Doctor Who/Trivia: Difference between revisions

** Many proposed episodes - often proposed by some of the show’s best writers - never get past the screenplay or pitch stage, and some rejected ideas have been leaked, although in hindsight, [[Hilarious in Hindsight| many sound kinda… weird:]]

*** Mark Gatiss, the mastermind behind episodes like “Victory of the Daleks”, “Night Terrors”, and “Robot of Sherwood”, had an idea for a story during Series 4 called “The Suicide Exhibition”. This blockbuster epic of a story would have taken place during [[World War II]], had [[Those Wacky Nazis]] as the bad guys, and would have been an adventurous romp where the Tenth Doctor assumed the role of that dashing [[Adventure Archaeologist]] everyone loves. Yes, Galiss actually admitted he wanted the Doctor to assume an [[Indiana Jones]] role, complete with a temple full of puzzle-themed deathtraps, and to be honest, that seemed right up the Tenth Doctor’s alley. Unfortunately, it never saw fruition.

*** Vampires are always cool, right? Sure! And they've appeared a few times in the franchise as a result. But Paul Cornell (writer of “Father’s Day”, “Human Nature”, and “The Family of Blood”, along with many Doctor Who novels and audio stories) wanted to take the concept further, and one proposal for a script involved the Twelfth Doctor actually becoming a vampire. A real one. The story would have involved a group of [[Friendly Neighborhood Vampire| vampires trying to live peacefully in London]], leading to the Doctor showing a darker, more sinister nature, but unfortunately, this idea never got past the pitch stage. Still, for what’s it’s worth, most fans agree that for an actor like Peter Capaldi, playing a vampire wouldn’t have been difficult. Cornell also proposed a Christmas Episode involving the Doctor protecting a young boy and an episode called “Pride and Prejudice and Daleks”, but both never saw the light of day.

*** Everyone who has seen ''[[The Thing]]'' knows why it is so scary; an unseen monster that is slowly infecting and assimilating your allies, so you don’t know who’s on your side and who isn’t until they actually strike… Pure [[Nightmare Fuel]], and the series almost did the same thing in the 70s, with an episode that would have been called “The Shape of Terror”. This story would have featured the Third Doctor, his companion Jo, and a bunch of [[Red Shirts]] facing off against a shapeshifting alien called the Energit in an abandoned research base, the Energit attacking and assimilating them much like the Thing would. (note this was years before the first appearance of the Zygons, a more well-known race of shapeshifting villains) It was never made, but it seems much of “The Shape of Terror” [[Recycled Script| was recycled into]] the episode “The Curse of Paladon”.

*** The First Doctor - or rather, the actor who played him, William Hartnell - had the idea of the Doctor having a son. [[Antagonistic Offspring| Whom he didn’t like at all.]] Hartnell even had the idea of this son looking exactly like the Doctor, [[Acting for Two| meaning he’d play both roles]]. The episode where this evil offspring would be introduced (working title, “The Son of the Doctor”) would likely have aired during Hartnell’s third or fourth season, but again, it was never made.

*** Most Companions come and go, but the TARDIS has been with the Doctor from the start. Unfortunately, while a few episodes revolve around exploring its interior, it doesn’t really do much except act as his base and a [[Time Machine]]. However, writer James Henry wanted to expand its role with an episode where it was given a battle mode, able to fight alien ships like some [[Cool Spaceship]] armed with high-tech phasers and photon torpedoes! While this sort of TARDIS has appeared in a few comic books, it sadly never made it to live action.

*** It has been established that the reason the Doctor has Companions is because he needs emotional support to keep from going truly mad. Thus, the proposed episode “Sealed Orders” would have given him a very [[Sadistic Choice]] to make. Scripted by Christopher Priest (the novelist who wrote ''[[The Prestige]]'') this episode was described as a political thriller where the Fourth Doctor would receive orders from the Time Lords to kill Romana. The story would also involve a few paradoxes, an alternate version of the Doctor, multiple TARDIS-es inside one another, and a non-linear storyline, ending with Romana’s departure. This got as far as a screenplay, but was never produced.

*** Tom MacRae is credited with writing three episodes, the Cyberman two-parter from Series 2, and the iconic “The Girl Who Waited” from Series 4. His third project (also for Series 4) was called “Century House”, which was never produced. This episode was Companion-lite, the Tenth Doctor being on [[Show Within a Show| a paranormal reality show called ''Most Haunted'']], where the Doctor [[Who You Gonna Call?| was investigating sightings of a specter called the Red Widow]] with the only involvement by a Companion being Donna watching the broadcast at home. Executive producer Russel David was unsatisfied with the script and passed it over in favor of “Midnight”, another Companion-lite episode that did rather well.

*** [[Big Creepy-Crawlies| GIANT ANTS!]] Wait, wait, what’s so special about giant ants? After all, the Doctor has dealt with such monsters before, in “The Web Planet”. But, those were actually aliens that looked like ants, and they weren’t very bright. “The Ants”, however, was a different type of plot Based on an idea by Roger Dixon, this would have involved the Second Doctor and Jamie shrunk to a height of a tenth of an inch tall, and menaced by real ants, who were super-intelligent and wanted to take over the world! Still, as novel as that was, it was never produced.

Doctor Who meets Harry Potter! Well, why not? In the Aught Years, these were the two most popular British Cash Cows and Doctor Who was arguably in its Golden Age, so who wouldn’t love an “official” crossover? Initially, Russel David had the idea of not only making the 2008 Christmas episode a crossover, but having J.K. Rowling herself write the script. Then he thought of a different approach - having Rowling appear on the actual show As Herself in an episode set in 1997, right after Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was published, as in when she was still struggling to write a follow-up story. Then they’d bring in some sort of alien-parasite bug thingie that could alter reality using the imagination of a human host as a model, and… You see where this is going, right? Oh, and this would still be An Asskicking Chrismas a Christmas episode. Unfortunately, actor David Tennet wasn’t as thrilled about the idea, and the idea was eventually abandoned.

Paul Abbot - better known for his work on Shameless, another popular British show - scripted an episode for series 1 that would reveal (dead serious here, btw) that Rose was not a real human, but had been created by the Ninth Doctor in an experiment to create the perfect companion. The plot would further involve Jack discovering this and facing the moral dilemma of telling her she wasn’t real or letting her believe the lie. This idea actually got pretty far but was cancelled at the last minute, possibly because David figured there wasn’t enough suspension of disbelief among fans that the Doctor (even one as unstable as the Ninth, thank you so much Time War) would lie and manipulate Rose after creating her to be his plaything. Probably a wise decision in