|
|
Doctor Who's Dumped Stories
Series 2
The Chase replaced an earlier submission by Terry Nation, the title of which is unknown.
The Dark Planet, by Brian Hayles, was replaced by The Time Meddler.
Series 3
The Hands of Aten, by Brian Hayles, was replaced by The Celestial Toymaker.
The White Witch, by Brian Hayles, and
The Nazis, also by Brian Hayles, were both dropped after the drafting stage.
Series 4
The Imps, by William Emms, replaced The Underwater Menace when that story was felt to be substandard. The Imps fell by the wayside when Emms was unable to complete the scripts, allowing The Underwater Menace to reclaim its slot.
Series 6
The Prison in Space, by Dick Sharples, was replaced by The Krotons following problems with the comedic slant of the narrative.
The Dream Spinner, by Paul Wheeler, was replaced by The Space Pirates after technical difficulties.
The Impersonators, by Malcolm Hulke, and a Derrick Sherwin submission (title unknown) were replaced by The War Games.
Series 7
The Shadow People, by Charlotte & Dennis Plimmer, and
The Mists of Madness, by Brian Wright, were both replaced by an extended Inferno.
Series 8
The Cerebroids, by Brian Wright, fell through at the scripting stage, leaving Robert Sloman and Barry Letts to expand an old audition piece into The Dæmons.
Series 9
The Mega, by Bill Strutton, and
The Space War, by Ian Stuart Black, were both dropped.
The Daleks in London, by Robert Sloman, was considered as the series finale until it was decided the returning Daleks would make more of an impact in the opening story. They were thus written into Louis Marks' nascent version of Day of the Daleks whilst Sloman got on with The Time Monster.
Series 10
Multiface, by Godfrey Harrison, was dropped.
Series 11
The Automata, by Robert Holmes, was replaced by The Time Warrior, in which Holmes managed to include the automaton from his original submission.
Series 12
The Space Station, by Christopher Langley, was replaced by The Ark in Space, which combined Langley's space station setting with John Lucarotti's original story of sleeping humans coming under attack from giant insects.
Series 13
The Prisoner of Time, by Barry Letts, was dropped, probably after Terror of the Zygons was held over from Series 12.
The Angurth, by Eric Pringle, was replaced by expanding The Seeds of Doom after Pringle was unable to complete his scripts.
Series 14
Douglas Camfield was commissioned to write Sarah's farewell story but was unable to meet the initial draft deadline. The slot was filled by The Hand of Fear.
The Gaslight Murders, by Basil Dawson, was replaced by The Robots of Death.
The Foe from the Future, by Robert Banks Stewart, was abandoned when Banks Stewart failed to deliver his scripts. The basic plot was combined with the setting for The Gaslight Murders (see above) to produce The Talons of Weng-Chiang.
Series 15
The Krikketmen, by Douglas Adams, was rejected on two counts. Firstly, it was written with Sarah-Jane Smith in mind, who had by now been written out of the series, and, secondly, it was far too extravagent a story to be realised by the BBC's limited resources. It did, however, bring Adams to the attention of producer Graham Williams, whilst the plot formed the basis of Adams' future Hitch-Hiker's novel Life, the Universe and Everything and the subsequent third radio series of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
The Killer Cats of Ghin-seng, by David Weir, was dropped because of a potentially expensive finale and replaced by The Invasion of Time
Series 16
The Lords of Miniscule, by TV legend Ted Willis, was replaced by The Power of Kroll after Willis failed to grasp the show's format.
Series 17
Dragons of Fear, by Pennant Roberts, was shelved, rewritten as Errinella and resubmitted for Series 18, when it was finally dropped.
Shylock, by John Lloyd, was rewritten as The Doomsday Project by Allan Prior before being shelved. It too was resurrected for Series 18, as The Doomsday Contract, before being finally dropped.
The Tearing of the Veil, by Alan Drury, was another script submitted for Series 17, only to be shelved, resubmitted for Series 18 and then dropped.
Sunburst, by Douglas Adams, actually got as far as being filmed as Shada before a technician's strike forced its abandonment. Some elements of the plot eventually found their way into Adams' novel, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.
Series 18
Sealed Orders, by Christopher Priest, was scrapped just before filming and replaced by Warrior's Gate.
John Nathan Turner tended to over-commission stories, which meant a larger than usual number of submissions were dropped during or after scripting. These included
Mark of Lumos by Keith Miles
Farer Nohan by Andrew Stephenson
Mouth of Grath by Malcolm Edwards & Leroy Kettle, and
The Dogs of Darkness, by Jack Gardner. This last one was resubmitted for Series 19 when it was eventually dropped.
