competition with the script that became Vengeance on Varos,[22] but it was ultimately rejected in July 1985.[20]

During the writing, Mills and Saward "fundamentally disagreed" on the character of the captain (Saward wanting a more Star Trek-type figure) and the dialogue for the castaways. Mills has said that "there was a Coronation Street quality to it that Eric felt didn't work in space. He thought the future would be classless, and I didn't."[23]

The story has been adapted for audio by Big Finish Productions as part of their series The Lost Stories. Renamed The Song of Megaptera and featuring the Sixth Doctor and Peri, it was released in May 2010.

May Time/Manwatch/The Children of Seth

After the success of Snakedance, Eric Saward requested that writer Christopher Bailey devise another story. The initial outline for May Time was comissioned on 24 August 1982 and was about a planet at war with its evil enemy Seth. Full scripts were comissioned on September 16 1982 with the new title Manwatch, but the scripts were dropped from production for unclear reasons. A second attempt at the story under the title The Children of Seth was attempted as a story for the Sixth Doctor and had scripts comissioned on 15 August 1983 and failed because of Bailey's failure to devise a structure for the new doctor's new 45 minute episode format and a tangible villan for the Doctor to face. It has been adapted to audio by Marc Platt for Big Finish Productions' third series of The Lost Stories, to be released in 2012, and features the Fifth Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa.[24]

Other Fifth Doctor stories

  • Hebos, by Rod Beacham
  • The Enemy Within, by Christopher Priest
  • Untitled story, by Tanith Lee
  • The Parasites (aka Parasites), by Bill Lyons
  • Genesis of the Cybermen, by Gerry Davis
  • The Torson Triumvirate, by Andrew Smith
  • The Dogs of Darkness, by Jack Gardner[disambiguation needed ]
  • The Psychrons, by Terence Greer
  • The Return, by Eric Saward
  • Poison, by Rod Beacham
  • Untitled story, by Lesley Elizabeth Thomas
  • The Darkness, by Eric Pringle
  • Warmongers, by Marc Platt and Charles M. Stevens (pseudonym for J Jeremy Bentham)
  • The Zeldan, by William Emms
  • The SCI, by William Emms
  • Circus of Destiny, by Ben Steed
  • The Elite, by Barbara Clegg
  • The House That Ur-Cjak Built, by Andrew Stephenson
  • The Nightmare Country, by Stephen Gallagher
  • The Place Where All Times Meet, by Colin Davis
  • The Rogue TARDIS, by Barbara Clegg
  • The Romanoids, by Geoff Lowe
  • The Six Doctors, by Robert Holmes
  • The Underworld, by Barbara Clegg
  • Way Down Yonder, by Lesley Elizabeth Thomas

Sixth Doctor

Planned 1986 serials

When Doctor Who was put on hiatus following Series 22 in 1985, several scripts were already being prepared with others in the story-outline stage. All of these scripts were abandoned to make way for The Trial of a Time Lord, when the series resumed in September 1986.

Three of these– The Nightmare Fair, The Ultimate Evil, and Mission to Magnus—were subsequently novelized by Target Books appearing from 1989.

Yellow Fever, and How to Cure It was a three-episode story by Robert Holmes that would have taken place in Singapore and featured the Autons as the monsters with either the Rani, the Master, or both appearing. Holmes reportedly only completed a story outline before Series 23 was canceled.[25]

Gallifrey was a Pip and Jane Baker script that reportedly would have dealt with the destruction of the Doctor's aforementioned home planet; this script was replaced by the Trial of a Time Lord arc,[25] while the concept of Gallifrey's destruction was briefly revived for the proposed interregnum feature film version of Doctor Who before being incorporated into the Doctor's backstory beginning in the 2005 series.[26]

Other stories put forward for Series 23 included The Hollows of Time, a two-episode story by Christopher H. Bidmead;[27] a two-episode script of an unknown title submitted by Bill Pritchard;[27] and The Children of January, a two-episode script by Michael Feeney Callan which was submitted in competition against Pritchard's script for the final available serial of the series.[27]

Several of these stories are to be adapted by Big Finish Productions for their The Lost Stories audio series. These include The Nightmare Fair, Mission to Magnus and The Hollows of Time, as well as lesser known stories, Leviathan, Point of Entry and The Macros (originally titled The Macro Men).

