The True Story Behind Doctor Who's Abandoned Anniversary Movie

Now that the project had the blessing of BBC1, the focus turned back to Rigelsford's script. As this was to be an anniversary special, there was a desire to include not just the surviving past Doctors but several classic monsters. The Sixth Doctor was to meet the Ice Warriors, while the Fourth Doctor would confront a Dalek in a Victorian graveyard (very Tom), and the Fifth Doctor would be thrown into the Cyber-wars.

In order to update these classic foes for a '90s audience, designers were brought in from a variety of sources including Jim Henson's Creature Workshop. Henson's team were assigned the Cybermen, with Rigelsford giving some insight into the designs at the Space Mountain convention:

"The guy who designed it, Nigel Johns, was trained by [Alien designer] H.R. Giger, so you can imagine that this particular Cyberman looked terrifying. It had holes in its knuckles and there was a point where it held up its hand, made a fist, and six-inch blades shot out of its knuckles! It was like Wolverine out of the X-Men comics - Cyberrine!"

These new Cybermen are the overriding image from the abandoned project, and really gives a sense of the more horror-inflected, adult tone they were aiming for.