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Doctor Who has always balanced fright with family fun, but sometimes the writers push the boundaries a little too far. This is a countdown of dark moments, from gruesome deaths to unsettling creatures, that ended up on the cutting room floor.
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00:00Doctor Who is renowned for sending people scurrying behind the sofa,
00:03but it always has to tread the line between frightening and scarring kids for life.
00:08That doesn't stop the writers from pushing boundaries,
00:10but sometimes these darker moments are deemed too much
00:14and are removed at the scripting stage or even from the finished episode.
00:18So let's get spooky!
00:21I'm Ellie for Who Culture and this is 10 Dark Doctor Who Moments You Weren't Allowed to See.
00:27Number 10. Everybody Dies, New Earth
00:30Doctor Who stories where nobody dies are few and far between,
00:34with Stephen Moffat's first story, The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances, being a rare example.
00:39Just this once, everybody lives.
00:42But as fans have often joked, it wasn't just this once.
00:45From Rory to River Song to Osgood,
00:47loads of other Moffat characters have visited the God of Death and been resurrected in the years since.
00:53This inclination to save characters has changed several stories over the years.
00:56It was Moffat who persuaded Russell T. Davis to let Jenny live at the end of The Doctor's Daughter,
01:01and he also inadvertently prevented a much more downbeat ending to New Earth.
01:06Originally, The Doctor created a very different type of cure for the diseased patients,
01:10one which killed them all.
01:11He had set them free and it was their only form of release,
01:14is what Russell T. Davis explained in the episode's online commentary.
01:18For a story all about new beginnings, this would hardly have been the right note to end on.
01:22And so, once again, everybody lives.
01:25Which is just as well, because everybody dies doesn't quite have the same ring to it.
01:29Number 9. Forbidden Fury.
01:31Fury from the Deep.
01:33These days, fans can watch a new episode of Doctor Who as soon as it's released,
01:37whatever country they live in.
01:38And the version that appears on BBC iPlayer is the same as the one that appears on Disney+.
01:42But as you can probably imagine, this wasn't always the case.
01:46When classic series stories were sold abroad,
01:48broadcasters were free to cut material at their own discretion.
01:52So overseas viewers could end up watching a slightly different version of an episode to viewers in the UK.
01:57When 1968's Fury from the Deep was screened in Australia,
02:01censors removed some of the story's scariest scenes,
02:04including the sequence in episode 2 where Maggie Harris is attacked by Mr. Oak and Mr. Quill.
02:10It's a pretty disturbing moment,
02:11with the quietly menacing Oak and Quill creeping up on Maggie and effectively suffocating her.
02:16But if you watch Fury from the Deep in Australia, you wouldn't have seen it.
02:19All copies of the serial, including this one, were eventually junked.
02:23But ironically, because this scene was physically cut from the Australian film print,
02:27it's one of the only parts of the story that survives today.
02:30Uh, yay for censorship, I guess?
02:32Number 8. The Spindleman. It Takes You Away.
02:35In It Takes You Away, the Doctor and friends contend with flesh-eating moths,
02:39ribbons of the seven stomachs, whatever that means,
02:42and a sentient universe-craving company.
02:44However, the episode was originally meant to feature one more antagonist,
02:48the Spindleman, played by Britain's tallest man, Paul Sturgis.
02:52This snout-faced creature was an inhabitant of the anti-zone, like ribbons.
02:57In scenes which were filmed but cut from the finished episode,
03:00it stalked Ryan and Yaz, then was trapped by them.
03:02Certainly sounds and looks like a solid concept,
03:05but in practice, the team wasn't able to do it justice.
03:08It just didn't work, is what Chris Chibnall admitted in one interview,
03:11going on to say, it was great on the page, but it needed to be really big and really imposing,
03:16and somehow it didn't quite read on camera.
03:18Despite the Spindleman falling through a crack in time,
03:21It Takes You Away still has its fair share of skin-crawling moments.
03:24Just go back and find a shot of Ribbon's moth-ravaged carcass,
03:27and pay attention to the creature crawling out of his eye socket.
03:30Juicy stuff.
