10 Unbelievable Doctor Who Facts That Are Somehow True

10. The Twin Dilemma Writer's Typewriter Explodes

The Twin Dilemma is a deeply flawed story, and there's plenty of blame to be doled out for the failures of the Sixth Doctor's debut. One of the guilty parties was the serial's writer, Anthony Steven – progress on the script was painfully slow, and what was submitted didn't meet the approval of script editor Eric Saward or director Peter Moffatt.

Although Steven eventually fell ill (forcing Saward to overhaul the story and do the rewrites himself), he did offer some increasingly wild and out-there excuses for the delays to the script. The one that the production team remembers is that Anthony Steven's typewriter "literally" exploded, which certainly trumps the dog eating your first draft as an excuse!

Whether Stevens' typewriter actually exploded or not isn't known, but it's clear that the more than 60-year-old screenwriter wasn't up to the task of writing his first and only Doctor Who story. Indeed, with the exception of further credits on drama series All Creatures Great & Small, The Twin Dilemma would be one of Stevens' final writing gigs altogether.

To borrow a word from the Master's vocabulary, it was a rather ignominious end for the veteran screenwriter.