10 Doctor Who Deleted Scenes That Should Have Been Left In

WhatCulture

Hey Doctor Who, why you deleting so much amazing Twelfth Doctor stuff?!

Transcript

00:00In a show like Doctor Who, there are plenty of ideas that never make it to the screen.

00:04Kate Stewart and Unit featured in early drafts of Flatline, for instance,

00:08and the Master wasn't always part of Spyfall.

00:10Some ideas get further and are cut after being filmed,

00:13and while not every deleted scene has made it into the public domain,

00:17some of the ones that have deserve to make it past the editor.

00:20I'm Ellie with Who Culture, here with 10 Doctor Who deleted scenes that should have been left in.

00:26Number 10. You get One Detour, Daleks in Manhattan

00:30Martha Jones doesn't really become a fully-fledged companion until well into Series 3.

00:35For the first six episodes, she's just a temporary TARDIS traveller.

00:39But it is easy to forget this, and that might be because a crucial scene was cut.

00:44At the end of Smith & Jones, the Doctor offers Martha a single trip.

00:47At the start of Gridlock, he stretches that definition to include a trip to the past

00:52and a trip to the future, before returning her home in The Lazarus Experiment.

00:56But first, Martha gets another trip back in time, to 1920s New York.

01:02Well, how come?

01:03Originally, an explanation was given on screen,

01:05in the form of a TARDIS interior scene cut from the start of Daleks in Manhattan.

01:10This lasts for almost two minutes, and sees Martha coaxing the Doctor into taking a cheeky detour.

01:16The scene was cut for two reasons.

01:17For time, and because it was felt that the episode had two openings.

01:21The TARDIS scene, and the scene outside the Statue of Liberty.

01:24With the TARDIS scene being less integral to the narrative, it was the one that had to go.

01:29Structurally, the episode probably works better for it.

01:32But it's a scene that really should exist in some form,

01:35given how important it is to Martha's journey.

01:37It would be a neat addition to the story, should it ever get novelised, for example.

01:42Number 9.

01:42You don't like Christmas?

01:44The time of the Doctor.

01:45Frustratingly few deleted scenes have been released from the 11th Doctor's era,

01:50but we do have a short clip from his final story to enjoy.

01:54The scene in question comes from the beginning of the episode,

01:56and takes place outside Clara's block of flats,

01:59which, fun facts, was one of the locations used for Rose Tyler's home at the Powell Estate.

02:03It bridges the gap between Clara's reunion with her boyfriend in the TARDIS,

02:07and the moment she introduces him to her family.

02:10On the surface, it's pretty superfluous, offering nothing more than a few extra jokes about Clara's Christmas dinner and the Doctor being naked.

02:17But on closer inspection, this scene has lots going for it.

02:21For one thing, it contains the only reference to Christmas crackers in the first half of the story,

02:26laying the groundwork for the role they'll play in the third act.

02:30It also features some pretty impressive directorial flourishes,

02:33such as the unusually low opening shot which frames Matt Smith's sonic screwdriver flick against the sunny skies.

02:38It's a lovely moment between the 11th Doctor and Clara.

02:42Given how little time they spend together during the rest of the story,

02:45and how short their time in the TARDIS was overall,

02:47we can't help but wish that this scene had been left in.

02:50Number 8. Chameleon Cameo – The Awakening

02:53Touted as the next big thing by producer John Nathan Turner,

02:57robotic companion Chameleon was swiftly exiled to the TARDIS following his debut.

03:02The prop's unreliability made it pretty much impossible to incorporate Chameleon into most stories.

03:07However, plans were afoot to briefly include him in an additional serial,

03:12namely Season 21's The Awakening.

03:14This appearance was limited to one scene and involved very little movement,

03:19thus working around the prop's limitations.

03:21It saw a suspicious Tegan encounter Chameleon fiddling around with the ship's innards.

03:26To avoid rehiring original voice actor Gerald Flood,

03:29the tones of Peter Davison and Mark Strickson were used instead.

03:32This was accounted for by Chameleon's chameleonic tendencies.

03:36The moment added nothing to the plot overall,

03:38and so when The Awakening was found to be significantly overrunning,

03:42it was an easy bit to cut.

03:43This had the unfortunate side effects of completely removing Chameleon's contribution to the story,

03:48however.

03:49Whether you love him or loathe him, Chameleon deserved better,

03:52and this scene would have helped give him a bit more of a presence during his short time on the show.

03:58Number 7. Rixton's Vone – Voyage of the Damned

04:01Voyage of the Damned was, at the time, the longest episode of the revived series by far,

04:06clocking in at 71 minutes.

