Sometimes an episode of Doctor Who is just so good that you think its impossible for it to have ever been any different. Everything hangs together so perfectly that surely it must have been written in one glorious and unstoppable surge of creativity. Yeah, and that giant Rat in The Talons Of Weng-Chiang was never anything but totally convincing. The fact of the matter is that, as with any other piece of drama (in fact, probably even more), the scripts for Doctor Who will almost always go through massive redrafts by both their original writer and the showrunner. Its a natural part of the writing process that helps the writer better their work, and allows the showrunner to iron out any wrinkles that the writer may not recognise from being so close to their work. But a lot of the time for Doctor Who, its budget. Sci-fi is ambitious and ambition costs money. And because Doctor Who is a BBC programme (no matter how much the executives are willing to bend over backwards for it), cuts have to be made left right and centre. It might be something as small as killing off a character in a simpler way, or it could be a more drastic measure like writing out a new monster and grabbing an old one out of the costume department as a substitute. Both of which have happened since 2005. But thanks to Doctor Who being well, Doctor Who, its viewers are in a much better position than other fandoms to find out just what they missed out on. Neil Gaiman talks about scenes he ended up cutting on his website, several writers have discussed elements of their scripts that were removed from later drafts in Doctor Who Magazine, and Russell T. Davies book The Writers Tale is crammed full of unwritten and rewritten material from Series 4. And today were journeying into a world of meanwhiles and neverweres (were not sure about the Could've Been King though) as we look at some scenes from New Who that, from the start, were destined to never make it onto the nations TV screens and why it was fated that we would never see them
JG Moore is a writer and filmmaker from the south of England. He also works as an editor and VFX artist, and has a BA in Media Production from the University Of Winchester.
