Doctor Who: 12 Cool Details Russell T Davies Just Revealed About New Earth & Gridlock

8. The Potions Originally Killed All The Patients, But Steven Moffat's Comments Inspired A Happier Ending

Doctor Who New Earth ending hospital patients
BBC Studios/Twitter: @russelldavies63

Near the end of the episode, the hospital is overrun by an army of diseased humans, but of course, the Doctor saves the day: he mixes every single intravenous solution he can find into one big concoction, and sprays it over those who are infected. Job done!

This leads to a happy ending in which everyone is cured and the diseases are contained, but in Davies' first draft of the script, things concluded in a much darker fashion: the infected humans all died. Grim.

But then... enter Steven Moffat. The famous Doctor Who writer and showrunner remarked that Davies loves killing off his characters, which prompted Davies to change his script and make the ending a lot more cheery.

Steven Moffat? The guy who's known for killing everyone? Well, almost everyone. He was responsible for a happy ending in which everybody lives? Madness.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!