10 Doctor Who Characters Who Almost Had Different Endings

by Danny Meegan

1. Sarah Jane Smith Was Almost Killed Off

Doctor Who Sarah Jane Smith departure
BBC Studios

Fourth Doctor serial The Hand Of Fear was the final regular appearance of Sarah Jane Smith during the classic years, with the Doctor accidentally dropping her off in Aberdeen - hundreds of miles away from her home in South Croydon.

For Sarah, this obviously wasn't ideal, but considering the alternate ending that the showrunners originally had in mind, she was lucky to escape with her life.

After actress Elisabeth Sladen informed the producers that she wished to depart the show for good, attention was turned to developing her exit. Around this same time, Who veteran Douglas Camfield was commissioned to write a serial called The Lost Legion, a four-part story involving a conflict between two groups of aliens.

This story was also set to be Sladen's last, and the plan was to have one of the aliens kill her off, making her one of the few companions in the show to actually die.

However, when the showrunners grew concerned about the progress being made on The Lost Legion, it was abandoned, and The Hand Of Fear - including Sarah's new ending - was readied in its place. And the rest is history.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!