10 Times Doctor Who REFUSED To Give Fans What They Wanted
4. A Proper 30th Anniversary Special
Doctor Who had been off the air for almost four years as it approached its 30th anniversary in 1993. Fans hadn't given up hope on the show returning, though, especially when news broke of a feature-length straight-to-video movie. Doctor Who In The Dark Dimension had an incredibly complicated, troubled production and never made it as far as filming.
With a "proper" Doctor Who anniversary special now quashed, fans had to make do with the surviving five Doctors and their companions interacting with the cast of Eastenders. Dimensions in Time - a 3D charity sketch for Children in Need - got a lot of unfair stick from fans who wanted this darker, grittier Doctor Who anniversary that had been previously promised.
And yet, as anyone who's read the script will tell you, Doctor Who may have had a lucky escape from the Dark Dimension. At least in Dimensions in Time each of the Doctors gets a decent share of screen time. In The Dark Dimension, the majority of the Doctoring is done by an older Tom Baker, because the Fourth Doctor was prevented from regenerating.
They probably felt that Tom Baker was more of a draw for audiences, which may have been the case, but the plot of (the considerably longer) The Dark Dimension is just as convoluted and nonsensical as Dimensions in Time. Worse still, it wouldn't have featured Frank Butcher or the Mitchell Brothers!