8 Doctor Who Episodes With Alternate Endings

In The Angels Take Manhattan, the Eleventh Doctor talks about how he always rips out the last page of a book. He hates endings, and this way, the book never has to end.

It's hard not to agree with his train of thought, especially when it comes to Doctor Who, because in this show, the endings - regenerations, companion departures, showrunner departures - have a tendency to be deeply depressing.

But what if there was a parallel world out there where every Doctor Who episode has an alternate, happy ending? Wouldn't that be magnificent? Well, yes, but that's not the reality we live in, because we're going to cover some of the show's alternate endings in this article, and most of them are just as bleak - or in some cases, even more bleak - than the endings we actually got.

With the modern era of Who currently sitting at 12 seasons strong, it's no surprise that there have been a bunch of alternate episode endings along the way, and while some of these aren't massive deviations from the final cut, others are much more drastic, ending on radically different notes compared to the versions that were broadcast.

The Televised Ending

After waving goodbye to those adorable little Adipose creatures and watching Matron Cofelia plummet to her death, Donna is officially inducted as the Tenth Doctor's newest companion, after a funny scene in which she gives him a comical amount of luggage to store on-board the TARDIS.

Because he's a top lad and all, the Doctor lets Donna choose their first destination, but surprisingly, she doesn't want to go too far, asking him to fly the TARDIS just a couple of miles away so that her grandfather, Wilf, can wave her off.

Which he does - by dancing around like a madman and yelling with joy.

The Alternate Ending

This one doesn't change the conclusion of the episode in a major way, because the only difference is a single character.

Rather than having Donna's grandfather wave her off, this alternate, original ending sees Donna's father - Geoff Noble - wave her off instead.

Played by Howard Attfield, Geoff was intended to be a recurring character throughout Series 4, but when Attfield passed away shortly after filming Partners In Crime, his scenes were removed, and Bernard Cribbins' Wilf was drafted in to fill that gap.