Series 19
Project Zeta Sigma, by John Flanagan & Andrew McCulloch, began life as Project 4G and was to introduce the Fifth Doctor. It was eventually replaced by Castrovalva.
The Enemy Within, by Christopher Priest, was replaced by Earthshock.
Turner's over-commissioning policies resulted in all the following being dropped:
Soldar and the Plastoids, by John Bennett,
Psychrons, by Terence Greer,
The Torsan Triumvirate, by Andrew Smith, and
Hebos, by Rod Beacham.
Series 20
Space Whale, by Patrick Mills & John Wagner, was rewritten as Song of the Space Whale by Patrick Mills before being replaced by Mawdryn Undead.
Further over-commissioned casualties were:
a storyline by Tanith Lee,
Way Down Yonder, by Lesley Elizabeth Thomas, and
The Parasites, by Bill Lyons.
Series 21
As I write this I'm listening to Ian Dury's What a Waste, which sums up the continuation of Turner's "throw-enough-mud" approach to commissioning stories. Casualties this series included:
Poison, by Rod Beacham,
The House that Ur-Czak Built, by Andrew Stephenson,
The Place Where All Times Meet, by Colin Davies,
Maytime, by Christopher Bailey, which became Man Watch,
Ghost Planet, by Robin Squires, and
Circus of Destiny, by Ben Steed.
Series 22
Yet more victims of over-commissioning.
Hex, by Peter Ling & Hazel Adair,
Children of Seth, by Christopher Bailey,
Livanthian, by Brian Finch,
The First Sontarans, by Andrew Smith,
The Macro Men, aka The Macros, by Ingrid Pitt & Tony Rudlin,
Strange Encounter, by Ian Marter, which became Volvok, and
a story by Chris Boucher.
Series 23
Several storylines had already reached the scripting stage when Michael Grade requested Doctor Who be put on hold for re-evaluation. These were:
Nightmare Fair, by Graham Williams, which had a working title of Arcade and featured the Celestial Toymaker,
The Ultimate Evil, by Wally K.Daly,
In the Hollows of Time, by Christopher H.Bidmead,
Mission to Magnus, by Philip Martin, which had a working title of Planet of Storms and featured the Ice Warriors and Sil, and
Yellow Fever and How to Cure It, aka Yellow Fever, by Robert Holmes, which featured the Autons.
The Williams, Daly and Martin scripts were later adapted as novels and published as Target's "The Missing Episodes" series.
A number of other storylines had been commissioned, including:
League of the Tancreds, by Peter Grimwade, and
The Children of January, by Michael Feeney Callan, which replaced an idea by Bill Pritchard,
plus submissions from Gary Hopkins and Jonathan Wolfman.
In the wake of the so-called "Cancellation Crisis", the submissions from Holmes, Bidmead and Feeney Callan were retained along with
Gallifrey, by Pip & Jane Baker.
These were then all scrapped and replaced with:
Attack from the Mind, by David Halliwell,
a story by Jack Trevor Story, and
End of Term, by P.J.Hammond.
Halliwell and Story's ideas were then replaced by
The Last Adventure, by Christopher H.Bidmead, whilst Hammond's was retitled Pinacotheca.
In the end, all these were dropped in favour of The Trial of a Time Lord
Series 25
Alixion, by Robin Mukherjee, is the only submission known to have been dropped from the McCoy years.
Series 27
Several stories had been commissioned for what would have been Series 27 before the Doctor Who production office was quietly closed. Of these, only Lungbarrow by Marc Platt is known to have definitely been drafted. It was later turned into a novel for Virgin's "New Adventures" series.
30th Anniversary Special
Tentatively confirmed as a forthcoming BBC film production in June 1993, Lost in the Dark Dimension, by Adrian Rigelsford and Jo McCaul, was abruptly erased from official BBC history shortly after, despite Graeme Harper having been engaged as director and a production office set up. The BBC claimed the project had never been given the go-ahead, although an off-the-record comment blamed lack of time and money. The bulk of the story centred around the Fourth Doctor, with the Seventh featuring less prominently and the Third, Fifth and Sixth hardly at all, which didn't please Messers Pertwee, Davison and Baker C. when they received draft copies of the script - Pertwee reportedly claiming it was nothing more than amateur fan literature. So, instead of a feature-length TV movie, Who fans had to make do with the two-part Dimensions in Time charity skit.
