10 Terrible Doctor Who Ideas That Nearly Happened

Of the various independent production companies wanting to take on the Doctor Who licence in the early 1990s, Nelvana got quite far in devising a concept. The Canada-based animation studio developed a Doctor Who cartoon that would've sat neatly alongside the likes of The Real Ghostbusters or Captain Planet on Saturday mornings.

Nelvana's animated Doctor Who series was a complete reimagining of the show, which turned the Doctor into a sort of crusader-for-hire, working at the behest of the Time Lords.

The series retained iconic characters like the Master, the Cybermen, the Daleks, and good old K9. However, the dialogue in the scripts and treatments doesn't feel like Doctor Who at all. For example, at one point, the Doctor tells K9 to "cease that infernal barking".

Meanwhile, the Master was to be half-man, half-cyborg, with a robot bird sidekick and looks modelled after Sean Connery. Alright then.

The project was eventually shut down by the BBC, which was probably for the best. Although it's slightly sad that “Doctor Who’s Time Stick Weapon” wasn't the big Christmas toy in 1993.