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Judi Dench as a companion and Peter Capaldi as a vampire? We were robbed!
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00:00There have been more episodes of Doctor Who than I've had hot dinners, and there have been even more that
00:05never made it to screens.
00:07Sometimes a script is too similar to others in development. Sometimes the writer has to drop out.
00:12Or, as is often the case for Doctor Who, the budget only comprises some blue tack and a piece of
00:17string, forcing plans to change.
00:19Hello everybody, Ellie here for Who Culture, and today we're going to talk about some of Doctor Who's most interesting
00:24unmade episodes.
00:26From sequels to prequels, and even an anniversary special that never saw the light of day.
00:32Number 20. Death to the Doctor
00:34Having worked on three Tenth Doctor stories and multiple installments of the Sarah Jane adventures,
00:40Gareth Roberts was one of the first writers Stephen Moffat approached when he took over as showrunner in 2010.
00:46Roberts would end up writing Series 5's 11th episode, The Lodger, a loose adaptation on a 2006 Doctor Who magazine
00:53comic strip,
00:54which saw the Tenth Doctor briefly move in with Mickey, and carnage ensued, as you would imagine.
01:00But at one stage, he was set to contribute an entirely different episode, titled Death to the Doctor.
01:05This would have been set on a Vegas-style planet obsessed with law enforcement,
01:10with the Doctor arrested for a minor offence and forced to fight a cyclops, hence the title.
01:14Another key element was a disgraced Sontaran called Scorm.
01:18It's a story that was just too costly to produce.
01:21Unsurprisingly, The Lodger was much more wallet-friendly, though its impact would be felt elsewhere.
01:26Most notably, Scorm would inspire the character of Strax, debuting in the following years A Good Man Goes to War.
01:33In the interim, the title would be used in modified form for Matt Smith's Sarah Jane adventure story, Death of
01:39the Doctor.
01:40See, it all worked out in the end.
01:42Number 19. The Nightmare Fair
01:45The classic Who season that changed the most from conception to broadcast was season 23,
01:51which, before becoming the serialised Trial of a Time Lord, comprised six standalone stories.
01:56The original opening story, The Nightmare Fair, would have brought back The Toymaker, 20 years on from his first appearance.
02:03Though played by original actor Michael Goff, the character would have been updated for modern audiences,
02:09operating in a world of arcade machines rather than playing cards and toy soldiers.
02:13Accordingly, his rematch with the Doctor would have taken place among the glitz and glamour of Blackpool.
02:19Yes, Blackpool.
02:21For those unaware, that's a seaside town on the west coast of England.
02:24The scripts were written and filming dates booked.
02:26The story was even set to be teased in season 22 finale, Revelation of the Daleks,
02:31which, as filmed, ended with the Doctor telling Perry,
02:34I'll take you to Blackpool.
02:35When the plan changed, the word Blackpool was removed,
02:38creating a very different kind of cliffhanger,
02:40namely a very jarring and weird one.
02:43Like most other unmade season 23 stories,
02:45The Nightmare Fair has subsequently been adapted for prose and audio,
02:49and The Toymaker would, of course, eventually return to television in the giggle.
02:53Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
02:56Number 18. Gawain and the Green Knight
02:58The 11th episode of Series 2 was originally assigned to national treasure Stephen Fry,
03:04who had first crossed paths with Doctor Who in 2002,
03:07starring in the webcast Death Comes to Time.
03:09Fry was given free reign to develop a story for the revived series.
03:13This was provisionally titled and set in the 1920s,
03:17a setting he had previously used for his 2003 film Bright Young Things.
03:21The script Fry ultimately ended up writing was reportedly a reworking of the Arthurian myth
03:26Gawain and the Green Knight,
03:28which in true Doctor Who style was revealed to have alien origins,
03:31and featured a scene of the TARDIS landing on a strange planet.
03:36Truly revolutionary stuff there, Stephen.
03:38Whether or not it was still set in the 1920s by this point is unclear.
03:42Either way, it was deemed too ambitious for a slot so late in production,
03:46and in what is surely one of the biggest downgrades in the show's history,
03:49was swiftly replaced by Fear Her.
03:51Initially pushed back to 2007,
03:53it was shelled for good when Fry proved unavailable for rewrites.
