Doctor Who – The Missing Scripts

I just found this website devoted to Doctor Who scripts that were dropped from the production schedule or reworked into more familiar episodes that ended up on screen. The site covers the entire history of the program, including the ‘missing Season 23′ and the many submitted scripts for Season 27.

I cannot recommend it enough. As a Doctor Who fan, I have heard of many of these scripts and ideas in part, but this site has compiled far more than I’ve ever seen in one place.

Sourcing the many books and articles published over the years, this site is a wealth of reading material.

Here are a few choice samples:

The Final Game
by Robert Sloman
Submitted for: Season 11 (Jon Pertwee)

Story: In the final confrontation between The Doctor and The Master it is revealed that they are somehow different parts of the same personality, the Doctor being the Id and The Master the Ego. The Master eventually sacrifices himself to save The Doctor and his companions.

Notes: This story was to be the last featuring Roger Delgado as he had asked to be written out of the series to pursue other projects. This story was abandoned after the tragic death of Roger Delgado in Turkey in June 1973.

Paradise 5 (or End of Term)
by: PJ Hammond
Episodes: 4
Companions: Mel
Submitted for: Season 23 (Colin Baker)
Story: The planet of Paradise 5 is a long dead world. Some time ago it’s nine moons were converted into a leisure complex for the hideously wealthy. The Doctor has decided to investigate the planet after finding 5 humanoid corpses floating in space. Strangely, the bodies weren’t wearing space suits, only business suits. the doctor hides himself in a vacant room of Paradise 5 while Mel works undercover as a pleasure hostess.

The pairs arrival does not go unnoticed. Gabriel, the head of paradise 5, senses that there is something amiss with the new girl Mel, and instructs two of his three subordinates, Stella and Bella to keep an eye on her while he goes to the administration moon Paradise One, to check the employment records.

With Gabriel gone, the Doctor comes out of hiding where he meets two of the holiday makers, Tapp, a successful businessman, and Aht, a scientist. The Doctor asks the pair about how they came to be on Paradise 5 and Tapp tells him that he was given a sup rise holiday by an unknown benefactor and whisked away without even being able to collect his clothes or effects. Aht gives a similar account and mentions that the surprise is supposedly part of the service. This sounds highly suspicious to the Doctor, who has a theory that people are being taken to Paradise 5 to be disposed of. This alarms the pair somewhat who have noticed that the complex has been gradually getting emptier, but the collection ships haven’t been leaving.

Deciding to look for more evidence to support his theory, the Doctor checks out a collection ship which is used to ferry the holiday makers back to their homeworlds. He finds that the ship is not of Earth construction. While wandering round the freezing cold ship Mel sees what she thinks is an angel-like being and tells the doctor, who dismisses it as nothing more than an optical illusion.

Gabriel returns from Paradise One, having found out that Mel’s papers are fake and sends Lorelei to capture her. He also dispatches two orderlies, mute half humans called Cherubs, to take the doctor to the collection ship. The Doctor is taken to the cargo ship where he finds Gabriel waiting for him. Gabriel reveals that the holiday makers are to be sold as slaves to the angel like owners of the craft. While being taken to the cargo hold the Doctor manages to escape, while at the same time Mel convinces Lorelei to set her free.

Arriving back at the complex the Doctor meets up with Mel, Lorelei and Tapp and Aht. They decide to steal a shuttle craft and pilot it to Paradise One and retrieve the TARDIS, but before they can Lorelei metamorphoses into a grotesque angel like creature and holds them while Gabriel arrives with a troop of cherubs who haul them back to the cargo hold of the ship. The Doctor tries to get the prisoners in the cargo hold to revolt,but meets with little success. Aht however, has a plan. He realises that the angel beings need an environment temperature of near zero to survive in their ethereal gaseous state and if the can raise the temperature of the ship, they may be able to destroy the creatures. The Doctor, Mel Tapp and Aht get the prisoners to block up the ventilation ducts with their trousers and jackets and start exercising. Their combined body heat raises the temperature of the ship, and the creatures dissipate in the warmer air. The prisoners are then able to get out of the ship and make their way to the shuttle port to make their escape.

Notes: After ‘Attack of the Mind’s replacement ‘The Last Adventure’ had fallen thorough, fan consultant Ian Levine suggested to Eric Saward that ‘Sapphire and Steele’ creator PJ Hammond should be approached. A storyline was submitted, but John Nathan Turner didn’t like the idea and it was dropped.

Doctor Who
by: John Leeky
Episodes: 1 (Paul McGann)
Companions: Barusa
Submitted for: CBS Series

Story: The Time Lords, led by a dying Cardinal Barusa are under attack from the Daleks whilst the Doctor is traveling the galaxy looking for the legendry Lost Scrolls. On his journey he is attacked by a Spider Dalek and is forced to return to Gallifrey where the Master, Barusa’s son, confronts the Doctor. The Master is next in line for succession to the presidency of Gallifrey but many Time Lords want the Doctor, Barusa’s grandson, to take leadership of Gallifrey. By eliminating the Doctor there will be nothing to stop the Master.In his final moments, Barusa tells The Doctor that his long lost father was the Time Lord explorer Ulysses and that his mother was a human from the ‘Blue Planet’. The Doctor then resolves to find his father and takes off in Ulysses’ old TARDIS. As he takes off Barusa’s spirit is somehow trapped in the crystals that power the TARDIS and he becomes one with it, able to communicate with and advise the Doctor.

Notes: It is plain that Leeky’s reboot of the series borrows heavily from the original. The Master, Gallifrey and the Daleks all appear as does Cardinal Borusa (inexplicably renamed Barusa). However, in direct contrast to the original series The Doctor’s motivation and origins are explained in detail, leaving you with an eccentric Englishman in space ‘quest format’ show.

The New Team (or Pompeii)
by: Paul Abbott
Episodes:
Submitted for: Series 1 (Christopher Eccleston)

Story: The TARDIS arrives in Pompeii 79 AD. Rose feels intimidated by Jack, who gets on very well with the Doctor and can share interstellar information with him and knows stories about the Time Lords.
As the Doctor struggles to regain the TARDIS before the volcano erupts, Jack uncovers information that Rose is, in fact, a secret experiment by the Doctor to psychically breed the perfect companion. Jack is left with a dilemma of whether or not to tell Rose the truth.

Notes: Russell T Davies asked Abbot to write for the new series and was impressed when Abbot already had a storyline about the truth about Rose. RTD was dismayed by the deconstruction of Rose’s character, but was still impressed. However, Abbot’s writing commitments with ‘Shameless’ meant he could not write the episode and RTD took over, intending to focus more on the volcano eruption as a story, before scrapping the whole idea to have a rematch with Margaret Blaine in Cardiff for ‘Boomtown’.

Batman: The Dark Knight Pics

Batman: The Dark Knight continues to film in Chicago and as the 2008 release date nears, fans and moviegoers alike are anxious to get a glimpse at what promises to be a super hero film with a LOT riding on it. The first film in the revived Warner Brothers franchise, Batman Begins, was an uproarious success and made many fans happy viewers and many happy movie viewers once again fans of the tortured soul in the black foam rubber suit.

Whereas Batman Begins was saddled with the responsibility of retelling the entire Batman origin, complete with studying the dark arts with the super secret League of Assassins in Tibet lead by the power hungry Ras Al Ghul, the sequel has a whole new challenge ahead of it… living up to the first one.

Batman Begins depicted a city torn apart by crime, corrupt cops and an insane asylum full of murderous psychopaths in the ‘bad section’ of town. By the conclusion, Police Captain James Gordan had formed an alliance with Batman to run down the remainder of the blood craze criminals/insane asylum inmates (they seemed to be treating them as interchangeable).

However, all was not well. Gordon delivered the first clue toward a whole mess of movies with a single playing card, the Joker.

With one villain already confirmed for the sequel, all anyone could think of was… Jack Nicholson and 1989.

With the Joker introduced as the main villain in the Batman sequel, The Dark Knight, I assumed that we’d get the stock ideas already introduced in the cartoons, comic books and film; poison gas, a nice parade, comical line readings and an awkward confrontation between an Olympic class athlete and a criminal mastermind (see 1989).

Imagine my surprise when I found these two images:

Apparently Heath Ledger is creeping the Hell out of his castmates on the set with his performance. To capture just the right feel for the Clown Prince of Crime, scriptwriter David Goyer researched the first appearances of the Joker, and by his own estimation came “eerily close” to the depiction.

That’s refreshing given the embarrassingly camp revival of another long standing villain in Doctor Who, the Master. There is always the danger that a production company is going to want to ‘make their mark’ on a character rather than honor what has come before it. It sounds like that is not the danger here.

“The Nicholson character portrayal doesn’t work [in this franchise],” Goyer said. “We asked, how would the Joker fit into the ‘Batman Begins’ universe?”

In a recent press conference at the San Diego Comic Con, actor Christian Bale let his opinion on the Batman franchise be known candidly: “With Burton, I never was a huge fan of Batman… he never created interest in my mind,” Bale said. “But then I read Frank Miller’s ‘Batman: Year One,’ [that] made me say what you all say: Why the hell hasn’t someone made this movie yet?”

If there is one thing to be sure of, the Dark Knight is going to be full of surprises. The images leaked of a redesigned armor for Batman, his Bat-bike (the Batpod) that apparently breaks away from the main body of the Batmobile in a dramatic chase sequence (I think we had that in Batman Returns, didn’t we?) and the introduction of Two-Face played by Aaron Eckhardt have me convinced that it will no doubt live up to the success of the first film.

But I still have no idea what’s going on here: