Believe it or not, it took until the fourteenth series of Doctor Who for the Time Lord's home planet of Gallifery to make an on-screen appearance. Almost every iteration of The Doctor had talked about the place, but after the success of the serial The Deadly Assassin, producer Graham Williams was eager to return to the setting once more. Which is how he commissioned David Weir's six-part serial Killers Of Dark, sometimes called Killers In The Dark, or the far more literal The Killer Cats Of Geng Singh. Whatever it was to be called, the story was planned as the grand finale of season fifteen. Except it soon became clear the show's meagre budget couldn't manage it. That's because Weir's script drew on Asian history whilst crafting a story about Gallifrey's forgotten race of cat people. Yes, cat people. Including a major action sequence where the cat people fought in a gladiatorial arena, presumably with a ball of yarn as the prize. The script called for crowd scenes in Wembley Stadium, 96,000 human shaped cat-people.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