03:57He would later appear in Doctor Who as MI6 boss C in Spyfall,
04:02but is yet to write for the show.
04:04Number 17. The Prison in Space
04:06In classic Who, it was common practice for multiple scripts to be commissioned for a single slot,
04:12in case a particular story fell through.
04:15Various stories were prepped for the second Doctor's final season,
04:18including Dick Sharple's The Prison in Space.
04:21Less serious than other contemporary stories,
04:24it would have been set on a world where women rule and men are subordinate,
04:28and was full of highly questionable moments,
04:30such as a brainwashed Zoe being broken out of her trance by Jamie smacking her on the bottom.
04:35Yikes.
04:35This story was soon replaced by The Crotons,
04:38the first Doctor Who contribution from Robert Holmes,
04:41who would go on to become a prolific writer and script editor throughout the classic series.
04:45Some beef remained with Sharples,
04:47who felt he'd been betrayed by the production team.
04:50But all things considered, it's probably a good job this one didn't get made.
04:54For those nevertheless intrigued to experience The Prison in Space,
04:57a slightly less egregious audio version was released in 2010.
05:02Number 16. Patings
05:04Little is known about the cancelled stories of the most recent eras.
05:08We know that Orphan 55 originally started life as a Series 11 episode,
05:13set on an outer space safari park,
05:15and that Legend of the Sea Devils emerged out of a desire to include a pirate story in Flux.
05:19And then there's this one.
05:21Patings would have brought back one of the era's most iconic creations.
05:25The Pating.
05:26Yep.
05:26They were going to do a sequel to the Saranga Conundrum.
05:30God have mercy on our souls.
05:31The idea was to pull an Alien-slash-Aliens-style stunt,
05:35with this second story featuring the endlessly hungry creatures en masse.
05:39It's not clear why the story was abandoned,
05:41with Chris Chibnall merely saying,
05:43quote,
05:43we had it all worked out and we couldn't do it for one reason or another.
05:46Which probably means another case of the budget not quite stretching far enough.
05:50And considering the fairly impressive CGI of the Pating itself,
05:53you can see why.
05:54Is the Saranga Conundrum the most obvious story for a sequel?
05:57No.
05:58But the Pating was undeniably Series 11's most merchandisable monster,
06:03perfectly straddling the line between cute and scary.
06:06And hey, given how big LeBooBoo's are now,
06:08they were probably onto something there.
06:10Number 15.
06:11The Perfect Companion.
06:13The version of Series 1 that Russell T. Davis originally pitched to the BBC
06:17is fairly close to the one that ended up on screen.
06:20The one exception being Episode 11,
06:22which was always something of a blank slate.
06:25At a very early stage,
06:26it was going to be a historical,
06:28depicting the eruption of Vesuvius in Pompeii.
06:30This idea was deemed too expensive for 2005,
06:34though it would eventually reach screens in 2008.
06:36The slot was then offered to Russell T. Davis' friend
06:39and former colleague, Paul Abbott.
06:41He submitted a bold storyline,
06:43which would have revealed that Rose wasn't just an ordinary human,
06:46but the result of an experiment conducted by the Doctor
06:48in order to devise the Perfect Companion.
06:51Understandably,
06:52Russell T. Davis had concerns about how this would fit into
06:54the Doctor and Rose's wider characterisation.
06:57There were also shades of the Seventh Doctor's manipulation of Ace,
07:00which he felt to be repetitive and unoriginal.
07:02As it transpired,
07:03Abbott was too busy to write for Doctor Who anyway
07:06due to the success of his new drama,
07:08Shameless,
07:08and Episode 11 became the more thematically appropriate Boomtown.
07:12Still,
07:13the notion of a perfect companion would be great to see one day,
07:16providing it's part of a series arc
07:18and not a one-off storyline.
07:21Number 14.
07:22The Vampire Doctor
07:23After writing two universally acclaimed stories for RTD1,
07:28Father's Day and Human Nature and the Family of Blood,
07:31Paul Cornell never returned to Doctor Who.
07:33Talk about a mic drop.
07:34But he did pitch various stories for Stephen Moffat's era.
