Doctor Who: 11 New Who Moments That Never Made It To Screen
8. Meglos Returns The Lodger
In an interview with Doctor Who Magazine in 2010, Gareth Roberts revealed that; as well as being loosely based on a Tenth Doctor comic strip he wrote, the villain in early drafts of his Series 5 episode The Lodger would have been Meglos a sentient cactus-like creature that appeared in a Fourth Doctor story of the same name in 1980. Roberts had joked about doing a sequel to Meglos for some time and commented in the interview that when he started writing The Lodger, it suddenly felt right. In the number of drafts that Roberts produced including Meglos, when the two met, the Doctor wouldnt remember Meglos, prompting him to namedrop planets and people from their previous encounter to jog his memory but to no avail:
The Doctor: Sorry, have we met? Meglos: Meglos! Last of the Zolfa Thurans! The Doctor (No idea): Really sorry. I meet a lot of people. Meglos: Remember Tigella, Doctor! The Gaztaks! The Doctor: The what? Remind me
However, to avoid a character too much like the Vinvocci (cactus-like aliens who appeared in The End Of Time) and to stop the already light episode from being an out-and-out comedy, Roberts dropped Meglos from his script in favour of a scarier villain. Probably a smart move since Meglos hadnt exactly aged well in the thirty years between his first appearance and The Lodger.
JG Moore is a writer and filmmaker from the south of England. He also works as an editor and VFX artist, and has a BA in Media Production from the University Of Winchester.