Trial of a Time Lord candidates

Several scripts were commissioned for possible use as the third, four-episode segment of the Trial of a Time Lord story arc, a position ultimately taken by Terror of the Vervoids.

  • Attack from the Mind by David Halliwell, set on the planet Penelope, which went through several drafts in consideration of becoming a segment of the Trial arc but was ultimately dropped.[28]
  • The Second Coming a two parter by Jack Trevor Story set alongside Halliwell's story that was likewise ultimately dropped.[29]
  • Pinacotheca (aka The Last Adventure) by Christopher H. Bidmead.[28]
  • Paradise Five (aka End of Term) by P.J. Hammond, creator of Sapphire and Steel. Paradise Five would have seen the Doctor and new companion Mel going undercover to expose sinister doings on a holiday pleasure planet.[30]

Paradise 5 was adapted for audio as part of Big Finish Productions' Lost Stories series. The trial elements are removed and Mel has been replaced with Peri. P.J. Hammond would later become a writer for Torchwood.

Mel introduction story

According to his book Doctor Who: The Companions (published at about the time Trial of a Time Lord was broadcast), series producer John Nathan-Turner intended to chronicle the Doctor's first meeting with Melanie Bush in a later episode,[31] presumably during Series 24.[citation needed] The subsequent dismissal of Colin Baker from the role of the Doctor rendered this potential storyline moot, although the later novel Business Unusual would attempt to fill in this gap in the show's continuity.[32]

Other Sixth Doctor stories

  • Untitled, by Eric Pringle
  • Untitled, by Robin Squire
  • League of the Tancreds, by Peter Grimwade
  • Leviathan (aka Livanthian), by Brain Finch (released as part of Big Finish's Lost Stories in January 2010)
  • The Guardians of Prophecy (aka The Place of Serenity), by Johnny Bryne
  • Hex, by Peter Ling and Hazel Adair (will be renamed Hexagora and released as part of Big Finish's Lost Stories in November 2011)
  • The First Sontarans, by Andrew Smith
  • Dark Labyrinth, by David Banks[disambiguation needed ]
  • Doomwraiths, by Philip Martin
  • The Ghost Planet, by Robin Squire
  • Iceberg, by David Banks
  • Space Sargasso, by Philip Martin
  • Valley of Shadows, by Philip Martin

Seventh Doctor

Shrine

Writer Marc Platt proposed a serial for Series 26 inspired by Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace,[33] concerning aliens looking for their God-King in Tsarist Russia. His idea was rejected in favour of a story that became Ghost Light.

Season 27 and beyond

Before the original Doctor Who series reached its conclusion, some plans had been made for a proposed Season 27.

  • The opener[34] was to be Earth Aid by Ben Aaronovitch, a space opera featuring a race of samurai insect-like aliens called the Metatraxi.[35][36] Earth Aid was to open with Ace in the captain's chair of a starship,[34][35] and the story would concern the politics of humanitarian aid.[35] The story was originally conceived as a stage play entitled Doctor Who: The Ultimate Adventure[34] and War World.[35] The Metatraxi were later used in Lawrence Miles' spin-off novel Alien Bodies.[37]
  • Ice Time, written by Marc Platt, was to feature Ice Warriors in 1960s London,[34][38] and would have seen the departure of Ace to the Prydonian Academy to become a Time Lord.[34][38][39] The story was to introduce a character with underworld connections who was intended to become a recurring character similar to the Brigadier.[34][38] The plot would have featured an Ice Warrior's armour in the London Dungeon and two reincarnated Warriors continuing a long rivalry. Platt also intended to have bikers being controlled by the Ice Warriors (and wearing similar helmets), scenes on a terraformed pastoral Mars, and a more mystical bent to the aliens while deepening their history.[40] Marc Platt has revealed that the name Ice Time was "only ever invented for an article in Doctor Who Magazine."[41]
  • Crime of the Century was to have been written by Andrew Cartmel,[34] and would have introduced a cat burglar/safecracker as the next companion.[34][38] The story was also intended to feature drug smuggling and a house on Earth as a base for the Doctor,[34] ideas which Cartmel would use in his Virgin New Adventures novel, Cat's Cradle: Warhead.[42]
  • Alixion by Robin Mukherjee,[34][43] in which the Doctor would be lured to an isolated asteroid to play a series of life-or-death games and would have regenerated at the end of the story.

