10 Deleted Doctor Who Characters You've Never Heard Of

Though Doctor Who’s standing within the BBC suffered a slow, sorry decline in the 1980s, it wasn’t considered an inevitability that the show would be cancelled in 1989 – at least, not on the production side.

In fact, the production team actually got as far as creating a plan for a potential Season 27, before word came down from on high that it wasn't going to happen.

One of the biggest elements of this plan was Raine Cunningham, the Doctor’s new companion and replacement for Ace, who was to leave the TARDIS and study at the Time Lord Academy on Gallifrey (that's a whole other kettle of fish).

Raine’s introduction alone would've likely made her one of the most memorable classic series companions, with her staging an audacious jewel heist during a high-society party, expertly cracking open a safe only to discover the Doctor himself hiding inside.

When Doctor Who was taken off the air after Season 26, Raine was relegated to being one of the show’s great “what could have been” companions – but on the plus side, a version of the character did ultimately see the light of day, on audio, in Big Finish's The Lost Stories range, though she did end up playing second fiddle to Ace here, who featured a lot more in these audio versions than she would've done had they originally been made for TV in 1990.

Just think: if classic Doctor Who had lasted one more season, it might've been Raine who returned for a heartwarming reunion with the Seventh Doctor in The Power of the Doctor, rather than Ace!