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Doctor Who has thousands of unproduced story concepts. Indeed, the first ever story ‘An Unearthly Child’ was based on a completely different idea: C.E. Webber’s ‘The Giants’, in which the Doctor and co. would have been shrunken down and faced comparatively massive Earth insects, was in an original series document produced for Doctor Who, and had Rex Tucker assigned to direct.

‘The Giants’ was vetoed for a combination of technical reasons: the small and outdated studio assigned to Doctor Who wasn’t up to the task of giant insects. Said insects drew the ire of Doctor Who co-creator Sydney Newman, who famously disliked bug-eyed monsters – you can’t get any more bug-eyed than literal bugs. Aspects of it ended up in the Season 2 story ‘Planet of Giants’, and the opening scene – where teenager Sue and her teachers Cliff and Lola meet Dr Who (sic) in the fog – was adapted...

The climax of "The End of Time", David Tennant's final Doctor Who adventure as the Tenth Doctor could have happened 36 years earlier if it weren't for a tragic accident. Airing on New Year's Day 2010, "The End of Time, Part 2" brought back the Time Lords, whose scheme to survive the Time War put all of humanity at risk. When the Doctor was unable to kill Rassilon (Timothy Dalton) and send him, and Gallifrey back into the nightmare of the Time War, the Master (John Simm) obliged instead.

While the Master was mostly acting out of revenge for having been used as a vessel for the signal needed to shift Gallifrey through space, his sacrifice can also be seen as an attempt to save the life of his former friend, the Doctor. Before Doctor Who's Christmas and New Year Master story in 2009/2010, 1970s script editor Terrance Dicks and producer Barry Letts...

Alex Westthorp Oct 1, 2019

Witches, demons and ancient pagan rituals: Alex explores the use of folk horror in the Doctor's adventures...

This article originally ran on Den of Geek UK.

Thought to be a relatively recent term, coined by director Piers Haggard and popularised by Doctor Who's own Mark Gatiss, "folk horror" is essentially horror based on old countryside folklore. It is a sub-genre of occult fiction, which encompasses paganism, witchcraft, superstition, legends and the traditions of the countryside. Often texts will refer to "Green man" rituals, stone circles, Devil worship, disfigurement and the "memories" of the earth.

In the cinema, folk horror is at the fore in films like the 1967 Hammer classic The Devil Rides Out, Terence Fisher's vision of the 1934 novel by Denis Wheatley, Piers Haggard's own 1974 film Blood On Satan's Claw (which incidentally features a terrific cast including a pre-Who Anthony Ainley and a post-Who Wendy Padbury...

Digital Spy readers named David Tennant as Doctor Who's greatest ever Doctor - now, with just 10 weeks to go until the 50th anniversary, DS is embarking on a new quest... to list the top 10 Who stories of all time.

We kicked off proceedings last Monday with William Hartnell classic 'The Aztecs' - now we travel seven years forward in time, for one of Jon Pertwee's all-time greats...

9. The Daemons (1971) - Five episodes - written by Guy Leopold

Season eight of Doctor Who - Jon Pertwee's second year with the show - represented the BBC sci-fi drama's second major creative revamp in two years. Just four stories on from a switch to full colour and new Earthbound format, Who found itself rejigged once again in 1971, with producer Barry Letts and script editor Terrance Dicks eager to push the show in a new direction.

Sweeping change is always a risk,...

Robert Holmes establishes his long-running genius for Doctor Who scripts in this first-class Pertwee story...

Back in my review on Colony In Space, I mentioned that writer Malcolm Hulke had found some way to travel forward in time. Well, now I’m convinced that there was a whole gaggle of writers who built their own Tardis, and armed with copious quantities of beer and kippers, travelled forward to the 21st century.

So while Hulke conducted research on the nitty-gritty of the British economy, Robert Sloman was assigned to have a chinwag with Sting about the environment, while Robert Holmes was assigned to do two things: One was to investigate the mundane policies of politicians, the other was to investigate that thorn in everyone’s TV side, reality TV. The end result? Carnival Of Monsters.

Carnival Of Monsters sticks out like a sore thumb in the Pertwee years. Most of the...