10 Doctor Who Episodes That Were Almost Completely Different

With the previous examples on this list, the bones of each episode stayed pretty much the same from their original, alternate versions, through to the final broadcast version.

For example, The Impossible Planet with Raxacoricofallapatorians would've been similar in overall structure to how it played out with the Ood. But conversely, Series 1's Boom Town was almost a completely different beast from top to bottom.

On the subject of Raxacoricofallapatorians (that's the last time we're saying that word, promise), Boom Town revolves around the Ninth Doctor's mission to apprehend Margaret Blaine, a Slitheen in disguise. However, this almost wasn't the case. Written by Russell T Davies, the episode was originally assigned to Paul Abbott, and his vision for the story was a departure from the Davies version in every conceivable way.

Abbott's version wasn't about the Slitheen at all - it was actually about the relationship between Rose and the Doctor, and would've revealed that Rose had been created by the Doctor in an experiment to find the perfect companion. Yikes.

Eventually though, Abbott had to abandon this plan due to other projects requiring his attention, meaning that we were a mere scheduling conflict away from watching this bizarre storyline play out onscreen.