10 Deleted Doctor Who Characters You've Never Heard Of

Doctor Who is known for its big celebrity guest stars, and they don't come much bigger than the Hollywood royalty that nearly appeared in 2009's The Waters of Mars.

Originally intended as a Christmas special titled “Red Christmas” or "Christmas On Mars", one thing that remained a constant throughout development was that Russell T Davies wanted the one-off companion to be a strong, older woman.

To that end, RTD hoped to get Academy Award-winner Dame Helen Mirren to play Valentina Kerenski, the Mars colony’s Russian commander. This would've been such a get for Doctor Who that it was initially planned to use Mirren in one of that era's signature cliffhangers, with preceding episode Planet of the Dead closing off with a knock at the TARDIS doors, and the Doctor opening them to find Mirren on the other side.

However, Valentina Kerenski ultimately didn't make it into The Waters of Mars, and for quite an unusual reason.

During development, RTD decided to massively overhaul the character out of concern she was too similar to Tanya Kirbuk, the spacefaring Soviet captain played by Mirren in the film 2010: The Year We Make Contact. The episode’s Christmassy tone was also dropped, and somewhere along the way we got the British Captain Adelaide Brooke leading the Mars colony instead of the Russian Kerenski, with Lindsay Duncan assuming the role once intended for Mirren.

The surname "Kerenski", meanwhile, was recycled for Yuri Kerenski, the Russian nurse onboard Bowie Base One.

Considering that The Waters of Mars is one of the best and scariest episodes of the modern series, it’s hard to feel particularly bad about any of the changes made during production.

Though it would definitely have been mind-blowing to see Dame Helen Mirren fighting water zombies!