Daleks, the Great Fire of London, Rogue’s return and more would have featured in this year’s season of Doctor Who
Ncuti Gatwa’s time in the TARDIS came to a premature end last year with The Reality War and a regeneration that showed every sign of last minute rewrites. We know the Scottish-Rwandan actor originally intended to film a third season, from his comments in a Graham Norton interview. And now, thanks to Russell T Davies’ memoir, Queerest of Folk, we have an idea of exactly what that would have looked like.
Back before the 2025 season even aired, Davies had updated Doctor Who Magazine with progress on the next. An outline for the next year of adventures already existed, he wrote, and scripts for more than one episode already existed in draft form. We now know that there were three completed scripts Fifteenth Doctor scripts. There were also concepts for a further two, and rough plan for three more. Of course, ‘complete’ is a relative concept when it comes to screen writing, and there would likely have been a few more drafts of changes before filming began. But probably those changes would have been relatively minor.
Even the completed scripts didn’t have actual titles yet, but we do know their focus.
Ncuti Gatwa’s third season, story by story
The Great Fire of London by Laurence Clark and Jack Thorne
Of course, as any fool knows, the Great Fire of London in 1666 was started by an overloading Terileptil power pack during the Fifth Doctor’s fight to stop a genetically enhanced version of the Black Death being unleashed upon humanity. However, over ten regenerations later, it seems there would have been more to tell.
Davies’ comments suggest this would have been one of most lavish stories of the Gatwa era, pushing that Disney budget to its limit to bring one of history’s worst urban disasters to fiery life. Laurence Clark and Jack Thorne are both first time Doctor Who writers. Clark has written for a number of series, including super-powered CBBC teen drama Gifted, and the comedy Perfect for U&Dave. Thorne meanwhile, is a BAFTA and Emmy Award winning writer whose standing in British television rivals Davies’. He’s the author of the searing dramas Adolescence and Toxic Town, the latter starring Jodie Whittaker, as well as energetic genre fare like the Enola Holmes films and Bad Wolf’s own adaptation of His Dark Materials.
Trypophobia in Space by Lydia Adetunji
Like many phobias, trypophobia is both very specific and easily triggered. Moreover, it effects people with anything ranging from mild disquiet to debilitating terror. Strictly speaking, it’s a fear of a pattern of small, tightly packed holes, though bumps and flat dots in similar patterns can also trigger it. It’s a visual phobia, meaning someone could eat a strawberry or be aware of their own skin pores. That is, so long as they don’t look at the them too closely.
One of the episodes originally planned for this year would have added trypophobia to the list of things Doctor Who has made viewers terrified of, alongside statues, shadows, ticking clocks and more. The script takes place about a NASA space station in the present day, or close to it. All in all, it would have been the season’s dark SF horror entry. Lydia Adetunji is another first time Doctor Who writer, having previously written episodes of His Dark Materials, Noughts + Crosses, The Last Kingdom, and Rivera.
Urban Horror in Manchester by Sharma Angel-Walfall
Sharma Angel-Walfall, writer of last season’s The Well would have been one of the returning writers for the season. Her new script would have taken place on a Manchester council estate. Davies compares it to the 2019 film Rocks, in which a teenage girl attempts to fend for herself and evade social services after her mother abandons her and her baby brother. Of course this is Doctor Who. So presumably the episode’s young protagonist would have had even darker, more alien, terrors to contend with. But fortunately, unlike Rocks in the film, they’d have had Ncuti Gatwa’s Time Lord to help.
Rogue’s Return by Kate Herron and Briony Redman
One of those plot strands frustratingly cut short by Disney’s decision not to renew their partnership with Bad Wolf was the love story between the Doctor and Rogue. Certainly missing out on more of the electric chemistry between Jonathan Groff and Ncuti Gatwa is a tragedy.
