10 Terrible Doctor Who Ideas That Nearly Happened

Writer Ben Aaronovitch originally intended to kill off Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart in the 1989 serial Battlefield, before realising that he couldn't bring himself to do it. It's just as well, as it's hard to imagine a story that would've had the sufficient magnitude to kill off the Doctor's oldest friend.

Battlefield is a lot better than people give it credit for, and it would make a degree of thematic sense to end the Brigadier's story there. It's a story about old soldiers, and the never-ending cycles of war and violence.

However, it's also poorly directed, meaning that the darkness of the subject matter largely gets lost in the sunny scenery and slapstick battle sequences. Against that backdrop, the death of the Brigadier would've been an insult.

Aaronovitch's inability to kill the Brig meant that we never had to endure the sharp tonal gearshift from Arthurian knights trampolining over explosions, to the Doctor losing his oldest friend. Instead, the Brig went out as he always should have: peacefully.

Who knows if his corpse would've still been turned into a Cyberman. But this is terrible ideas that nearly happened, not definitely happened. So let's move on.