Doctor Who: 13 Cool Details Russell T Davies Just Revealed About The Stolen Earth & Journey's End

11. The Dalek Introduction Was Almost Vastly Different

Doctor Who Journey's End alternate ending David Tennant Cybermen
BBC/Twitter: russelldavies63

Despite them being the main villains of the story, we don't actually see the Daleks until ten minutes into The Stolen Earth.

It's a simple yet effective introduction: we hear their iconic phrase "EXTERMINATE!" repeated numerous times, and watch our heroes react to said phrase with feelings of hopelessness and despair, hitting home just how powerful and intimidating the Daleks really are. Shortly after this, we see one of their saucers flying over a London street, before cutting to the interior of one of their ships.

This whole sequence of events works very well, but originally, Davies had something much more epic in mind.

On Twitter, the writer shared a couple of script pages of an alternate Dalek introduction scene. This more "big budget" version would've featured plenty of action and explosions, including a shot of the Daleks destroying a certain London landmark, as well as the death of the Prime Minister.

Doctor Who The Stolen Earth alternate Dalek scene
BBC/Russell T Davies

The alternate sequence also included an even longer build-up to the reveal of the Daleks, and in a separate tweet, Davies declared this version "better" than the stripped-down one we got in the final cut.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.