But the plan was for Rogue to return in a new episode by his creators, Kate Herron and Briony Redman. Although there was no script yet for it, the premise had the Doctor encounter the time travelling bounty hunter once more in 1980s Blackpool. This hints Rogue ultimately escaped his hell dimension prison without the Doctor ever showing up to rescue him. Therefore, just how he feels about the Time Lord on their reunion is unknown…
Blogtor Who won’t be the first this week to point out that the last Doctor Who was about to set a story in 1980s Blackpool, 1986’s The Nightmare Fair, the entire season wound up getting cancelled, unmade. Blogtor’s not generally the superstitious sort, but perhaps whoever wins the current tender process should avoid commissioning Blackpool scripts. Just to be on the safe side.
Dalek episode by Juno Dawson
Another story that didn’t get past the discussion stage was a Dalek story by The Interstellar Song Contest’s Juno Dawson. Almost nothing is known about this story. In fact, it’s entirely possible almost nothing about this story was even decided before work on the season came to a halt. All that’s relatively certain is that it would pitched the Fifteenth Doctor against the Daleks at long last. In doing so, it would have fulfilled one of Ncuti Gatwa’s main ambitions in the role.
It seems, too, that this episode would have functioned much like Turn Left, Utopia, or Fear the Raven as an entry point for an epic season ending storyline.
Three Part Finale by Russell T Davies
Unusually, Russell T Davies himself wouldn’t have penned the first episode of the season. In fact, his first story would have been the finale. But what a finale! A three part Dalek epic! Of course, while in Blogtor’s opinion the 21 episodes of Davies’ second run of the show stacks up against the first 21 of his original run, RTD2’s major problem is that the weaker episodes this time were the finales, which tends to colour people’s view of the whole era.
Would this finale have balanced them out and hit the highs of The Parting of the Ways and Doomsday? Or would an inexplicable giant CGI Davros have ruined the fun? We’ll never know now.
The Billie Piper Christmas Special
Although Davies doesn’t detail the original plan for the 2026 Christmas Special in Queerest of Folk, he does touch on how it would have dealt with the aftermath of that regeneration when plans changed. The description sounds slightly similar to 2013’s The Time of the Doctor. It would been set during an intergalactic festival called Winternox as a space ship hovers ominously over a sleepy village. The Daleks would have featured, and the village would have harboured “a very surprising secret” that everyone is looking for.
Blogtor Who’s instinct? That the episode would have revealed what happened to sentient super-weapon the Moment after the Time War. And thus also why the Doctor has temporarily adopted the form of the ‘Bad Wolf girl.’
Davies’ comments about the special also suggest that his previously contradictory comments about it were a carefully constructed half-truth. There was originally a plan to make the special, and he and Bad Wolf had begun very early work on it. However, he was never officially contracted to write it. Therefore it both was and wasn’t ever ‘planned.’ Depending, as they say in another SF universe, on your point of view.
With three completed scripts as well as ideas for the rest of the episodes, fans will be hoping for new entries in Big Finish’s Lost Stories range
Naturally, the second a Doctor Who fan learns of an unproduced script is also the second they begin asked when Big Finish are going to adapt it for their Lost Stories range. In interviews about his book, Davies has demurred that the decision rest entirely with the writers of the individual scripts. However, he does hope fans will get to enjoy them one day in some form or another.
For his part, Ncuti Gatwa has expressed his strong desire to work with Big Finish at some point, and adapting his lost season seems like the perfect opportunity. In particular, the now former Doctor has said he wants to meet the Daleks on audio, at the very least. So even though it was the furthest from completion, Juno Dawson’s Dalek story, and perhaps even Davies’ three part saga, might be near the top of his list to do.
Like the original plans for 1986’s Season 23, the ‘lost’ 2026 season is bound to be discussed for decades to come
So much for the road not taken. With confirmation in the past couple of weeks that the vast TARDIS set at Wolf Studios is no more, the Bad Wolf era really is slipping into the shadows now. But a new dawn, a new Doctor, and a whole new Doctor Who is just around the corner. Though the tender process specifically bans the new team from consulting with anyone from the Bad Wolf production (and therefore puts these scripts off limits for now at least), hopefully their own plans will be just as exciting.
All this really does just scratch the surface of the revelations Russell T Davies’s new book has to offer. Not just about both his eras of Doctor Who, and his career in television. You can read it all in his own words (or listening to his reading of the book) by buying your copy of Queerest of Folk at the links here.
