10 Doctor Who Facts Most Fans Don't Know
5. The Doctor Was Originally A Villain
Yes, the Doctor is a bit shady in both the original unaired pilot and the as-broadcast version of An Unearthly Child, but the original version of the character was envisioned as a much more villainous creation. Co-writing an outline for Doctor Who with Sydney Newman and Donald Wilson, writer C. E. Webber put forward an alternate origin for the Doctor that, weirdly, has something in common with Chris Chibnall's Tecteun.
In the original outline, the Doctor was on the run from his own people, who were concerned about his meddling with time. And why were they so concerned? Well, because the Doctor was travelling through time to find his perfect past, and when he found it, he intended to stay there forever by destroying the future.
In a pop-culture landscape dominated by fan nostalgia and people living in the past, this is a strong concept for a Time Lord villain in modern Doctor Who. It would've been the kiss of death for the original show however, and thankfully, the idea was nixed by Sydney Newman with a rather blunt script note: "Nuts!"