10 Biggest Doctor Who Missed Opportunities

For a show with limitless potential, Doctor Who does tend to let many things slip by…

Doctor Who Eleventh Doctor Missy
BBC Studios

It's safe to say that, as a collective, Doctor Who fans are more vocal than most about the direction of their favourite show.

Every Whovian has their own wildly different view on what Doctor Who should and shouldn't be - some prefer the quirky, runabout charm of the classic series, some prefer RTD's space opera soap, and others prefer to plot Moffat's convoluted stories on a flow chart.

The point is, the one thing we love to do more than flame the show we claim to love, is to politely disagree with each other about almost every aspect of it. But sometimes, very rarely, impossible things just happen, and we call them miracles. When our hearts are in the right place, and the stars are too, Doctor Who fans agree.

There have been tons of missed opportunities in the show's history, and no doubt, we can all shake hands on the fact that the following ten - from wasted characters to storylines ripe with potential - represent some of the biggest of the lot.

10. River Not Meeting Captain Jack

Doctor Who Eleventh Doctor Missy
Big Finish Productions

Let's start off with a fun one: how did River Song never cross paths with Captain Jack Harkness?

It's obvious from their cheeky personalities and disregard for rules that they'd make a brilliant pair for a standalone adventure, but that opportunity is pretty much deader than Gallifrey at this point.

It wasn't for a lack of trying though. Efforts were made to bring Jack into the Doctor's team in A Good Man Goes To War, and you can only imagine the fireworks that would've ensued if Barrowman and Kingston had got into a quippy back-and-forth.

Or how about River in Torchwood? She would've fit perfectly with the more adult tone of that show, and the fact that this was never considered as an option (or maybe it was, who knows) is disappointing.

The similarities between the characters - right down to both owning a vortex manipulator and the same squareness gun - certainly suggest that they have met, and meet they did... in a Big Finish audio drama.

It's better than nothing, but one of the most-requested team-ups in Doctor Who history deserved an onscreen adventure.

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Alex is a sci-fi and fantasy swot, and is a writer for WhoCulture. He is incapable of watching TV without reciting trivia, and sometimes, when his heart is in the right place, and the stars are too, he’s worth listening to.