20 Cancelled Doctor Who Episodes You Didn't Know About

There have been more episodes of Doctor Who than I've had hot dinners, and there have been even more that never made it to screens

Sometimes a script is too similar to others in development. Sometimes the writer has to drop out

Or, as is often the case for Doctor Who, the budget only comprises some blue tack and a piece of string, forcing plans to change

Hello everybody, Ellie here for Who Culture, and today we're going to talk about some of Doctor Who's most interesting unmade episodes

from sequels to prequels and even an anniversary special that never saw the light of day

20. Death to the Doctor Having worked on three Tenth Doctor stories and multiple installments of the Sarah Jane adventures

Gareth Roberts was one of the first writers Stephen Moffat approached when he took over as showrunner in 2010

Roberts would end up writing Series 5's 11th episode, The Lodger, a loose adaptation on a 2006 Doctor Who magazine comic strip

which saw the Tenth Doctor briefly move in with Mickey. And carnage ensued, as you would imagine

But at one stage, he was set to contribute an entirely different episode

titled Death to the Doctor. This would have been set on a Vegas-style planet obsessed with law enforcement

with the Doctor arrested for a minor offence and forced to fight a cyclops, hence the title

Another key element was a disgraced Sontaran called Scorm. It's a story that was just too costly to produce

Unsurprisingly, the Lodger was much more wallet-friendly. though its impact would be felt elsewhere

Most notably, Scorn would inspire the character of Strax, debuting in the following years A Good Man Goes to War

In the interim, the title would be used in modified form for Matt Smith's Sarah Jane adventure story, Death of the Doctor

See, it all worked out in the end. Number 19. The Nightmare Fair

The classic Who season that changed the most from conception to broadcast

was season 23, which, before becoming the serialized trial of a Time Lord

comprised six standalone stories. The original opening story, The Nightmare Fair, would have

brought back the Toymaker, 20 years on from his first appearance. Though played by original actor

Michael Goff, the character would have been updated for modern audiences, operating in a world of

arcade machines rather than playing cards and toy soldiers. Accordingly, his rematch with the Doctor

would have taken place among the glitz and glamour of Blackpool. Yes, Blackpool. For those unaware

that's a seaside town on the west coast of England. The scripts were written and filming dates booked

The story was even set to be teased in season 22 finale, Revelation of the Daleks

which, as filmed, ended with the Doctor telling Perry, I'll take you to Blackpool

When the plan changed, the word Blackpool was removed, creating a very different kind of cliffhanger

namely a very jarring and weird one. Like most other unmade season 23 stories

The Nightmare Fair has subsequently been adapted for prose and audio, and the toy maker would, of course

eventually returned to television in the giggle. Number 18, Gawain and the Green Knight

The 11th episode of series two was originally assigned to national treasure Stephen Fry

who had first crossed paths with Doctor Who in 2002, starring in the webcast Death Comes to Time

Fry was given free reign to develop a story for the revived series

This was provisionally titled and set in the 1920s, a setting he had previously used for his 2003 film, Bright Young Things

The script Fry ultimately ended up writing was reportedly a reworking of the Arthurian myth Gawain and the Green Knight

which in true Doctor Who style was revealed to have alien origins, and featured a scene of the TARDIS landing on a strange planet

Truly revolutionary stuff there, Stephen. Whether or not it was still set in the 1920s by this point is unclear

Either way, it was deemed too ambitious for a slot so late in production

and in what is surely one of the biggest downgrades in the show's history, was swiftly replaced by Fear Her

Initially pushed back to 2007, it was shelled for good when Fry proved unavailable for rewrites

He would later appear in Doctor Who as MI6 boss C in Spyfall, but is yet to write for the show

17. The Prison in Space In classic Who, it was common practice for multiple scripts to be commissioned for a single slot

in case a particular story fell through. Various stories were prepped for the second Doctor's final season

including Dick Sharple's The Prison in Space. Less serious than other contemporary stories

it would have been set on a world where women rule and men are subordinate

and was full of highly questionable moments, such as a brainwashed Zoe being broken out of her trance by Jamie

smacking her on the bottom. Yikes. This story was soon replaced by The Crotons

the first Doctor Who contribution from Robert Holmes, who would go on to become a prolific writer and script editor

throughout the classic series. Some beef remained with Sharples, who felt he'd been betrayed by the production team

