10 Unmade Doctor Who Stories We're Glad We Never Saw
5. Talons '96
The Leekley Bible is not unlike one of the dangerous books in Professor Chronotis' library. The pages of John Leekley's pitch for a '90s Doctor Who series could easily have changed the very fabric of reality. Commissioned by Universal to work with Philip Segal on a proposed US version of the series back in the mid-'90s, Leekley pitched a US reboot of Doctor Who.
Of the many intriguing elements of Leekley's pitch are the over-arching plot of the Doctor searching for his missing father, and of him and the Master being half-brothers. More sacrilegious than that, however, Leekley posited the idea of remaking classic Who serials for a US audience. None of them reached the script stage, but the concepts make for interesting reading.
The Sea Devils would have been amalgamated with The Silurians and set in Louisiana, while the Cybermen were reimagined as "Cybs" - Cybernetic pirates. Another idea updated Robert Holmes' controversial classic The Talons of Weng-Chiang. Rather than Victorian London, the Doctor would be hunting a serial killer in contemporary New York. Talons is obviously a grim story, but somehow, the idea of it being updated to the present day makes it even darker. Thankfully producer Philip Segal decided to honour the show's legacy and pitched the 1996 TV Movie as a fresh start rather than a hard reset.