10 Terrible Doctor Who Ideas That Nearly Happened
Doctor Who can do anything, but there are times when it definitely shouldn't.
Doctor Who has been going for over 60 years by this point, and the constant churn for story ideas in the early days meant that all manner of good and bad ideas have been tossed aside
As Doctor Who fans, we often love to ponder these might-have-beens.
What if Sarah Jane Smith had returned for Tom Baker's final season of Doctor Who? How would Hugh Grant's Ninth Doctor have tackled the Slitheen? How would Christopher Eccleston have interacted with Matt Smith and David Tennant?
The mind boggles with the possibilities of some of Doctor Who's greatest missed opportunities. However, the mind recoils at the mention of some of the terrible ideas that almost made into televised Doctor Who.
An unmade Doctor Who episode where Sarah Jane Smith was murdered by aliens? No thank you. A Christmas special in which JK Rowling's imagination comes to life? Absolutely not.
Thankfully, saner heads often prevail, and such terrible ideas are consigned to niche Doctor Who Magazine features or WhoCulture lists.
So with that in mind, here are some more terrible Doctor Who ideas that almost happened...
10. The Young Doctor Adventures
Keen to cash in on Doctor Who's overnight success in 2005, the BBC tapped Russell T Davies for spinoff ideas. One potential spinoff that was pitched to RTD was a CBBC show that would focus on the Doctor's childhood on Gallifrey. For obvious reasons, Davies declined to pursue the idea further and developed The Sarah Jane Adventures instead.
It was the right call, as a series of The Young Doctor Who Adventures would have risked destroying any sense of mystery surrounding the character. Firstly, and most crucially of all, how could you develop a whole show around the Doctor's childhood and not reveal his birth name?
Sure, the Doctor's Theta Sigma nickname from The Armageddon Factor would provide a decent workaround, but then what would his parents call him? What would his parents be like?
And then what would the stories be like? Would we have young versions of the Doctor, the Master, and the Rani running rings around their tutors at the Academy?
It sounds like what the BBC really wanted was Harry Potter with temporal mechanics and TARDIS flight lessons instead of spells and Quidditch. Thankfully, Russell saw the folly of CBBC's vision.