8. Liam Cunningham Is... The Eighth Doctor! (1995)
The torturous development of the US-funded Doctor Who pilot designed to re-imagine the show after the BBC axed the series in 1989 is well-documented in the warts-and-all book, Regenerations. Looking at the tangled moves by Philip Segal to launch the series on to mainstream US television - Spielberg! Amblin! CBS! Fox! Universal! - which resulted in the BBC/Fox TV Movie starring Paul McGann in 1996, there were two fascinating near-misses over the casting of the lead role... Segal's first choice was Liam Cunningham, who later appeared opposite Matt Smith in the most recent series. Having beaten Mark McGann, Anthony Head and John Sessions among others to the role, he was all set to take the TARDIS Stateside, pleasing the BBC who wanted a British star. However, Cunningham was rejected by Fox for not having a large-enough profile for a US television project, so the search began again, leading us to...