07:38One such story, proposed for the Twelfth Doctor,
07:41centred around a community of vampires living in contemporary London,
07:44riffing on Cornell's own Wilderness Years novel, Goth Opera.
07:48In a dramatic twist,
07:49one of the TARDIS team would have succumbed to the bloodsuckers partway through.
07:52Initially, this was Clara,
07:54but Moffat suggested instead having the transformation occur to the Doctor.
07:57There are shades of this idea in some Twelfth Doctor stories that were produced,
08:01with Series 9 featuring two communities of aliens living in London,
08:05the Zygons and the residents of Trap Street,
08:07and evil duplicates of both the Doctor and Clara.
08:10So it's not surprising that it never got made.
08:12Also, vampires or vampire-like creatures have featured in Doctor Who before,
08:16State of Decay, Smith and Jones, and the Vampires of Venice, among others.
08:20So perhaps there was a fear of retreading old ground.
08:23And let's be honest,
08:24Twilight had sort of killed the scare factor of vampires by 2014.
08:28Still, it's a pity.
08:29Jenna Coleman would have put in an impressive turn as Vampire Clara,
08:33but Peter Capaldi as a vampire doctor would have been something to behold.
08:37We were robbed!
08:38Robbed, I tell you!
08:40Number 13. The Cricket Men
08:42For Doctor Who, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas Adams wrote The Pirate Planet and Sharder,
08:49co-wrote City of Death, and script-edited Season 17.
08:52He also pitched the story to the show a couple of years earlier, in 1976.
08:56In typically outlandish Adam style, this centred around androids called Cricket Men,
09:02who were trying to free their home planet, Cricket, from a Time Lord prison,
09:06by constructing a key from items associated with the Earth game Cricket,
09:10a sentence that only a show like Doctor Who could churn out, quite frankly.
09:13The Doctor and his companion become aware of this scheme during a test match at Lord's,
09:18when the Cricket Men steal the Ashes Trophy.
09:20Though it didn't result in a television commission, Adams didn't let The Cricket Men go,
09:25later attempting to get it made as a feature film.
09:27When this came to nothing, he used the story as the basis for his third Hitchhiker's book,
09:32Life, the Universe, and Everything,
09:34by which time the cricket opening device had become the Wicked Game.
09:38Meanwhile, he'd revisit the idea of a Time Lord prison in Sharder,
09:41which, in a cruel twist of fate, would also never reach screens.
09:44The Cricket Men finally saw the light of day as a novel in 2018,
09:48with James Goss working from Adams' original notes.
09:52Number 12. The Suicide Exhibition
09:54Mark Gatiss is New Who's most prolific guest writer,
09:58penning episodes for all of the first ten series, say for series three and four.
10:03His absence during this time wasn't for lack of trying.
10:05Gatiss actually developed another tenth Doctor story that never made it to screens.
10:10Inspired by a real-world phenomenon from the two world wars,
10:13whereby prized museum exhibits were substituted for items that could afford to be destroyed.
10:18This story comprised a treasure hunt in a London museum besieged by German soldiers and Bogmen zombies.
10:24Following an initial draft set in World War I,
10:27Gatiss was asked to give the story more of an Indiana Jones feel,
10:30with the action moved to World War II and the soldiers becoming Nazis.
10:34The resulting script, The Suicide Exhibition, was set to be produced as part of series four,
10:39constituting Donna's first trip back in time.
10:41However, it was ultimately replaced by The Fires of Pompeii.
10:44It was also briefly considered to become one of the 2009 specials, but this wasn't to be.
10:49Gatiss has recently expressed interest in doing some sort of adaptation,
10:53and given his long history with Big Finish,
10:55he was one of their first ever writers after all,
10:57it's surely just a matter of time till Doctor Who's own lost arc gets an audio version.
11:02Number 11. Sleep No More The Sequel
11:06Like the stories directly before it, Sleep No More was originally conceived as a two-parter,
11:11featuring businessmen trying to colonize sleep to increase productivity.
11:16One interaction involved two opposing factions,
11:18one who used sleep-eliminating technology and one who didn't.
11:22Another saw the Doctor discover this technology in part one,
11:25before going back in time to discover its origin in part two.
