10 Insane Doctor Who Rumours That Never Happened
6. Pamela Anderson as a New Companion
There was as many Doctor Who comeback rumours in the 1990s as there were unlicensed spin-off videos and audio plays. One of the strangest rumours came in 1995, a year prior to the Paul McGann TV Movie. It's strange because there is actually a lot of truth to it, none of which is the potential casting.
The Daily Mail reported that Eric Idle was to play the Doctor in a new co-production between the BBC, Universal and Steven Spielberg's Amblin Television. That co-production turned out to be the McGann movie of course, and the original pitch document featured a plotline that would see the Doctor trying to find his long-lost father, Ulysses. The newspaper article cites that Peter O'Toole was to play the part of the Doctor's Dad.
It also suggested that the Doctor would, as ever, be joined on his travels by a female companion to be played by Pamela Anderson, then riding high on her popularity from Baywatch.
As we would find out a year later, all of this came to nothing and it's incredibly likely that the report was pulled from some names thrown around the production office rather than any concrete casting. Something that Eric Idle noted on Twitter recently when he retweeted an old press cutting stating: "This is so made up."