But all things considered, it's probably a good job this one didn't get made

For those nevertheless intrigued to experience the prison in space, a slightly less egregious audio version

was released in 2010. Number 16, Patings. Little is known about the cancelled stories

of the most recent eras. We know that Orphan 55 originally started life

as a Series 11 episode, set on an outer space safari park

and that Legend of the Sea Devils emerged out of a desire to include a pirate story in flux

And then there's this one. Patings would have brought back one of the era's most iconic creations

The Pating. Yep, they were going to do a sequel to the Saranga Conundrum

God have mercy on our souls. The idea was to pull an alien-slash-aliens style stunt

with this second story featuring the endlessly hungry creatures en masse It not clear why the story was abandoned with Chris Chibnall merely saying quote we had it all worked out and we couldn do it for one reason or another

Which probably means another case of the budget not quite stretching far enough. And considering the fairly impressive CGI of the Pating itself

you can see why. Is the Saranga conundrum the most obvious story for a sequel

No. But the Pating was undeniably Series 11's most merchandisable monster, perfectly straddling the line between cute and scary

And hey, given how big LeBooBoo's are now, they were probably onto something there

Number 15, The Perfect Companion. The version of Series 1 that Russell T. Davis originally pitched to the BBC

is fairly close to the one that ended up on screen. The one exception being Episode 11, which was always something of a blank slate

At a very early stage, it was going to be a historical, depicting the eruption of Vesuvius in Pompeii

This idea was deemed too expensive for 2005, though it would eventually reach screens in 2008

The slot was then offered to Russell T. Davis' friend and former colleague, Paul Abbott

He submitted a bold storyline which would have revealed that Rose wasn't just an ordinary human

but the result of an experiment conducted by the Doctor in order to devise the perfect companion

Understandably, Russell T. Davis had concerns about how this would fit into the Doctor and Rose's wider characterisation

There were also shades of the Seventh Doctor's manipulation of Ace, which he felt to be repetitive and unoriginal

As it transpired, Abbott was too busy to write for Doctor Who anyway due to the success of his new drama, Shameless

and Episode 11 became the more thematically appropriate Boomtown. Still, the notion of a perfect companion would be great to see one day

providing it's part of a series arc and not a one-off storyline. Number 14. The Vampire Doctor

After writing two universally acclaimed stories for RTD1, Father's Day and Human Nature and the Family of Blood

Paul Cornell never returned to Doctor Who. Talk about a mic drop. But he did pitch various stories

for Stephen Moffat's era. One such story, proposed for the Twelfth Doctor, centred around a community

of vampires living in contemporary London, riffing on Cornell's own Wilderness Years novel

Goth Opera. In a dramatic twist, one of the TARDIS team would have succumbed to the bloodsuckers

partway through. Initially, this was Clara, but Moffat suggested instead having the transformation

occur to the Doctor. There are shades of this idea in some 12th Doctor stories that were produced

with Series 9 featuring two communities of aliens living in London, the Zygons and the residents of

Trap Street, and evil duplicates of both the Doctor and Clara. So it's not surprising that it never got

made. Also, vampires or vampire-like creatures have featured in Doctor Who before, State of Decay

Smith and Jones, and the Vampires of Venice, among others. So perhaps there was a fear of

retreading old ground. And let's be honest, Twilight had sort of killed the scare factor

of vampires by 2014. Still, it's a pity. Jenna Coleman would have put in an impressive turn as

vampire Clara, but Peter Capaldi as a vampire doctor would have been something to behold

We were robbed! Robbed, I tell you! Number 13. The Cricket Men

For Doctor Who, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas Adams wrote The Pirate Planet and

Sharda co-wrote City of Death and script-edited Season 17. He also pitched the story to the show

a couple of years earlier in 1976. In typically outlandish Adam style, this centered around

androids called Cricketmen, who were trying to free their home planet, Cricket, from a Time Lord

prison by constructing a key from items associated with the Earth game Cricket, a sentence that only

a show like Doctor Who could churn out, quite frankly. The Doctor and his companion become

aware of this scheme during a test match at Lord's when the Cricket Men steal the Ashes trophy

