8 Doctor Who Episodes With Alternate Endings
5. The Unicorn And The Wasp
The Televised Ending
After cracking a murder mystery involving a giant wasp - and then embarking on the most boring car chase in the history of entertainment - the Doctor and Donna watch as Agatha Christie wanders up to The Harrogate Hotel, with her memory of the episode's events having been wiped.
Cut to the inside of the TARDIS, and the Doctor shows Donna a copy of Christie's novel Death In The Clouds, which features a huge wasp on the cover. Her memories may have been wiped, but somewhere, in the back of her mind, Christie remembered.
The Alternate Ending
Originally, The Unicorn And The Wasp was structured with the framing device of an older Agatha Christie having flashbacks to the main story of the episode.
This is how the episode originally started - with an elderly Christie lying in bed, recalling vague memories of her encounter with the Doctor - and then, in its original, alternate conclusion, the Doctor and Donna visit this older Christie.
Here, they show her the same book that the Doctor shows Donna in the televised ending, informing Christie that she becomes the best-selling novelist of all time, and helping her remember the events of the episode.
It's like Vincent And The Doctor's ending, where the Doctor shows Vincent that everybody in the future loves his paintings. This alternate ending does something similar, but for Agatha Christie instead. However, when the decision was made to remove old Christie, both the opening and the ending were changed.