20 Cancelled Doctor Who Episodes You Need To Know About
1. How The Monk Got His Habit
The three stories Peter Harness wrote for Doctor Who all ended up being part of ongoing series narratives. But he did also pitch some standalone adventures.
Shortly after writing the Zygon two-parter, he proposed a story which incorporated both the “Meddling” Monk and the “Mad Monk”, Rasputin.
It would've opened with the Monk playing Boney M’s Ra-Ra-Rasputin to the man himself and inadvertently sending him mad, thus averting the Russian Revolution and changing the course of human history.
With no one else to turn to he calls the Doctor, only to find himself speaking to Peter Capaldi’s twelfth incarnation rather than William Hartnell’s first.
The pair would then have tried to find a solution, with the Monk ultimately forced to regenerate into Rasputin’s form and take his place – thus explaining how he adopted his monk persona.
Besides the fact that it’s an utterly crazy pitch (something Harness has freely admitted), it’s possible Steven Moffat steered clear of this story to avoid taking the limelight away from Missy, who had a big part to play in Series 10.
It’s a good job he did too, as the Master would end up becoming Rasputin in their very next incarnation, and there's no way in hell we'd want to be deprived of that Rasputin dance scene would we?