Though it didn't result in a television commission, Adams didn't let the Cricket Men go

later attempting to get it made as a feature film. When this came to nothing, he used the story as

the basis for his third hitchhiker's book, Life, the Universe and Everything, by which time the

Cricket opening device had become the Wicked Game. Meanwhile, he'd revisit the idea of a Time

Lord prison in Sharda, which in a cruel twist of fate would also never reach screens. The Cricket

It meant finally saw the light of day as a novel in 2018, with James Goss working from Adam's original notes

12. The Suicide Exhibition Mark Gatiss is New Who's most prolific guest writer

penning episodes for all of the first ten series, save for series three and four

His absence during this time wasn't for lack of trying. Gatiss actually developed another tenth Doctor story

that never made it to screens. Inspired by a real-world phenomenon from the two world wars

whereby prized museum exhibits were substituted for items that could afford to be destroyed

This story comprised a treasure hunt in a London museum besieged by German soldiers and Bogmen

zombies. Following an initial draft set in World War I, Gators was asked to give the story more of

an Indiana Jones feel, with the action moved to World War II and the soldiers becoming Nazis

The resulting script, The Suicide Exhibition, was set to be produced as part of Series 4

constituting Donna's first trip back in time. However, it was ultimately replaced by the

Fires of Pompeii. It was also briefly considered to become one of the 2009 specials, but this wasn't

to be. Gatiss has recently expressed interest in doing some sort of adaptation, and given his long

history with Big Finish, he was one of their first ever writers after all, it's surely just a matter

of time till Doctor Who's own lost arc gets an audio version. 11. Sleep No More The Sequel

Like the stories directly before it, Sleep No More was originally conceived as a two-parter

featuring businessmen trying to colonize sleep to increase productivity. One interaction involved

two opposing factions one who used sleep technology and one who didn Another saw the doctor discover this technology in Part 1 before going back in time to discover its origin in Part 2 When the story became a single

writer Mark Gatiss, yep, him again, put some of his original ideas aside

with the intention of developing a sequel, something he pitched for Series 10

This saw the Doctor arrive on present-day Earth where bankers were using a new technology to work longer hours

and thus make more money. Although the technology would have been different from that used by Rasmussen. Its side effect, the creation of Carnivorous Sandmen, would have been

the same. Upon realizing that Series 10 could be his last chance to write for Doctor Who, Gatiss

changed course, instead opting to do the story he'd always dreamed of, Ice Warriors on Mars

It's a shame because Sleep No More isn't the most popular episode ever, but a sequel might have

helped fix that. Number 10. The Leakly Bible. If you thought the TV movie pushed the envelope for

Doctor Who? Think again, because it could have been a whole lot crazier. During the early days

of the project, American writer John Leakley was tasked with creating a writer's bible for a

prospective season. Essentially a complete reboot, it reimagined the show as a sort of Greek myth

with the Doctor's former tutor Borusa now his grandfather and the Master now his half-brother

Most of the episodes would have been remakes of memorable classic Who serials, but the pilot was

slightly more original, opening with the Master becoming president of the Time Lords, the dying

Borussia merging with the TARDIS and the Doctor embarking on a quest to find his long-lost father

Ulysses. In the pilot alone, viewers would have been transported to war-torn London and ancient

Egypt before a showdown on Scarrow with Davros and the redesigned Spider Daleks. Leakley's ideas

were met with a lukewarm response, which is probably for the best given that they would

have taken a sledgehammer to 30 years of continuity. He was removed from the project

and had nothing to do with a TV movie that did end up on screens. 9. A Midwinter's Tale

Before arriving at the next Doctor, Russell T. Davis considered various storylines for the 2008 Christmas special

including one set in a deserted London. This was inspired by the night he spent in the capital following the premiere for Torchwood Series 2

Walking around his hotel in the early hours, Davis was struck by how empty it felt

leading him to ponder, what if I was a dad who returned to his room to find his family gone

This idea was revisited in 2009, by which time the dad character had evolved into a gran who's gone away for Christmas with her family

Helen Mirren and Judi Dench were considered for the role, having remarkably both expressed interest in appearing in the show

Meanwhile, the creatures responsible for the disappearance were set to be eight-legged centaur-like aliens

who have frozen Earth in a single second in order to stage a carnival

The storyline was abandoned, but elements of it ended up elsewhere. The notion of the Doctor teaming up with an older woman inspired Adelaide in the Waters of Mars

and the premise became the basis for the Sarah Jane adventure story The Empty Planet

8. The Chimes of Midnight A few Doctor Who audio dramas have inspired television episodes

namely Rob Shearman's Jubilee, which became Dalek, and Mark Platt's Spare Parts, which became Rise of the Cybermen and The Age of Steel

At one point, Shearman's spooky Christmas tale The Chimes of Midnight, arguably the most acclaimed Big Finish release ever

was also in the running to be adapted. Released in 2002, the original starred the 8th Doctor

and his audio-only companion Charlie Pollard, and was set in an Edwardian country house

where people are killed on the chime of every hour. The television version would instead have featured

the 11th Doctor, Amy and Rory, with the action moved to a modern-day setting

and the Christmas element dropped. Shearman attended read-throughs for Series 5 but felt he could never quite get the story to work

which is perhaps not surprising given the dark twists of the source material

As such, it was abandoned. Nice as it would have been for Chimes to reach a larger audience

a screen version would have potentially lessened its impact. So it's probably for the best that it never happened

7. The Mutants of Planet 6767 The current production team is equally as tight-lipped about unmade episodes as the last one

But one thing we have learned is that The Well wasn't always going to be a Midnight sequel

Prior to co-writing the episode with Russell T. Davis, Sharma Angel Walfall wrote a whole other script of her own

It was still set on a colony in the far future, but had an entirely different central idea

How might humans mutate under another world's sun? This version of the story would have been much more grounded in real science

harking back to the educational purpose of Doctor Who as laid out by its co-creator, Sydney Newman

It would also have required extensive CGI and prosthetics work. But with the Interstellar Song Contest already eating up much of the season's effects budget

this was deemed a step too far. Another key component was a love story, which jarred with the darker tone Russell T. Davis was after

As things turned out, pretty much every season 2 story featured some tie to the past

so it's a shame this story wasn't produced. It would have been a breath of fresh air

Although, the episode we did get was pretty good too, so swings and roundabouts, I guess

6. Genesis of the Cybermen Unlike the Daleks, the cyber origins have only been explored relatively recently

notably in the excellent and horrifying series 10 finale world enough in time and the doctor

falls however the notion of a cyberman origin story was first floated by their co-creator jerry

davis in the early 1980s set on mondas before the events of the 10th planet davis's storyline

revealed the doctor to have unwittingly played a part in the cybermen's creation leaving a powerful

component behind when the tardis is accidentally sent forwards in time upon arriving in the future

he discovers that Mondas' king has used this device to turn his subjects into Cybermen

In a final twist we would have seen the moment Mondas was forced out of our solar system the direct result of rebel spaceships fleeing to Earth At the time Genesis of the Cybermen was deleted pretty much immediately on the grounds that it was out of step with the show current style of storytelling although an audio version was finally released in 2025

5. Century House Like Mark Gatiss, Tom McRae, writer of Rise of the Cybermen and the Age of Steel for Series 2

was commissioned to write a story for Series 3 that was pushed back to Series 4 and then abandoned

It would have been a Doctor Who spin on Most Haunted-style shows

following a television crew as they attempt to track down the ghost of the Red Widow in a spooky clifftop house

It was specifically conceived as a companion light episode, with the Doctor joining the broadcast and the companion watching events unfold from the comfort of their sofa

allowing these scenes to be shot in a single day. Despite its dark setting, Century House was apparently quite light in tone

It was pencilled in as the eighth episode of Series 4, directly after The Unicorn and The Wasp

However, as production drew nearer, Russell T. Davis realised that he didn't want to run two comedic episodes back-to-back

and he opted to write a last-minute replacement. And that last-minute replacement was, well, only a certain stone-cold classic known as Midnight

So yeah, probably a good job that Century House never got made. 4. Stracks on Trial

Just as the Pertwee-era Unit family appeared at the start of Tom Baker's era but pretty much disappeared straight after

The Twelfth Doctor's debut story Deep Breath would turn out to be the Paternoster Gang's last

But at one point, things might have been different, with one of the gang getting their very own episode

As he revealed on his blog back in 2018, Green Wing writer James Henry was invited to pitch an episode for the Twelfth Doctor's first series

After suggesting various ideas that had already been taken, he was offered another premise

What if the Sontarans found out that Strax had been helping humanity and the Doctor and put him on trial

effectively sentencing him to death. Despite believing it to be, quote, the worst pitch he'd ever done

Henry was asked to develop Strax on trial into a full script. In the end, it just missed out

which is a pity, as it would have made Strax a more three-dimensional character

and given Dan Starkey a chance to do more than just shout about acid and grenades

Henry also recalled a mortifying email where he wrote the story's title with a P instead of an X

but insists that this had nothing to do with him not getting the gig. Number 3. Doctor Who meets J.K. Rowling

One of Russell T. Davis' hopes for the 2008 Christmas special was to secure another big-name guest star

someone on the level of a Catherine Tate or Kylie Minogue. Having just finished reading the final Harry Potter book and enjoying it immensely

an idea suddenly occurred to him. What if the 2008 Christmas companion was J.K. Rowling

Davis had actually asked Rowling to write for the show back in 2004

but having her actually appear in the show was a different prospect entirely

He was also keen to continue the trend of having the Doctor meet famous authors

having previously featured Dickens, Shakespeare, and Agatha Christie. Had this story gone ahead, it would have involved a space bug leaping onto Rowling's back

and bringing the world of her imagination to life, enabling wizards, witches, and magic to feature in the Doctor Who universe

However, it was quickly kiboshed by David Tennant, who felt it sounded too much like a spoof, and Rowling herself wasn't too keen either

2. Lost in the Dark Dimension A short while into the wilderness years of the 1990s, it became clear that Doctor Who was going to be off air for its 30th anniversary

To plug the gap, the BBC commissioned a feature-length director video special titled Lost in the Dark Dimension

Set in a world where the fourth Doctor survived his fatal fall in Logopolis and thus never regenerated into his successors

it would have starred Tom Baker as an older Doctor alongside the Brigadier, Dorothy, an alternate version of Ace

and the Brigadier's son slash Ace's boyfriend, Alex. The other surviving Doctors would have featured in minor roles

with the Daleks, Cybermen, Ice Warriors, and Yeti also returning. Rick Mayall was being eyed up for the ultimate big bad, Hawkspur

a professor-slash-politician possessed by a deadly alien entity. The special was formally announced in June 1993, but by July it had been canned

owing to an insufficient budget, complaints from the Doctor actors about not having bigger roles

and the ongoing negotiations that led to the 1996 TV movie. The BBC instead celebrated Doctor Who's 30th birthday with the Children in Need special Dimensions in Time

which was certainly an episode. And number one, How the Monk Got His Habit

The three stories Peter Harness wrote for Doctor Who all ended up being part of ongoing series narratives

but he did also pitch some standalone adventures. Shortly after writing the Zygon two-parter, he proposed a story which incorporated both the meddling monk and the mad monk Rasputin

It would have opened with the monk playing Boney M's Ra-Ra Rasputin to the man himself

and inadvertently sending him mad, thus averting the Russian Revolution and changing the course of human history

With no one else to turn to, he calls the Doctor, only to find himself speaking to Peter Capaldi's 12th incarnation rather than William Hartnell's first

The pair would then have tried to find a solution, with the monk ultimately forced to regenerate into Rasputin's form and take his place

thus explaining how he adopted his monk persona. Besides the fact that it's an utterly crazy pitch, something Harness has freely admitted

it's possible Stephen Moffat steered clear of his story to avoid taking the limelight away from Missy

who had a big part to play in series 10. It's a good job he did too, as the Master would end up becoming Rasputin in their very next incarnation

and there's no way in hell we'd want to be deprived of that Rasputin dance scene now, would we

And that concludes our list. Let us know in the comments down below which Unmade episode you would have liked to have seen made

In the meantime, I've been Ellie for WhoCulture and in the words of River Song herself, goodbye, sweeties