10 Failed Doctor Who Movies (And Why They Didn't Happen)

8. Doctor Who Meets Scratchman

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BBC

While the other movies on this list would've featured brand-new actors cast in the title role, Doctor Who Meets Scratchman is an outlier for the fact that it would've actually starred the current (at the time) TV Doctor, Tom Baker.

The movie - alternatively titled Doctor Who and the Big Game - was written by Baker and Ian Marter (who played companion Harry Sullivan) and their ideas for the story and characters sounded pretty bonkers, even by Doctor Who standards.

In the film, the Doctor and his companions would've faced off against the villainous Scratchman, who was actually the Devil. The Daleks and the Cybermen were also involved, as was a group of scarecrows that could come to life. Oh, and the climax would've taken place on a huge pinball table. Because... reasons.

However, the project was never greenlit by the BBC, and it only got as far as the scripting stage. While it didn't make it to the big screen, Doctor Who Meets Scratchman was eventually turned into a novel and audiobook, the latter of which was narrated by Baker himself.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.