03:31Number 7. Macra Terror. Gridlock.
03:34Returning enemies in the early years of New Who included the Autons, the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Master, and the
03:41Macra.
03:41Previously seen in the now-missing 1967 serial The Macra Terror,
03:46these creepy crustaceans weren't exactly an obvious choice for a return.
03:51Russell T. Davis only brought them back because he wanted Gridlock to feature crab-like creatures,
03:55and there just so happened to be a suitable candidate in the show's back catalogue.
03:59The combination of a limited CGI budget and Gridlock not needing to focus on the monster
04:04means that the Macra end up literally blending into the background.
04:08However, they were originally set to have a more prominent role.
04:11RTD's early outline explored other parts of New New York besides the motorway,
04:16with fully grown adult Macra lurking in the oceans.
04:19Also cut from the episode was the gruesome concept of insect-like baby Macra,
04:24devouring drivers unfortunate enough to use the fast lane.
04:27It's one of those ideas that were simply too expensive to make a reality,
04:31which for anyone who doesn't like creepy-crawlies was probably for the best.
04:35Number 6. Vetoed Violence, the TV Movie
04:38Much like the Doctor Who of 2024, the 1996 TV movie was an American co-production,
04:45and needed to appeal to both UK and US audiences.
04:49In practice, this meant many things, including a more grounded approach to peril and violence.
04:53Nothing epitomises this more than the scene where the 7th Doctor steps out of the TARDIS in San Francisco
04:59and is immediately shot dead.
05:01That was all well and good for the US, but back in the UK,
05:04some of the more extreme moments of violence were deemed too shocking,
05:07and had to be removed in order for the movie to land a pre-watershed slot,
05:11and a 12 certificate rather than a 15.
05:14Specifically, the classification board ordered the removal of the gunfight that takes place prior to the TARDIS landing.
05:20About 40 seconds of material in total, and some of the more distressing parts of the Doctor's surgery.
05:26Oh, and a close-up of the master snapping Chang Li's neck was also taken out.
05:30Now, the uncut version was eventually broadcast in the UK in 1999,
05:35and has since been made available on home media,
05:38but curiously, the version currently on BBC iPlayer is the censored edit.
05:43Just another reason to support physical media, folks.
05:46Number 5. Emperor Explosion, the Parting of the Ways
05:49By the end of Series 1's Dalek,
05:52the lone pepperpot infused with humanity is something of a tragic figure,
05:56so much so that you actually feel sorry for it when it self-destructs.
05:59In contrast, the Dalek Emperor is a self-proclaimed god whose downfall is fully deserved,
06:04though his off-screen death doesn't give us the satisfaction of watching him die.
06:08But as the script for the Parting of the Ways reveals, this wasn't meant to be the case.
06:12Had the budget allowed for it, we'd have cut back to the Emperor as its casing divides into particles.
06:18This would have been followed by a close-up of the creature inside screaming its rage as it shrivels and
06:25turns to dust.
06:26Now, it's a real shame this didn't make it to scream, because who doesn't love a good villain death?
06:30What's more, all the close-ups of the Emperor were achieved practically,
06:34using the puppet originally created for Dalek.
06:36So there was potential to do a really cool effects shot,
06:40with the mutant dissolving in water or deflating like a balloon.
06:43Gruesome, yes, but ah, what could have been?
06:47Number 4. Noor's fate, Spyfall
06:49The Chibnall era shined a light on lesser-known historical figures like Ada Lovelace, Joseph Williamson and Mary Seacole.
06:57Appearing alongside Lovelace in Spyfall was Noor Inyat Khan, a British spy stationed in France during World War II.
07:04She helped the Doctor defeat the Master and the Kasavin before being returned to her own time,
07:10not long before her real-life capture and execution at the hands of the Nazis.
07:14Actress Aurora Marion revealed on Instagram that Noor's death was originally set to appear in the episode.
07:20The scene was scripted and even filmed, but never made it to screen.
07:23It's hard to say how it would have played out without seeing the scene for ourselves,
07:27but it was almost certainly cut because it was deemed harrowing and perhaps even distasteful.
