10 Unmade Doctor Who Stories We're Glad We Never Saw
9. The Red Fort
Demons of the Punjab was a nuanced and emotional portrayal of the partition of India, that pushed the series into new areas. It's the closest that new Doctor Who has gotten to the original values of both the BBC and the original pitch for the series - inform, educate and entertain.
The second season of Classic Doctor Who had also intended to tackle the Raj in India, with a script by Dalek creator Terry Nation entitled The Red Fort. It was to depict the so-called "Indian Mutiny", when the Mughal empire battled with the East India Trading Company, rebelling against British rule of India. The title refers to the 1857 assault on a Mughal temple in Delhi.
While '60s Doctor Who wasn't afraid to show warts-and-all history, it's interesting to consider just how the show would have tackled this moment in history. Would it have been as sensitively handled as Demons of the Punjab? Or would it have been a gung-ho, boy's own adventure with muddied messaging about colonialism? It's probably just as well that the popularity of the Daleks, and an instruction to write The Keys of Marinus, drew Nation in a different direction.