10 Unmade Doctor Who Stories We're Glad We Never Saw
8. Cat's Cradle
Ghost Light writer Marc Platt had originally pitched a story a few years earlier for Colin Baker's Sixth Doctor. If the eventual novel adaption is anything to go by, it was to be a dark fantasy story that plunged the Doctor and Mel into the heart of the TARDIS. In the novel, the fifth of Virgin's New Adventures range, the TARDIS is destroyed by an alien parasite and Ace is left alone to battle for survival on a strange planet.
As the story progresses, it transpires that the planet is actually the Doctor's TARDIS, exploded and expanded outward. It's likely this, and the idea of the silver cat that acts as Ace's guide that featured in Platt's original pitch. Although the cat in the original Platt script was to be the Sixth Doctors pen-badge rendered sentient with the soul of the TARDIS.
The novel is an incredibly complex tale of Gallifreyan mythology, with some properly horrific moments. It would therefore have fit into Season 22 quite nicely, if the show had the budget to realise Platt's pitch. However, at a time where the show was being criticised for being too inward-looking and violent, a dark horror fantasy set inside the Doctor's ship wasn't really the way to go.