07:31I mean, it does seem odd to have an episode celebrating a lesser-known historical figure
07:35and then end with them being gunned down in a concentration camp.
07:38Number 3. Corpse Machine, Frontios
07:41Christopher Bidmead's third and final Doctor Who script revolves around a planet that supposedly buries its own dead.
07:48In reality, the Mavity-manipulating Tractators are to blame,
07:52using their powers to pull the colonists into the Earth for use in their nefarious schemes.
07:57Quite what this entails isn't clear.
07:59We learn that their excavation machine requires a living mind to operate.
08:03In this case, the unfortunate Captain Revere.
08:05And there's a throwaway line about the Tractators needing bodies as well as minds.
08:09So we'll have to imagine how these bodies are actually utilised.
08:12This is a hangover from the draft scripts, which took the concept to a whole other level.
08:16Bidmead's original intention was for all Tractator technology to be constructed from human remains.
08:22The idea was deemed too grittily for Saturday tea time, but it was reinstated in the story's target novelisation,
08:29which describes the excavation machine as follows.
08:32It was a repellent site.
08:33A huge and hideous assembly of parts of human bodies shaped something in the form of a giant Tractator.
08:39It was a machine built from the dead.
08:41A machine made from corpses sounds more John Carpenter than Doctor Who,
08:45though it would have been interesting to see how this was portrayed with AT's budget and effects.
08:49Number 2. The original Flood, The Waters of Mars
08:52The Daleks, Cybermen and Weeping Angels might be Doctor Who's most iconic monsters,
08:57but the Flood definitely rivaled them in terms of being scary.
09:00With their cracked skin, black mouths and dead eyes,
09:03these water zombies pushed the show's boundaries more than any other creation in RTD1.
09:08They also proved a major challenge for the production team.
09:11Their original design was deemed too terrifying and had to be significantly toned down.
09:16Even then, there were concerns about going too far,
09:19to the point where the look of the zombies was changed midway through filming.
09:22The Waters of Mars co-writer Phil Ford has since recalled,
09:26it was the only time, I believe, that Russell saw dailies
09:29and went onto the studio floor to change something because it was too scary.
09:32Specifically, it was felt that the contact lenses used to make Andy and Tarek's eyes white
09:37made them too frightening.
09:38It was then decided that for Maggie Kane's transformation,
09:41actress Sharon Duncan Brewster would not wear them.
09:44Now, The Waters of Mars is already one of the darkest episodes of the revival,
09:48and these original designs would have cemented that reputation even further.
09:52Number 1. Davros' Dark Backstory, Journey's End
09:56When the Master returned in 2007, he came with a brand new backstory,
10:00conveyed in a tantalising flashback.
10:03And a similar thing very nearly happened when Davros returned the following year.
10:07Series 4 finale, Journey's End, originally featured a flashback to the Khaled Thal War,
10:12depicting Davros before his life-changing accident.
10:15Described in this iteration as a gaunt man in a medic's coat, Davros would have been shown
10:19experimenting on wounded soldiers with one thrashing in agony as he's injected with a syringe.
10:25We'd then have witnessed the explosion that changed his life forever.
10:29As described in the script, Davros, his head now bald red peeling,
10:33holding both hands over his face so he can't be seen, he's screaming.
10:37This scene was cut early on due to budget constraints, but even if it hadn't been,
10:41there's no telling whether a bloody wartime flashback featuring wounded soldiers
10:45and Davros' skin peeling off would have made it past the edit.
10:48That said, with Julian Bleach now playing a pre-accident version of the character on TV,
10:53Russell T. Davis could feasibly bring this scene to life in his new era.
10:57The entire concept of Dot and Bubble was one he envisioned in 2010,
11:00so he's not opposed to revisiting old ideas.
11:03So there are some of the dark moments that didn't make it on screen,
11:07but some of them actually did, and we've got a list of those for you too.
11:1010 Darkest Doctor Who Moments.
11:12Go check that out, and in the meantime, I've been Ellie for Who Culture,
11:15and in the words of Riversong herself, goodbye, sweeties.
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