4. The Return And Death Of Midshipman Frame The Stolen Earth/Journey's End
BBCAmongst the e-mails between Benjamin Cook and Russell T. Davies that make up the majority of The Writer's Tale are scripts for entire episodes from initial outline to late draft. Of particular note are the script pages that show a considerable number of scenes from the Series 4 finale that were cut at the writing stage. In the Stolen Earths original scenes at the Shadow Proclamation (which themselves were cut for being vastly over-budget but rewritten for The End Of Time Part 2); a soldier working for the Proclamation was supposed to offer to help the Doctor and then be revealed as Midshipman Frame, a character first seen in Voyage Of The Damned. In scenes that went unwritten, Frame would have played a vital part in advancing The Stolen Earths plot by helping the Doctor cut through the ridiculously convoluted bureaucracy of the Shadow Proclamation so he could find the Earth. After the scenes where the Doctor works out how to locate the Earth, Frame would have joined him on board the Tardis and become a companion. Though Frames companion status would have been very short-lived. Had this plot thread made it to screen, Frame would have been exterminated onboard the Crucible by the Supreme Dalek at the start of Journeys End to show how powerful and ruthless the new Dalek empire was. However, Russell Tovey was unavailable for the episodes recording block as he was appearing in a play at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. Because of this, the red tape element of the Shadow Proclamation was written out and Jack Harkness was exterminated in Frame's place. Thanks to Toveys unavailability, Frame lived to fight (and flirt) another day; appearing in The End Of Times repurposed Shadow Proclamation scene where the Doctor set him up with Jack.