11:28When the story became a single-parter, writer Mark Gatiss,
11:32yep, him again, put some of his original ideas aside with the intention of developing a sequel,
11:36something he pitched for series 10.
11:38This saw the Doctor arrive on present-day Earth,
11:41where bankers were using a new technology to work longer hours,
11:44and thus make more money.
11:45Although the technology would have been different from that used by Rasmussen,
11:49its side effect, the creation of Carnivorous Sandmen, would have been the same.
11:53Upon realizing that series 10 could be his last chance to write for Doctor Who,
11:57Gatiss changed course, instead opting to do the story he'd always dreamed of,
12:01Ice Warriors on Mars.
12:03It's a shame because Sleep No More isn't the most popular episode ever,
12:06but a sequel might have helped fix that.
12:0910. The Leakley Bible
12:11If you thought the TV movie pushed the envelope for Doctor Who,
12:14think again, because it could have been a whole lot crazier.
12:18During the early days of the project, American writer John Leakley was tasked with creating
12:22a writer's Bible for a prospective season.
12:25Essentially a complete reboot, it reimagined the show as a sort of Greek myth,
12:29with the Doctor's former tutor Borusa, now his grandfather,
12:32and the Master, now his half-brother.
12:34Most of the episodes would have been remakes of memorable classic Who serials,
12:38but the pilot was slightly more original,
12:40opening with the Master becoming president of the Time Lords,
12:43the dying Borusa merging with the TARDIS,
12:45and the Doctor embarking on a quest to find his long-lost father, Ulysses.
12:48In the pilot alone, viewers would have been transported to war-torn London and ancient Egypt,
12:54before a showdown on Scarrow with Davros and the redesigned Spider Daleks.
12:58Leakley's ideas were met with a lukewarm response,
13:01which is probably for the best given that they would have taken a sledgehammer to 30 years of continuity.
13:06He was removed from the project, and had nothing to do with a TV movie that did end up on
13:10screens.
13:119. A Midwinter's Tale
13:13Before arriving at the next Doctor, Russell T. Davis considered various storylines for the 2008 Christmas special,
13:21including one set in a deserted London.
13:23This was inspired by the night he spent in the capital following the premiere for Torchwood Series 2.
13:28Walking around his hotel in the early hours, Davis was struck by how empty it felt,
13:33leading him to ponder,
13:34What if I was a dad who returned to his room to find his family gone?
13:37This idea was revisited in 2009, by which time the dad character had evolved into a gran who's gone away
13:43for Christmas with her family.
13:45Helen Mirren and Judi Dench were considered for the role, having remarkably both expressed interest in appearing in the show.
13:51Meanwhile, the creatures responsible for the disappearance were set to be eight-legged centaur-like aliens
13:56who have frozen Earth in a single second in order to stage a carnival.
14:00The storyline was abandoned, but elements of it ended up elsewhere.
14:04The notion of the Doctor teaming up with an older woman inspired Adelaide in the Waters of Mars,
14:08and the premise became the basis for the Sarah Jane adventure story, The Empty Planet.
14:138. The Chimes of Midnight
14:15A few Doctor Who audio dramas have inspired television episodes,
14:20namely Rob Shearman's Jubilee, which became Dalek,
14:23and Mark Platt's Spare Parts, which became Rise of the Cybermen and The Age of Steel.
14:27At one point, Shearman's spooky Christmas tale, The Chimes of Midnight,
14:30arguably the most acclaimed Big Finish release ever, was also in the running to be adapted.
14:35Released in 2002, the original starred The Eighth Doctor and his audio-only companion Charlie Pollard,
14:41and was set in an Edwardian country house where people are killed on the chime of every hour.
14:46The television version would instead have featured The Eleventh Doctor, Amy and Rory,
14:50with the action moved to a modern-day setting and the Christmas element dropped.
14:53Shearman attended read-throughs for Series 5, but felt he could never quite get the story to work,
14:59which is perhaps not surprising given the dark twists of the source material.
15:02As such, it was abandoned.
15:04Nice as it would have been for Chimes to reach a larger audience,
15:07a screen version would have potentially lessened its impact,
15:10so it's probably for the best that it never happened.
15:13Number 7. The Mutants of Planet 6767
15:16The current production team is equally as tight-lipped about unmade episodes as the last one,
15:21but one thing we have learned is that The Well wasn't always going to be a Midnight sequel.
15:26Prior to co-writing the episode with Russell T. Davis,
15:29Sharma Angel Walfall wrote a whole other script of her own.
15:32It was still set on a colony in the far future, but had an entirely different central idea.
15:36How might humans mutate under another world's sun?
15:39This version of the story would have been much more grounded in real science,
15:43harking back to the educational purpose of Doctor Who as laid out by its co-creator,
15:47Sidney Newman.
15:48It would also have required extensive CGI and prosthetics work.
15:52But with the Interstellar Song Contest already eating up much of the season's effects budget,
15:56this was deemed a step too far.
15:57Another key component was a love story,
15:59which jarred with the darker tone Russell T. Davis was after.
16:02As things turned out, pretty much every Season 2 story featured some tie to the past,
16:07so it's a shame this story wasn't produced.
16:09It would have been a breath of fresh air.
16:11Although, the episode we did get was pretty good too,
16:14so swings and roundabouts, I guess.
16:16Number 6.
16:17Genesis of the Cybermen
16:19Unlike the Daleks, the cyber origins have only been explored relatively recently,
16:24notably in the excellent and horrifying Series 10 finale,
16:27World Enough and Time and The Doctor Falls.
16:30However, the notion of a Cyberman origin story was first floated by their co-creator,
16:34Jerry Davis, in the early 1980s.
16:37Set on Mondas before the events of the Tenth Planet,
16:40Davis' storyline revealed the Doctor to have unwittingly played a part in the Cybermen's creation,
16:45leaving a powerful component behind when the TARDIS is accidentally sent forwards in time.
16:50Upon arriving in the future, he discovers that Mondas' king has used this device to turn his subjects into Cybermen.
16:56In a final twist, we would have seen the moment Mondas was forced out of our solar system,
17:01the direct result of rebel spaceships fleeing to Earth.
17:04At the time, Genesis of the Cybermen was deleted pretty much immediately,
17:08on the grounds that it was out of step with the show's current style of storytelling,
17:12although an audio version was finally released in 2025.
17:18Like Mark Gatiss, Tom McRae, writer of Rise of the Cybermen and the Age of Steel for Series 2,
17:24was commissioned to write a story for Series 3 that was pushed back to Series 4 and then abandoned.
17:29It would have been a Doctor Who spin on Most Haunted-style shows,
17:33following a television crew as they attempt to track down the ghost of the Red Widow in a spooky clifftop
17:38house.
17:38It was specifically conceived as a companion light episode,
17:42with the Doctor joining the broadcast and the companion watching events unfold from the comfort of their sofa,
17:47allowing these scenes to be shot in a single day.
17:50Despite its dark setting, Century House was apparently quite light in tone.
17:54It was pencilled in as the eighth episode of Series 4, directly after The Unicorn and The Wasp.
17:58However, as production drew nearer,
18:00Russell T. Davis realised that he didn't want to run two comedic episodes back to back,
18:04and he opted to write a last-minute replacement.
18:07And that last-minute replacement was?
18:09Well, only a certain stone-cold classic known as Midnight.
18:12So, yeah, probably a good job that Century House never got made.
18:16Number 4. Stracks on Trial
18:17Just as the Pertwee-era Unit family appeared at the start of Tom Baker's era,
18:23but pretty much disappeared straight after,
18:25The Twelfth Doctor's debut story, Deep Breath, would turn out to be the Paternoster Gang's last.
18:29But at one point, things might have been different,
18:31with one of the gang getting their very own episode.
18:34As he revealed on his blog back in 2018,
18:37Green Wing writer James Henry was invited to pitch an episode for The Twelfth Doctor's first series.
18:43After suggesting various ideas that had already been taken, he was offered another premise.
18:47What if the Sontarans found out that Stracks had been helping humanity and The Doctor and put him on trial,
18:53effectively sentencing him to death?
18:55Despite believing it to be, quote, the worst pitch he'd ever done,
18:58Henry was asked to develop Stracks on Trial into a full script.
19:01In the end, it just missed out, which is a pity,
19:04as it would have made Stracks a more three-dimensional character
19:07and given Dan Starkey a chance to do more than just shout about acid and grenades.
19:12Henry also recalled a mortifying email where he wrote the story's title with a P instead of an X,
19:17but insists that this had nothing to do with him not getting the gig.
19:21Number 3. Doctor Who meets J.K. Rowling
19:24One of Russell T. Davis' hopes for the 2008 Christmas special was to secure another big-name guest star,
19:30someone on the level of a Catherine Tate or Kylie Minogue.
19:33Having just finished reading the final Harry Potter book and enjoying it immensely,
19:37an idea suddenly occurred to him.
19:39What if the 2008 Christmas companion was J.K. Rowling?
19:42Davis had actually asked Rowling to write for the show back in 2004,
19:45but having her actually appear in the show was a different prospect entirely.
19:49He was also keen to continue the trend of having The Doctor meet famous authors,
19:53having previously featured Dickens, Shakespeare, and Agatha Christie.
19:57Had this story gone ahead, it would have involved a space bug leaping onto Rowling's back
20:01and bringing the world of her imagination to life,
20:03enabling wizards, witches, and magic to feature in the Doctor Who universe.
20:07However, it was quickly kiboshed by David Tennant,
20:09who felt it sounded too much like a spoof, and Rowling herself wasn't too keen either.
20:15Number 2. Lost in the Dark Dimension
20:17A short while into the wilderness years of the 1990s,
20:20it became clear that Doctor Who was going to be off air for its 30th anniversary.
20:24To plug the gap, the BBC commissioned a feature-length director video special
20:29titled Lost in the Dark Dimension.
20:31Set in a world where the fourth Doctor survived his fatal fall in Logopolis
20:35and thus never regenerated into his successors,
20:37it would have starred Tom Baker as an older Doctor,
20:40alongside the Brigadier, Dorothy, an alternate version of Ace,
20:43and the Brigadier's son slash Ace's boyfriend, Alex.
20:47The other surviving Doctors would have featured in minor roles,
20:50with the Daleks, Cybermen, Ice Warriors, and Yeti also returning.
20:53Rick Mayall was being eyed up for the ultimate big bad, Hawkspur,
20:57a professor slash politician possessed by a deadly alien entity.
21:01The special was formally announced in June 1993, but by July it had been canned,
21:06owing to an insufficient budget, complaints from the Doctor actors about not having bigger roles,
21:11and the ongoing negotiations that led to the 1996 TV movie.
21:15The BBC instead celebrated Doctor Who's 30th birthday,
21:18with the Children in Need special Dimensions in Time,
21:21which was certainly...an episode.
21:24And number one, how the monk got his habit.
21:27The three stories Peter Harness wrote for Doctor Who all ended up being part of ongoing series narratives,
21:33but he did also pitch some standalone adventures.
21:36Shortly after writing the Zygon two-parter,
21:38he proposed a story which incorporated both the meddling monk and the mad monk Rasputin.
21:43It would have opened with the monk playing Boney M's Ra-Ra Rasputin to the man himself
21:47and inadvertently sending him mad,
21:50thus averting the Russian Revolution and changing the course of human history.
21:53With no one else to turn to, he calls the Doctor,
21:56only to find himself speaking to Peter Capaldi's 12th incarnation rather than William Hartnell's first.
22:01The pair would then have tried to find a solution,
22:03with the monk ultimately forced to regenerate into Rasputin's form and take his place,
22:08thus explaining how he adopted his monk persona.
22:11Besides the fact that it's an utterly crazy pitch,
22:14something Harness has freely admitted,
22:16it's possible Stephen Moffat steered clear of his story
22:18to avoid taking the limelight away from Missy,
22:21who had a big part to play in series 10.
22:23It's a good job he did too,
22:24as the master would end up becoming Rasputin in their very next incarnation,
22:28and there's no way in hell we'd want to be deprived of that Rasputin dance scene now, would we?
22:34And that concludes our list.
22:36Let us know in the comments down below which Unmade episode you would have liked to have seen made.
22:40In the meantime, I've been Ellie for Who Culture,
22:42and in the words of River Song herself,
22:44goodbye sweeties.
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