04:08The record has since been beaten by The End of Time Part 2,

04:12The Day of the Doctor, Deep Breath, and The Power of the Doctor.

04:15Even so, the original edit was still deemed to be too long,

04:18and various cuts had to be made.

04:20One of the most puzzling omissions concerns Rixton's Slade,

04:23and his phone-like device, which was creatively named a Vone.

04:27When we first see Slade, he's using his Vone to instruct an unseen lackey.

04:31As a result, attentive viewers might have wondered

04:34why he didn't try to call for help when the ship was wrecked in a meteor shower.

04:38Originally, this question was accounted for,

04:40with Slade remarking to the other survivors that his Vone was no longer working,

04:45and the Doctor deducing that they therefore have no chance of sending an SOS.

04:49Speaking on the Series 4 DVD and Blu-ray box set,

04:52Russell T. Davis explained that those lines made the scene too complicated,

04:56but admitted that for the sake of clarity, they perhaps should have remained.

05:00And given how short the cut sequences were,

05:03less than 30 seconds combined, we can't help but agree.

05:06Number 6.

05:07Tenth Planet Reconstruction, Twice Upon a Time

05:10Twice Upon a Time is another one of those episodes that was notoriously over-length.

05:15Reportedly, the first edit ran for 90 minutes.

05:18It was longer than Dunkirk, Stephen Moffat recalled in one interview,

05:22and I mean the historical event, not the movie.

05:24Most of his missing material is yet to surface,

05:27though some of it was reinstated in Paul Cornell's 2018 novelisation of the story.

05:32Furthermore, the story's director, Rachel Talalay,

05:35has since reassured fans that nothing major was lost.

05:39Erm, there's one case that we'd beg to differ, however.

05:41The episode opens with a thrilling recap of the first Doctor's final story,

05:45The Tenth Planet, combining archive footage and newly shot material.

05:49As broadcast, this sequence features a mere handful of new shots.

05:54But as the accompanying episode of Doctor Who Extra revealed,

05:57much more of the story was re-enacted than what we saw on screen.

06:01Most tantalisingly of all, the revamped Mondassian Cybermen costumes from

06:05World Enough in Time and The Doctor Falls were pressed back into service,

06:09allowing the team to restage some of The Tenth Planet's action pieces on a 21st century budget.

06:14Sure, the montage as it stands is tighter and gets to the action quicker,

06:18but would it really have hurt to include just a few more seconds of the re-shot Tenth Planet?

06:23It would have made many a fan's Christmas.

06:26Number 5.

06:27Far more than just another Time Lord.

06:29Remembrance of the Daleks.

06:31As is now common knowledge,

06:32Seventh Doctor script editor Andrew Cartmel made it his mission

06:36to bring more mystery to the Doctor via the so-called Cartmel Master Plan.

06:41This would have revealed the Doctor to be a reincarnation of a being known as The Other,

06:46who, together with Rassilon and Amiga,

06:48played a vital role in the formation of Time Lord society.

06:51It would, in effect, have given him godlike status.

06:55The plan could never be fully realised due to the show's untimely cancellation in 1989,

07:00but various seeds were planted in the final stories of the show's original run,

07:05hinting that there was more to the Doctor than meets the eye.

07:08Most notorious of all is a line from Remembrance of the Daleks,

07:11that ended up on the cutting room floor,

07:13with the Doctor explicitly referring to himself as

07:15far more than just another Time Lord.

07:18It's a line that's gained such iconic status

07:20that you'd be forgiven for thinking it did appear on television.

07:23But alas, it did not,

07:25reportedly because producer John Nathan-Turner

07:27was concerned about its religious connotations.

07:30It absolutely should have remained in.

07:32Number 4.

07:33Cyber Surprise, Journey's End.

07:35The end-of-series cliffhanger became a staple of the first RTD era,

07:40with almost every finale leading into that year's Christmas special.

07:43Parting of the Ways had the Tenth Doctor's debut,

07:46Doomsday had Donna Noble's surprise appearance,

07:49Last of the Time Lords had the Space Titanic,

07:51and Journey's End had a soaking wet Doctor stripped down,

07:54just to his shirt, mind you, and mope around the TARDIS.

07:57But this wasn't always the way.

07:59In fact, as written and filmed,

08:01the episode's closing scene saw the Doctor inspector reading on the TARDIS scanner,

08:06while failing to notice two Cybermen creeping up behind him.

08:09What?

08:09This scene would have led directly into the next Doctor,

08:12with the brief appearance of the Cybermen explained as them falling through the vortex.

