10 Unmade Doctor Who Stories We're Glad We Never Saw
Not every unmade Doctor Who story should get a Big Finish boxed set...
Unmade Doctor Who stories are a gold mine for Big Finish, who regularly revisit abandoned scripts for their range of audio adventures. After all, who wouldn't want to hear Russell T Davies' rejected script for the Sixth Doctor and Mel? Or British comedy stalwart John Lloyd's rejected Fourth Doctor and Romana script?
Where some unsuccessful story ideas, like John Lucarotti's original space station story, are adapted into stone-cold classics like The Ark In Space, others get dumped on the reject pile.
Doctor Who scripts get abandoned for all sorts of reasons; budgetary problems, writer availability, or just the sheer unsuitability of the idea. Sometimes these ideas don't get much further than an initial pitch because they're too high-concept or not a good fit for the ethos of the series.
This list collects a number of unmade Doctor Who stories that would have vastly changed the series, and not for entirely good reasons. Some got dangerously close to being realised, some have later been adapted into novels and audios, but none of them made it to screen.
10. The Son Of Doctor Who
At the height of the show's success and the actor's powers, William Hartnell had an idea for a story to be told in Doctor Who's second season. No offence to the man, but it's not the most original of plotlines. It was to involve the Doctor meeting his son, an evil time traveller who looks a lot like him. Hartnell suggested he play both roles, presumably removing the Doctor's wig to appear younger as the evil son.
This is really as far as the idea got, and it's unclear whether a writer was approached or if Hartnell even intended to write the story himself. Nor is it clear if this son would be the father of Susan, or another relative. While it would have been an interesting insight into the Doctor's life, it was wisely abandoned as an idea, maintaining the "Who?" in Doctor Who.
A more nefarious version of the Doctor was introduced in the form of the Meddling Monk, and Hartnell would get his wish to play a villain realised in the 1966 serial The Massacre. An evil Doctor doppelganger was later introduced in The Enemy of the World, where Patrick Troughton played both the Second Doctor and villainous tyrant Ramon Salazar.