Other serials under consideration, submitted, or commissioned included:

Big Finish Productions has produced audio adaptations of several of the Season 27 scripts as part of their Lost Stories releases. The safecracking companion (who was never named during the planning for Season 27) has been named Raine Creevey and she is portrayed by Beth Chalmers.[45]

The Dark Dimension

For the series' 30th anniversary in 1993, BBC Enterprises planned a made-for-TV movie titled The Dark Dimension. The film was to feature an alternative timeline in which the Fourth Doctor never regenerated, and involve cameo appearances for the other remaining Doctors.[46] The writers intended Rik Mayall to play the part of the villain, Hawkspur.[47]

The production did not occur, in part due to problems between the BBC and BBC Enterprises, and the difficulty in coordinating the short appearances of the other actors. Instead, the anniversary was celebrated with the light-hearted (and widely regarded as non-canonical) charity special, Dimensions in Time.[48]

Other Seventh Doctor stories

  • Lungburrow, by Marc Platt (released as a New Adventure in 1997)

Eighth Doctor

Leekley stories

Early in the process that was to lead to the 1996 Doctor Who film, Universal Television had Amblin Entertainment produced a writers' bible which detailed John Leekley's proposed pilot and episodes of a new series.[49] The new series would have established a new continuity rather than following on from the classic series,[49] and the bible reused many elements from the classic series. It is unclear whether clearance could have been obtained for all the episodes detailed, as the costs would likely have fallen to the BBC.[49]

The pilot was to feature the half-human Doctor seeking his father, Ulysses, through various time periods—contemporary Gallifrey (where Borusa dies and is merged with the TARDIS, and the Master becomes leader of the Time Lords), England during the Blitz, Ancient Egypt, and Skaro (where the Daleks are being created).[50] A writer for Doctor Who Magazine, when reviewing the Revisitations boxset from 2010 (which included special editions of "The Talons of Weng Chiang", "The Caves of Androzani", and the TV Movie), described the proposed idea as "a self-mythologizing guff".

Other proposed episodes in the bible included The Pirates, in which the Doctor teamed up with Blackbeard,[51] and several remakes of stories from the classic series, including

Earlier versions of the bible included, among them:

Leekley's scripts were not well-received at Amblin or elsewhere; and in September 1994, he was removed from the project.[56]

Ninth Doctor

The New Team/Pompeii

Conceived by Paul Abbott, this episode was intended for episode 11 of series 1. With Jack Harkness having joined the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler, Rose feels left out. But when they land in Pompeii in 79 AD, Jack discovers that Rose's life has been manipulated by the Doctor in an experiment to create the perfect companion. Abbot's commitment to Shameless and other projects led to him dropping out of the episode and Russell T Davies took over, before scrapping the idea and writing "Boom Town" in its place.[57]

Tenth Doctor

For Series 2 of 2006, an untitled episode 2 set at Buckingham Palace, concerned Queen Victoria getting an alien insect in her eye.[citation needed] For the same series, episode 11 involved a villain who has discovered how to drain things of their beauty, and has reduced his planet to a sterile grey landscape.[citation needed]

The 1920s

The revived Doctor Who series was to feature a script by Stephen Fry, set in the 1920s. Rumours appeared on the BBC's websites shortly after the airing of the new Series 1[58] and the story was pencilled in as the tenth episode of Series 2.[11] According to a video diary entry by David Tennant, Fry attended the very first cast read-through for Series 2, indicating that his script was still under consideration at that point.[59] Due to budgetary constraints, the episode was moved to Series 3 and replaced by Fear Her.

The story was subsequently abandoned, as Fry did not have spare time[60] for the rewriting necessary to replace Rose with Martha.[11] Fry said, "They asked me to do a series[61] and I tried, but I just ran out of time, and so I wrote a pathetic letter of "I'm sorry I can't do this" to Russell Davies."[62]

Century House

A "companion-lite" episode, Century House was written by Tom MacRae for Series 3 of the revised show.[6] The Doctor was to appear on a live broadcast of Most Haunted, investigating a house haunted by the "Red Widow", with Martha Jones watching at home as a framing device. The episode did not fit into the production schedule, and was reworked such that the show was watched by Donna Noble and her mother Sylvia.

Due to dissatisfaction with the premise, and to avoid two comedic episodes in the same series, the episode was dropped and replaced with Russell T Davies' Midnight.[6]

The Suicide Exhibition

During the Second World War, a Nazi task force assaults the Natural History Museum in London, which has been overrun by monsters. Later action would have involved the discovery of a secret chamber beneath the museum.[citation needed]

This episode was written by Mark Gatiss and planned to air in the fourth series of Doctor Who, but was replaced by The Fires of Pompeii.[citation needed] Elements of the story were later reused in Stephen Moffat's The Big Bang, the finale of Series 5.

2008 Christmas special untitled

On Christmas Eve, an alien creature attaches itself to author J.K. Rowling. Suddenly, the real world is replaced by a magical reality influenced by the writer's own imagination. The Doctor must battle witches and wizards to reach Rowling and put the world to rights.[63]

A Midwinter's Tale

A grandmother is trapped in a posh hotel with her unruly family. Wishing that they'd all just disappear, she storms out of their suite to fetch some ice, only to find the corridors deserted. Returning to her rooms, she discovers that her family has indeed disappeared—but so has all of humanity. Finally, she comes upon the TARDIS and the Doctor. Investigating, they discover eight-legged centaur-like creatures abroad in London. It transpires that aliens from another dimension, the Shi'ar, have frozen time on Earth in order to hold a festival celebrating the marriage of their queen. The life of the grandmother's family becomes endangered, culminating in a race through secret tunnels beneath Buckingham Palace.[citation needed]

Television spin-offs

During its run, several Doctor Who spin-offs have been proposed, including one featuring Professor George Litefoot and Henry Gordon Jago from The Talons of Weng Chiang,[64] and a children's show featuring "Young Doctor Who" which was vetoed by Russell T Davies and replaced by The Sarah Jane Adventures.[65] The following is the remainder of the proposed but eventually cancelled spin-off productions of the series:

The Destroyers

In the mid-1960s, Dalek creator Terry Nation wrote a 30-minute teleplay entitled The Destroyers as a possible pilot episode for an American-produced spin-off of Doctor Who. Like Doctor Who, the untitled series would have had a serial format and focus on the adventures of the SSS, an organization that finds itself battling the Daleks. Lead characters included agents Captain Jack Corey, David Kingdom, his sister Sara Kingdom, and an android named Mark Seven.

Although the show went unproduced, elements of this teleplay (and in particular, Sara Kingdom) was earlier used in The Daleks' Master Plan.[66] Big Finish Productions released an audio adaptation in December 2010 as part of their Lost Stories series, packaged with The Prison in Space.[9]

Nelvana cartoon series

Concept art of the planned Doctor Who animated series by Nelvana

In the 1980s, a cartoon series was planned by Canadian animation house Nelvana which was to feature an unspecified Doctor who incorporated elements of various BBC series Doctors.

Concept art was prepared depicting several possible versions of the Doctor as well as K-9, an unnamed companion, Daleks, Cybermen and few new characters but the project did not proceed further and no pilot was produced.[67]

K-9 and Company (Series 1)

Elisabeth Sladen was approached to return to the series as Sarah Jane Smith, but resisted the offer.[68] Following the outcry after K-9 was removed from the show, producer John Nathan-Turner proposed a spin-off featuring the two characters.[68]

A single episode, "A Girl's Best Friend", was produced as a pilot for a proposed series, and broadcast by BBC1 as a Christmas special on 28 December 1981, but the series was not taken up. The basic premise of a series centered on Sarah Jane Smith was reused in the Sarah Jane Smith audio series and in The Sarah Jane Adventures just over 25 years later.

Rose Tyler: Earth Defence

When it was decided that Billie Piper would leave the series at the end of Series 2, executive producer and head writer Russell T Davies considered giving her character Rose Tyler her own 90-minute spin-off production, Rose Tyler: Earth Defence, with the possibility of such a special becoming an annual Bank Holiday event.

The special would have picked up from Rose's departure in Doomsday in which Rose joins the Torchwood Institute of a parallel Earth and the title is a play on what the Doctor says when she tells him. The special was officially commissioned by Peter Fincham, the Controller of BBC One, and assigned a production budget.

Davies changed his mind while filming Piper's final scenes for Series 2 of Doctor Who, later calling Earth Defence "a spin-off too far" and deciding that for the audience to be able to see Rose when the Doctor could not would spoil the ending of Doomsday, and the production was cancelled. Davies said Piper had been told about the idea, but the project ended before she was formally approached about starring in it.[69] The plot element of Tyler working with Torchwood to defend the earth would be revisited towards the end of Series 4 in 2008.

Proposed films

In the mid-1960s, two motion pictures starring Peter Cushing were produced based upon the television series. Since then, there have been periodic further attempts to adapt Doctor Who as a feature film.

The Chase

Cushing's human (as opposed to Time Lord) version of the character, Dr. Who, appeared in two films—Dr. Who and the Daleks (a major box-office success in America,[citation needed] long before the television series aired there, and based upon The Daleks) and Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150 AD (based upon The Dalek Invasion of Earth). The second film failed to replicate the box-office success in America of the first film, and as a result plans for a third Cushing film—an adaptation of The Chase[dubious ]—were cancelled.[70]

Doctor Who Meets Scratchman

An artist's impression of a poster for Doctor Who Meets Scratchman. Featured in Doctor Who Magazine #379, artwork by Brian Williamson

During spare time in filming, Tom Baker and Ian Marter (who played Harry Sullivan in the series and later novelised several Doctor Who scripts for Target Books) wrote a script for a Doctor Who film, Doctor Who meets Scratchman.

The script, sometimes titled Doctor Who and the Big Game,[71] saw the Doctor encounter the Daleks, meet the Devil known as Harry Scratch or Scratchman, robots known as Cybors, scarecrows made from bones, the Greek god Pan, and at times Vincent Price and Twiggy were associated with the production to play as the villain Harry Scratch and a possible new female companion after Elisabeth Sladen left the TV series.[72] The finale of the film was to have taken place on a giant pinball table, with the Doctor, Harry and Sarah dodging balls as well as battling Daleks on the board.

During his tenure as the Fourth Doctor, Baker repeatedly tried to attract funding for the film. At one point, he received substantial donations from fans, but after taking legal advice was forced to return them. The plans were eventually dropped.[72]

A feature article about the film was featured in Doctor Who Magazine issue 379 including the full screenplay of the story.

Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen

During the Fourth Doctor era, future Doctor Who script editor Douglas Adams at one point prepared a submission for a Doctor Who film, Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen.[73]

Elements of Krikkitmen were used in the Key to Time story arc, for which Adams wrote a story, and Krikkitmen was reworked as the third Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book Life, the Universe and Everything.[73]

Lacuna film proposals (1987-1994)

As the original Doctor Who series was nearing its end and continuing during the first interregnum (1989–1996), numerous attempts were made to adapt the series for the big screen for the first time since the Peter Cushing films of the 1960s. Jean-Marc Lofficier, in his book The Nth Doctor, profiles a number of film proposals, some of which came close to being produced. Ultimately, however, the only film version of Doctor Who (other than the two Cushing films) produced to date has been the 1996 made-for-TV film which was developed as a continuation of the TV series rather than a reboot or reimagining of the concept.[74] At one point, the film had the full working title, Doctor Who: The Last of the Time Lords.

