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If even half of these happened, Doctor Who would've been quite different indeed.
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00:00It's no secret that TV shows like Doctor Who chop and change a lot between the scripting
00:05phase and the end result. And Doctor Who is no exception to this rule. While some of these
00:09amendments are minor, like the companion standing a centimetre to the left, or there's seven Daleks
00:15in the scene instead of six, or David Tennant appears, because he often does do that, some
00:19was so huge that they would have changed the course of the show. And so, with that in mind,
00:24I'm Ellie with WhoCulture, here with ten Doctor Who deleted scenes that would have changed
00:30everything.
00:32Number 10. A load of pants in the Shakespeare code.
00:35In this underrated Series 3 adventure involving Big Billy Shakespeare, witches, and a missing
00:40play, a subtle piece of comedy plays out. Martha, who is head over heels for the Doctor,
00:46is left embarrassed when he obliviously offers to share a bed with her. It's cringy enough
00:50as it is, but unfortunately for poor Miss Jones, this scene was nearly a lot worse.
00:56The original version saw the tenth Doctor stripped down to his undies, no, no, really, before getting
01:02into bed. This makes the situation a million times more embarrassing for Martha, and for
01:07the audience watching at home. Thankfully, the scene was rewritten, because the creators
01:11deemed it inappropriate. You don't say.
01:14Ten already gets a ton of flack for his treatment of Martha, so just imagine what the backlash would
01:19have been to him showing off his budgie smugglers right in front of her. Considering the more
01:24sensitive world we live in today, what might have seemed like harmless comedy in 2007 could
01:30have seriously come back to bite the show in the… well, you know where. You almost saw it.
01:35Number 9. Playing Capaldi off in The Zygon Inversion.
01:39Peter Capaldi is, not to mince words, a bloody good actor. Capable of comedy, drama, and
01:46everything in between, the Scot commands the screen in everything he does, and his time
01:51as the Doctor was no exception. Perhaps his finest piece of acting came in the Series 9
01:56episode The Zygon Inversion. During a tense standoff between Kate Stewart and a Zygon disguised
02:02as Clara, the Twelfth Doctor unleashes a tirade against them both, all about the dangers and
02:07futility of war. It's a moving, timeless speech, framing conflict as a pointless endeavour
02:13while promoting the positives of diplomacy. Capaldi delivers every line perfectly,
02:18balancing the character's rage with the guilt of the Doctor's past actions on the battlefield.
02:23But as good as the finished product is, more of this monologue exists. According to writer
02:27Peter Harness, the speech was scripted to be way longer than it actually was, with sections of it
02:33cut from the final episode. Capaldi himself read some of the dropped lines at a convention in New
02:38Zealand in 2015. You can have too much of a good thing, though. The speech is perfect as it is,
02:45and an elongated version would have risked ruining one of the greatest moments in the show's history.
02:50Number 8. This is the BBC in The Keys of Marinus.
02:54First Doctor serial, The Keys of Marinus, isn't about our heroes being locked out of their houses,
03:00but rather a quest to restore a supercomputer. It also very nearly revealed a key part of the
03:05Doctor's origin story. In an early version of the story, the Doctor revealed why he and
03:10granddaughter Susan were on Earth during the events of An Unearthly Child, the very first
03:14Doctor Who serial, and why he was in a bit of a grump during that time. The TARDIS scanner was
03:19broken,
03:20typical, and it was only showing images in black and white. So who does the Doctor turn to in his
03:25time of need? Why, the British Broadcasting Corporation, of course. The Doctor was on Earth,
03:30visiting the BBC, seeking help to fix the TARDIS scanner. He would, however, find them
03:35infernally secretive. This is all kinds of meta, especially when you take into account that the
03:41Keys of Marinus is in black and white, not colour. Revealing that the Doctor had visited the actual
03:46BBC would have been a bonkers idea, but this sequence was removed before filming. Probably for the best.
03:53Number 7. Wardrobe Malfunction in Twice Upon a Time
03:57Sticking with the first Doctor now, and his reinvention at the hands of David Bradley.
04:02In the 2017 Christmas special Twice Upon a Time, the twelfth Doctor meets his original self,
04:08as played by Bradley. The two have a chin wag, rescue a soldier, and then go their separate ways
04:13to regenerate into a new form. Regeneration is the subject of this entry, as Twice Upon a Time
04:19almost answered a question about the process that had gone unanswered for decades.
04:23When the first Doctor regenerated into the second Doctor in the tenth planet, he famously changed
04:29clothes too. This has been a question mark for all this time, but Twice Upon a Time almost explained
04:35it away. Writer Stephen Moffat confirmed this in an interview, but he never actually revealed what
04:40the answer was going to be, because the scene was cut. This could have potentially been a huge deal,
04:45revealing something about regeneration that we didn't know before, while also solving a decades-old
04:51plot hole. Of course, now that we've seen the thirteenth Doctor's regeneration also feature a
04:56clothes change, maybe some answers are imminent. Or maybe Neil Patrick Harris is just messing with us.
05:02Number 6. The Voice of Reason in The Bells of St. John
05:06The Bells of St. John is the episode where the Doctor finally meets the proper version of Clara
05:11Oswald, after running into two different incarnations of her. Jenna Coleman earning the triple paycheck
05:16there. What a boss! In the episode, the eleventh Doctor meets Clara in modern-day London,
05:21after she is given the TARDIS's phone number by a mysterious woman. That woman would turn out to be
05:27Missy, the latest incarnation of the Master, who first appeared in the next series. However,
05:32a deleted moment almost gave her a bigger part to play in this episode, in which she is merely
05:38referred to as the woman in the shop. Towards the end of the story, the Doctor would have received
05:42another phone call. Rather than trying to sell him insurance, the voice on the other end would have
05:47instructed him to trust this new version of Clara, and to take her with him. An alternate version of
05:52this scene would have had the voice telling the Doctor, run you clever boy, and save her. Echoing one of
05:58Clara's most iconic phrases. While Missy presumably wouldn't have been revealed here, incorporating her
06:04in such a direct way would have made a great tease for what was to come. Admittedly, this would have
06:09been
06:09totally unnecessary, which is likely why it was cut. Number 5. Liquid Courage in Father's Day.
06:17In Father's Day, Rose Tyler asks the Ninth Doctor to take her back to the day of her father's death,
06:23so she can be with him when he dies. Instead, she ends up saving him, creating a paradox with
06:28disastrous consequences. Later on, Rose's dad Pete does the right thing, and jumps in front of the car
06:34that was meant to kill him in the first place. But flinging yourself in front of a moving vehicle
06:39isn't an easy task. As such, Pete very nearly had some extra help, as he was at one point going
06:46to be
06:46shown taking a swig of wine. However, a lot of kids watched Doctor Who, and drawing a link between
06:51consuming alcohol and bravery was not a message the BBC wanted to send its young audience. This moment
06:56would have also changed how we viewed Pete's sacrifice, one of the strongest emotional beats of this
07:01series. Consequently, the wine scene was cut, though if you look closely, Pete can actually be seen
07:07taking a swig of drink right before his final conversation with Rose, so fragments of this
07:12scene did actually survive. Number 4. More Than Meets the Eye in Survival.
07:18Survival is perhaps the most ironically named Doctor Who serial of all time, as it was the final one to
07:24air during the show's original run. At one point in time, the serial was also set to drop this massive
07:30bombshell. Thank heavens it didn't, as fans would have been waiting almost two decades for a follow-up.
07:35The revelation in question would have come from the seventh Doctor, while in conversation with the
07:39Master at the very end of the serial. After a battle on the planet of the Cheetah People,
07:45yep, that's a thing, both characters were originally supposed to transport back to Earth,
07:49where the Master would accuse the Doctor of not being a Time Lord anymore. Shockingly,
07:53the Doctor would have revealed that his nemesis was right. He would go on to say that he had
07:59evolved into something new, and that he was now multi-talented. However, producer John Nathan
08:05Turner decided not to include these lines, feeling they were too explicit in how they hinted at a
08:10different past for the Doctor. It goes without saying that meddling with the Doctor's backstory
08:14would have huge ramifications for the show. That said, considering how little an impact the
08:19Timeless Child has had, maybe not. Number 3. Here Comes the Bogeyman in Hyde.
08:25The episode, eventually called Hyde, went through a surprising number of changes before it hit the
08:30small screen. Written by Luther creator Neil Cross, Hyde was originally called Phantoms of the Hex,
08:36which is a much cooler name, but let's not dwell on that. Instead of the crooked man-villain that
08:41ended up appearing in the actual broadcast, the episode almost contained a throwback to
08:46Gallifrey's distant past. Cross wanted the villain to be the Lost Lord, an ancient Time Lord
08:51locked in a prison called the Hex. The Lost Lord had been stuck there so long that he had become
08:56a myth, basically Gallifrey's very own bogeyman. So, the Doctor would have been seriously spooked
09:02when he learned that he was real. In the end, the plot was drastically changed to feature the two
09:08crooked men searching for each other in a 1970s mansion. While the end result was fine, imagine how
09:14much more exciting Hyde would have been if it had introduced a brand new Time Lord. Even after all
09:20these years, there's still so much about Gallifrey we don't know, so getting little nuggets like this
09:26every so often would go a long way towards making the planet more interesting. Also, Lost Lord sounds
09:31like a punk band, and that is exactly the sort of energy Doctor Who needs.
09:36Number 2. Brigadier Consequences in Battlefield
09:41Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, the Brigadier to his mates, was one of the most stable parts of Doctor
09:47Who's original run. Though he appeared in the Sarah Jane Adventures in 2008, his last proper
09:52appearance in Doctor Who was in the final season serial Battlefield, and this was very nearly his
09:58final appearance full stop. The original plan for this serial, as approved by Nicholas Courtney himself,
10:03would have seen the Brigadier sacrifice himself during a battle with the Destroyer of Worlds.
10:08He would have called in an airstrike against the creature, getting himself killed in the process.
10:12This would have changed so much about the show. Not only would we not have got the Briggs'
10:17appearances in the Sarah Jane Adventures, or potentially in the Big Finish audio dramas,
10:22but we would have had to accept that one of the most beloved characters in the entire series
10:26died a brutal death. Thankfully, the Brigadier's life was spared when the creators couldn't go through
10:31with it. Quite right too.
10:33Number 1. What's in the Pit in The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit
10:38Matt Jones' first and only Doctor Who credit is a highly underrated one, and first introduces us to
10:44recurring aliens, the Ood. Oh, and we also discover that the actual devil is real. But the Ood though,
10:50they're adorable! The action revolves around a planet orbiting a black hole, and the dangers that lie
10:56beneath its surface. Trapped under the planet is a horrifying beast called The Beast. Jeez guys,
11:02try a bit harder next time, eh? No, no, no, no. You don't get to name things. I'm the Doctor.
11:07I do the
11:07naming. The Pit wasn't always going to be Satan's humble abode, however. In fact, at one point,
11:12the creative team had absolutely no idea what was going to be down there. Many ideas were pitched as
11:17to who or what would be dwelling in the cave. Intriguingly, Davros, the creator of the Daleks,
11:23was considered for a time, as was the Doctor's mortal enemy, the Master. As we now know,
11:29both of these iconic villains would appear in New Who over the next few years. So just imagine how
11:34different Doctor Who would have been if one of these iconic enemies was just stuck in a hole
11:39somewhere. Considering how integral the Master would become to RTD's first run, including him here
11:45would have changed the course of the Tenth Doctor's tenure. It's a fascinating alternate timeline,
11:49that's for sure. And that concludes our list. If you think we missed anything, then do let us know
11:54in the comments below, and while you're there, don't forget to like and subscribe, and tap that
11:58notification bell so you never miss a Who Culture video ever again. I've been Ellie with Who Culture,
12:03and in the words of Riversong herself, goodbye, sweeties.
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