Easter Special: Doctor Who - ‘Death To The Doctor’

Unmade Dr Who script from 2010

Something a bit different from my gander bag for Easter. This is ‘Death To The Doctor’, an unmade script I wrote for Doctor Who back in 2010, featuring Matt Smith (the best ever Dr Who). It was intended to be episode 7, but looming budget calamities meant that such a financially demanding episode couldn’t possibly be made, hence its substitution by a more achievable episode 7, and me racing in with the much cheaper ‘The Lodger’ for later in the run.

It got fairly far advanced - there was a design drawing for the giant Cyclops monster that’s featured, but sadly I haven’t got a copy of that.

As you will see, it was very specifically tailored to the slot immediately after Episode 6, when Rory had fairly recently joined Dr Who and Amy as a time traveller, so it wasn’t possible to rejig it for any later occasion. The plot hinges on the three characters being at that particular early stage of their acquaintance. I think, looking back, that’s quite a healthy sign, that we were paying close attention to the relationships and making them guide the stories.

This is about the tenth draft - Matt had been cast by this stage, and I’d seen him in rushes from earlier episodes, which was a great help. (It’s Rory who seems a little ‘off’ to me reading this again, as Arthur hadn’t been cast yet, and the original idea, I think, was that the character was going to be a big, conventionally handsome ‘bloke’.) I seem to recall there was a flying futuristic car in an earlier draft, which was taking the mickey out of the budget; one of those special effects they could breeze through in 1978, but which require enormous outlay and design efforts in this century to be acceptable. And it was only going to be on screen for 90 seconds! Naughty of me.

This ep features an early version of the exiled Sontaran character - invented by Steven M - who turned up in the show a year later with a different name, Strax. He is called Skorm here. (Steven’s okayed me to share the script here, by the way.)

Bunkerites will also recognise the character of Shanie, the tender-hearted Wild West barmaid who I basically just lifted from the Blake’s 7 episode ‘Gambit’, in which she was called Cheney. I needed a character like her, and obviously I couldn’t be bothered to change the name very much. Again, naughty. I mean, yes, it’s a stereotype but really.

I don’t want to say too much about the thing. I’d rather you came to it fresh. One thing that strikes me now is that it’s very complicated. We kept adding ideas to the plot - I laboured over the legal system of the planet to get it clear in my mind. But squeezing all of this into a 42 minute slot seems … well, very ambitious to me now. I often found with Doctor Who on TV that the original 1960s format was screaming in protest as you tried to squish it into a big modern chunk. The stories always wanted to unfurl, stretch out and be four times twenty-five minutes, the bastards.

But I enjoyed reading this again - and I’d forgotten the resolution to the tangle which the heroes get caught in. One of the execs thought this was a pro-gun, pro-‘open carry’ redneck story, which was bizarre; I thought it was the exact opposite!

Anyway, here you go - I hope you enjoy it - and Happy Easter!