Among the script proposals profiled by Lofficier are several submissions by Space: 1999 alumnus Johnny Byrne, plus others by Robert DeLaurentis, Adrian Rigelsford, John Leekley, Mark Ezra and Denny Martin Flinn.[74]

See also

  • The Lost Stories

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Sullivan 2006a.
  2. ^ Sullivan 2006b.
  3. ^ Sullivan 2006c.
  4. ^ Sullivan 2006d.
  5. ^ a b Dixon 2006.
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  11. ^ a b c d e Sullivan 2006f.
  12. ^ Foster, Chuck (2011-10-31). "The Prison in Space". Doctor Who News Page. http://www.doctorwhonews.net/2011/10/dwn291011173008-prison-in-space.html. 
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  19. ^ a b Sullivan 2004a.
  20. ^ a b Sullivan 2004b.
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  25. ^ a b Howe, Stammers & Walker 1993, pp. 207–208.
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  32. ^ Russell, Gary (1997), Business Unusual, BBC Books, ISBN ISBN 0-563-40575-9 
  33. ^ Ghost Light
  34. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Owen 1997.
  35. ^ a b c d Molesworth 2007, 26:00.
  36. ^ Sullivan 2007b.
  37. ^ Miles, Lawrence (1997), Alien Bodies, BBC Books, ISBN ISBN 0-563-40577-5 
  38. ^ a b c d Kuzmarskis 1999a.
  39. ^ Molesworth 2007, 29:40.
  40. ^ Doctor Who Magazine #306
  41. ^ Vortex Magazine Issue 14 (page 15)
  42. ^ Cartmel, Andrew (1992), Cat's Cradle: Warhead, Virgin Books, ISBN ISBN 0-426-20367-4 
  43. ^ Molesworth 2007, 35:00.
  44. ^ a b "Bat Granny" 2007.
  45. ^ "The 'missing' Season 27 gets underway at last", Doctor Who Magazine Issue 420, London: Panini Magazines, 2010 .
  46. ^ Kuzmarskis 1999b.
  47. ^ Hickman 2006b, p. 29.
  48. ^ Sullivan 2007a.
  49. ^ a b c Segal & Russell 2000, p. 42
  50. ^ Segal, Russell & 2000 pp64-67
  51. ^ a b c d Segal & Russell 2000, p. 53
  52. ^ Segal & Russell 2000, p. 54
  53. ^ Segal & Russell 2000, p. 60
  54. ^ a b c d e f g Segal & Russell 2000, p. 55
  55. ^ a b c Segal & Russell 2000, p. 56
  56. ^ Segal & Russell 2000, p. 68
  57. ^ Doctor Who Magazine #360.
  58. ^ BBC News 2005.
  59. ^ Tennant 2006.
  60. ^ Lyon 2006.
  61. ^ It's unclear what Fry meant by "series", which has several different meanings in the UK pertaining to television production.
  62. ^ Oatts 2007.
  63. ^ Jen Blackburn (17 September 2008). "Dr exterminates role for Rowling". The Sun. http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/tv/article1697812.ece. Retrieved 14 August 2011. 
  64. ^ Cornell, Day & Topping 2003b.
  65. ^ Russell 2006, p. 252.
  66. ^ Peel & Nation 1988, pp. 195–196.
  67. ^ Lofficier, Jean-Marc (1997), The Nth Doctor, London: Virgin Publishing, p. 9, ISBN 0-426-20499-9 
    Bailey, Shaun (Producer); Kalangis, Johnny (Director) (2004) (QuickTime or Windows Media). The Planet of the Doctor, Part 6: Doctor Who & Culture II (Documentary). Toronto: CBC Television. http://www.cbc.ca/planetofthedoctor/videos.html#. Retrieved 9 April 2009. 
    "Planet of the Doctor". CBC Television. http://www.cbc.ca/planetofthedoctor/tb_gallery.html. Retrieved 9 April 2009. [dead link]
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  71. ^ Bettoli-Lotten 2007.
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  73. ^ a b Gaiman, Dickson & Simpson 2003.
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Bibliography

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