7. Agatha Christie Would Remember Her Disappearance
Gareth Roberts penned The Unicorn and the Wasp for Series 4, a lovely standalone episode that sees the Doctor and Donna team up with Agatha Christie to solve a murder mystery involving an alien wasp... Seriously. Roberts exploits the real-life historical curiosity around Christie's ten day disappearance to build the story, but it underwent some substantial changes before broadcast. At the conclusion of the story, Agatha loses her memories of the events and is dropped off at a hotel in Harrogate by the Doctor as per historical record. The entire story was initially framed by an elderly Christie trying to remember the events, as flashes of it had been surfacing and making it into her stories ever since. The Doctor and Donna arrive and tell her what happened. This was ultimately cut since Davies felt it neutered the story of any peril if viewers knew that the main characters and the historical figure (who'd live for another 50 years) made it through to the end. Which is odd considering that main characters typically survive mid-season episodes and, for all their "time can be rewritten" drama, they wouldn't just kill off a historical figure prematurely for the sake of it. The broadcast ending was shot on the TARDIS set, very late into production, with the Doctor showing Donna that Agatha's repressed memories had leaked into her later work. The resolution of the episode, which originally involved the Doctor ramming the Wasp into the lake to drown, was rewritten out of fear the Doctor would be seen purposely killing it. There was also a reference to an Agatha Christie work - now better known as 'And Then There Were None' - that didn't make it past the censors.