20 Cancelled Doctor Who Episodes You Need To Know About

The version of Series 1 that RTD originally pitched to the BBC is fairly close to the one that ended up on screen – the one exception being Episode 11, which was always something of a blank slate.

At a very early stage it was going to be a historical, depicting the eruption of Vesuvius in Pompeii. This idea was deemed too expensive for 2005, though it would eventually reach screens in 2008.

The slot was then offered to RTD’s friend and former colleague Paul Abbott. He submitted a bold storyline, which would've revealed that Rose wasn’t just an ordinary human, but the result of an experiment conducted by the Doctor in order to devise the perfect companion.

Understandably RTD had concerns about how this would fit into the Doctor and Rose’s wider characterisation. There were also shades of the Seventh Doctor’s manipulation of Ace, which he felt to be repetitive and unoriginal.

As it transpired Abbott was too busy to write for Doctor Who anyway due to the success of his new drama Shameless, and Episode 11 became the more thematically-appropriate Boom Town.

Still, the notion of a “perfect” companion would be great to see one day, providing it’s part of a series arc and not a one-off storyline.