08:17As documented in the writer's tale,

08:19Russell T. Davis felt that it was important to end the series on an upbeat note.

08:23But Doctor Who magazine writer Benjamin Cook

08:25thought that this Cyber scene detracted from the tragic end to Donna's story.

08:30And on reflection, RTD agreed with him.

08:32Personally, I also agree.

08:34So, consequently, the cliffhanger was abandoned,

08:36and a new ending was shot many weeks later,

08:39during production of the next Doctor.

08:41RTD has since admitted that part of me thinks we should have done this,

08:45and it's not hard to see why.

08:47After all, who doesn't love a good

08:48What?

08:49What?

08:50What?

08:51Number 3.

08:52Clara's Theme.

08:53The Pilot.

08:53The 12th Doctor's guitar featured prominently across Series 9,

08:57but was mostly absent from Series 10,

09:00save for cameos in The Pyramid at the End of the World and Twice Upon a Time.

09:03It also made an off-camera appearance in Series Open at the Pilot,

09:07with the Doctor knocking out a few bars of Beethoven's Fifth,

09:10but originally, it was set to make a much more substantial appearance in the episode.

09:14During the montage that makes up the Doctor's It Means Life lecture,

09:18we see Bill and Heather bump into each other in the student bar.

09:21As scripted, this was part of a longer sequence,

09:24which saw the Doctor also present playing his guitar in the background.

09:28This led into another deleted scene where Bill asked the Doctor what he was playing.

09:32I forget, he tells her.

09:34However, to any eagle-eared fan,

09:36the tune is instantly recognisable as Clara's theme.

09:39This sequence was likely cut to make the Doctor's lecture and the episode as a whole more punchy,

09:44but it absolutely should have been included.

09:46It would have given the Doctor another chance to show off his guitar playing,

09:50while simultaneously playing tribute to Clara Oswald.

09:53I mean, what's not to love?

09:54Unless you're not a fan of Clara, in which case, just appreciate Murray Gold's music?

09:59Number 2. Old Agatha, the Unicorn and the Wasp.

10:02Sometimes, in spite of everything, whole subplots end up on the cutting room floor.

10:07This is one of those cases, and by far the biggest cut on this list.

10:11Originally, the Unicorn and the Wasp was framed with scenes of an old Agatha Christie on her deathbed,

10:16a narrative device the woman herself would no doubt have approved of.

10:20The first of these sees Christie recalling her encounter with the Doctor,

10:23but struggling to remember the details.

10:26I've written so many mysteries, she tells her nurse.

10:29Before I die, I have to solve mine.

10:31At the episode's end, things come full circle,

10:34with the Doctor and Donna returning to tell her the truth.

10:37These scenes appear on the Series 4 DVD and Blu-ray,

10:40with RTD recalling that they read very well on the page,

10:43but didn't work so well in the edit,

10:45making the story feel like it was taking place in the past tense.

10:49It's hard to argue with this reasoning,

10:51but it's a shame that they couldn't have been included somehow,

10:55perhaps as a prequel or a minisode.

10:57Deleted scenes featuring actors and sets otherwise absent from a whole story

11:01are always the most tantalising, don't you think?

11:03Number 1. Plague Doctor, the Woman Who Lived.

11:07In The Woman Who Lived, Ashilda is reunited with the Doctor

11:10800 years after they first met.

11:13But all is not well.

11:14Ashilda has come to feel trapped by her life of immortality,

11:17imploring the Doctor to take her with him.

11:20And after reading her diaries,

11:22specifically an entry about the devastating loss of her children during the plague,

11:26he begins to understand why.

11:28What you might not have realised is that the Doctor already knew

11:30about this tragic chapter of Ashilda's life,

11:33because he was actually there.

11:34This deleted cutaway shows Ashilda passing a plague doctor in the street.

11:39The figure remains silent, watching Ashilda as she goes before removing their mask,

11:44to reveal themselves as none other than the Doctor,

11:47looking much more bedraggled than usual.

11:49There are multiple reasons why this scene should have been left in.

11:52For starters, it adds more depth to Ashilda's story,

11:55and shows us a lesser-seen side of the Doctor too.

11:58It would have also allowed us to add another costume variant

12:01to the 12th Doctor's already substantial wardrobe.

12:04And one-off costumes are always the most exciting.

12:07Well, that's everything for this list, but fear not.

12:09There are plenty of other deleted scenes from Doctor Who,

12:12so why not check out 10 Doctor Who deleted scenes you need to see?

12:16In the meantime, I've been Ellie with WhoCulture,

12:18and in the words of Riversong herself,

12:20goodbye, sweeties.

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended