Miranda Richardson is the Doctor! (TV ATL)

[Charles RB]

[FONT=&quot]"Gene Roddenberry had promised at a Boston convention [1] that gay characters would appear in Trek but production realities would make this a harder task than introducing black characters had been. According to Mark Altman, executive producer Rick Berman worried that Blood and Fire would not be able to run in markets that had scheduled Trek in the afternoon. [2] ... Gerrold would depart over this and Trek would only touch on this by metaphor until another show forced its hand."[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- Gay Representation In 1990s Speculative Fiction by Dr Alison Korhonen[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]
“The Yanks went nuts. So did the Australians and Canadians but it was the Americans that management cared more about. They cared more about America than what Northern Ireland was saying and we had Paisley himself having a whinge.”[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Russell T Davies, DWM #300[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]

"Doctor Who had been one of Sci-Fi's bigger hits, trading off both Miranda Richardon's credibility and, as with anime programming, the 'exotic' nature of a foreign show. Nobody had expected what would happen in April [3] ... The show came to the attention of mainstream America as church and parent groups howled about a show most people had never heard of."[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- Gay Representation In 1990s Speculative Fiction by Dr Alison Korhonen


[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]"It had not been sold to America as a challenging or controversial show - moments that were challenging, such as the council estates or Syal's take on the Raj, were rarely noticed as such by foreign viewers. Homosexuality, on the other hand, they knew. There was a furious debate at the eleventh hour about whether to cut the line - or indeed the whole scene ... In the end, both camps remained deadlocked and the episode went out. The backlash began almost immediately."[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- Doctor Who and the Warring Companies by David Bishop


[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]“Most of them hadn't even seen it!”[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Russell T Davies, DWM #300


[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]" "We had Whovians on staff," says Bragga. "I liked it myself. We get to the scene where Jax says 'I'm into men myself' and my jaw dropped." ... As fandom argued about it, further arguments broke out among the Trek staff about how they should respond to that. The fury from conservative groups had scared them but so did the fact another show had beaten them - the show that prided itself on the kiss from Plato's Stepchildren - to a social landmark."[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- Gay Representation In 1990s Speculative Fiction by Dr Alison Korhonen

[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]"Teaser
"As Harry Kim wakes up, he can hear the distant voice of Captain Janeway, who says something about an emergency transport. She calls out his name several times as her voice transitions into that of his boyfriend Liam, who wakes him gently. Kim stares out the window of his apartment as he discovers that he is back on Earth, in the city of San Francisco."[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- Voyager: Non Sequitor [4] summary on Memory Alpha


[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]"Joss Whedon had thought from Season 1 that either Xander or Willow would turn out to be gay [5] and, in a whim, decided to start this in Series 2. "It could have been either but Xander and Cordelia popped into my head and that was too funny not to use," he says. And so Amy Madison from S1's Witch made her return in Halloween ... "Others blazed that trail and put blacktop on it and some nice traffic lights, I'm just cruising down it," Whedon claims but an ongoing gay relationship was a huge step up from Who, Trek, and Space: Above and Beyond's background mentions and one-off partners."[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- Gay Representation In 1990s Speculative Fiction by Dr Alison Korhonen


[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]“Russell and I become sci-fi legends - I've had guys come up to me and tell me how important that was for their own identity, and I've heard all these others show talk about me... I just read a line for two seconds, man! [laughs]”[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Ben Browder, Scandal Jax DVD feature[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]

[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]"The USA Network complained in strong terms and BBC Enterprises, still bitter about the turf war, implied to Sir Birt that this could lose them a market."[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- Doctor Who and the Warring Companies by David Bishop


[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]“I can say this now - yes, Enterprises were backstabbing us. They were willing to get me fired and other people fired because they couldn't get over The Dark Dimension. What can you say about that? It was a Bob Holmes script come to life. ... I was sneaky and promised Jax would leave in the next series, which I'd planned anyway and I didn't tell them it'd be near the end! We had to be watched more too.”[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Russell T Davies, DWM #417


[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]"Companions at the BBC tell us that Davies was going to regenerate but Enterprises were so aggressive, Birtpop turned on them."[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- Private Eye


[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]"Enterprises were badly stung by this eleventh hour rebuke. Their hand had been overplayed ... It was also a factor that ratings were still high and repeats were abnormally strong, both at home and in foreign markets. The controversy seemed to have attracted new viewers. ... The video of Damaged Goods was Enterprises' highest seller in both the UK and US."[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- Doctor Who and the Warring Companies by David Bishop


[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]“People love a good scandal and god bless 'em. The ratings and video sales told everyone I knew what I was doing - which was a lie but it was a useful lie. Up I went to producer and handed the scripting duties to Paul [Cornell] and now we were ready.”[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Russell T Davies, DWM #300


[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]"Like many things in my life, Special Constables comes down to Doctor Who. The success of the Horrocks run made people at all the channels think 'hey, maybe sci-fi fantasy isn't crap' [6] and Alan Yentob, head of BBC 1 at the time, asked if I had any ideas for a show. DC Peter Grant just popped into my head...”[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Ben Aaronovitch, Conjuring It Up DVD feature for Special Constables Series 1
[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]

[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]"And so now we had connections to the Sci-Fi Channel and the BBC, it was time to dust off Space Chase [7] and get it into production. We knew Browder was coming off Doctor Who as well so we looked into getting him - Steve [Gallagher], our first writer, he'd actually done some Who too so it all comes back to that...”[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Brian Henson, Behind the Scenes DVD feature on Space Chase Season 1


[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] [FONT=&quot]"Boy, did I have a tough act to follow! Russell was a big fan of the strip so we got forewarned that Mickey was leaving at the end of the series and would come back later, and he told us Jax as gay. We didn’t realise he mean explicitly … We gave Jax and the Doctor a year long quest of three four-parters, with the Bannermen as our first villain. There was a little backstory about how Jax had had a nasty run-in with the Bannermen before and Russell and Paul, bless their hearts, put a reference to it in the next series.[8]"[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]

[FONT=&quot]- Scott Gray, Stripped For Action[/FONT]

​

[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] [FONT=&quot]“We had an idea of what to do now and six original books a year with seven novelisations to do it. Of course, these all had to tie in to the show so the new Past Doctor Adventures were the big prize."[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]

[FONT=&quot]- Kate Orman, Novel Ideas: The Eighth Doctor [/FONT]​

[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] [FONT=&quot]“The PDAs w[FONT=&quot]ere aimed at an older audience and[/FONT] began in 1995 with seven books a year. Kim Newman – writing as Jack Yeovil – [/FONT][/FONT][FONT=&quot][FONT=&quot]started the line with Coppola’s Dr Who, a Third Doctor story with Francis Ford Coppola trying to make a film version of The Invasion on location in the Home Counties. [9]”[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]

[FONT=&quot]- Wikipedia entry for Past Doctor Adventures


[/FONT]​

[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]"It would all have ended there if America hadn't started thinking about doing their own Doctor Who."[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- Doctor Who and the Warring Companies by David Bishop

[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]--

[1] So David Gerrold has said in an introduction for a Blood And Fire novelisation

[2] A real claim

[3] In the bad old days, overseas broadcasts could be delayed by months

[4] The episode was being written in late spring and early summer, just in time for shoehorning

[5] Mused about OTL but not seriously worked on until S4

[6] The RTD run in OTL spawned a lot of other shows. ITTL, the Horrocks run started a year ago but there's more of an institutional "meh" over Who and FSF at the BBC in 1993 so it takes two years of success to get the ball rolling instead of one[/FONT]


[FONT=&quot][7] Space Chase was plotted out in 1993 and would, over the years, turn into Farscape. (Filming it earlier and in Britain will make it a very different show)

[/FONT]
[8] The name Sontar, the Blathereen, and other spinoff material have made it onto the show. RTD is indeed a huge fan of the strips.


[9] In OTL, Newman wrote this story for his Anno Dracula books (Coppola filming a Dracula film in Romania).

 

[Charles RB]

[FONT=&quot]"Philip Segal had first been interested in Doctor Who in 1989, when he was with Columbia … This second attempt to do a deal collapsed in 1993 when his friend Greenwood was removed from Enterprises.[1] He refused to give up. “I liked the Horrocks show,” he says. “It was never gonna make it big in the States though, not with that budget. It was always going to be cult and not mainstream. With American backing, the show could be taken to the next level.” In 1995, Segal was working with Paramount – the owners of Star Trek – who became extremely supportive of his idea.”[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- Doctor Who and the Warring Companies by David Bishop[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]“Paul Cornell will bookend the new series with the stories Goth Opera and Human Nature, while Meera Syal returns with Planet Bollywood and Russell T Davies with the one episode story Love & Monsters[2]. Gareth Roberts and Marc Platt make their TV Who debuts with The Well-Mannered War and School Reunion, and Frank Cottrell Boyce adds historical drama Saint-Ex And The Little Doctor.”[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- Gallifrey Guardian in DWM #224[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]“Me and Paul are halfway through the plans for the series when we start hearing about the Paramount offer. We asked the bosses and they said to carry on… for now. That told us we could be stuffed.”[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Russell T Davies, DWM #300[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]“I’d met Frank through Russell and said to him that the show needed a historical story, to balance out all the future ones. Turns out he’d been thinking of doing a biographical film about Antoine du [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Saint-Exupéry [4] and there were real-life exciting things that Antoine did, we were almost reluctant to put monsters in! Marc, he was another one of that social circle of Who fans-turned-pro in the 80s and 90s and I knew he was desperate to get into Who proper and not the Kladituu videos. He had an idea for a Brigadier story, which I always want to see, and Russell suggested adding Sarah Jane to the mix. The Cybermen were to save money. That’s also why we have the Henson Daleks as the bad guys in Human Nature and the Metatraxi in Well-Mannered War! TV is mercenary![/FONT][FONT=&quot]”[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Paul[/FONT][FONT=&quot] Cornell, DWM #305[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]“I thought I was being cheeky just trying to sneak in the Chelonians from my Virgin books and then these guys say, hey, how’d you like to have the Metatraxi as the other side of the war and write out Jax? Uh, yes please!”[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Gareth Roberts[/FONT][FONT=&quot], DWM #224[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]“Jax sacrifices himself to save the universe from the Hive. That’s a good ending. I think it would’ve been better if I’d actually died but I can see why Jax survives to go off with some guy he just met. Killing him woulda looked like the BBC was caving.”[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Ben Browder, DWM #281[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]“Akaash dreams of becoming a big star on Earth, far from his slum of a space station, and when the Doctor lands he thinks he’s got his winning ticket!” [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Novelisation of Planet Bollywood[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]“The new companion was named ‘Companion’ when I got her. She was from the future, she was meant to be a stuffy middle-class person to contrast with Mickey and the Doctor, and a few other details …. Priya was my name for her. It does meant the love interest for Akaash ends up leaving him to do her own thing[3], and if only more romance stories ended that way!”[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Meera Syal[/FONT][FONT=&quot], DWM #276[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]“Honestly, I had not planned to have two ethnic minority companions. It just seemed like it would easier to work the new girl into Meera’s script than anyone else’s.”[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Paul[/FONT][FONT=&quot] Cornell, DWM #305[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]“Virgin had a small legacy in low-budget videos, made by Doctor Who fans who were disgruntled of the series being toned down. [5] One of these, Kladituu, even featured a New Adventure character: the time-hopping Kladituu Lethbridge Stewart. … Unfortunately, the return of Doctor Who siphoned off most fans’ attention and only the P.R.O.B.E. series [6] would last to three videos. Kladituu reached two, ending with Marc Platt’s Ghost Light."[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- Too Broad and Deep: The New Adventures by Rebecca Levene[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]“Using the New World University as their cover and the half-converted students as pawns, the Cybermen seek to control the minds of every human being. The Brigadier, Sarah Jane Smith, and the Doctor can’t be sure who is friend and who is foe – and when they meet, they can’t even be sure of each other. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]“And for the Brigadier, this has become a family matter as his estranged daughter is put at risk!” [7][/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Novelisation of School Reunion[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]“I wanted to bring back Sarah Jane but the Paramount chatter made it mandatory. We absolutely had to get her in so if necessary, we could pitch a spinoff to replace Doctor Who. The alternative is all the crew would be out of a job.”[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Russell T Davies, DWM #300[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]“Even in 1995, even after shows like Special Constables and Space Chase and Space Precinct [8] were being made off the back of Doctor Who, there were enough of the old guard who felt embarrassed by the show and embarrassed by the budget they had to give it and embarrassed that American shows looked better.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]”[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Paul[/FONT][FONT=&quot] Cornell, DWM #305[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]"Enterprises weren’t willing to push the Paramount pitch too much: Greenwood’s removal had stung them badly. They were, however, willing to do everything they could to help Paramount make its pitch. … What Paramount wanted depends on who you ask. Segal and some others genuinely wanted to make an American remake or continuation of Doctor Who. Others, and rumours are that this went to the top, didn’t care whether or not the pitch succeeded. For them, this was all about interfering with Doctor Who in the hopes Sci-Fi Channel would lose it. If a sci-fi show was going to get attention for being socially and politically challenging, it was going to be one of theirs.”[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- Doctor Who and the Warring Companies by David Bishop[/FONT]​

--
[1] Segal had been attempting this from 1989 OTL and the deal that would become McGann’s film was finished in Febuary 1994. This all goes wrong for him in 1993 TTL.

[2] Like The Long Game, this is an idea RTD had had for years.

[3] Sci-fi-ing up a Syal stage play, though in Bombay Dreams I’m pretty sure Priya doesn’t go off into space

[4] Which came out in 1997

[5] TTL’s equivalent of the many Doctor-ish direct-to-video stories made by fans throughout the 90s.

[6] This one was a real series of videos (but made it to four).

[7] Basically, this is Downtime


[8] This would come out in the 90s anyway but nobody ITTL knows that. The histories will remember Gerry Anderson's space cop show as being a spawn of Who


----


SUPPLEMENTAL: The Chimera Virus worked out what the Virgin NA's would look like in this timeline:

The New Adventures
Timewyrm Arc
Wyrmtunnel by Ben Aaronovitch
- The Timewyrm appears
- Version of OTL’s Transit
Exodus by Terrance Dicks
- The Timewyrm and the War Chief appear
Apocalypse by Nigel Robinson
- The Timewyrm appears
- The Second Doctor, Ben, and Polly cameo
Revelation by Paul Cornell
- The Timewyrm appears

Business as Usual
Cat’s Cradle by Marc Platt
- The Time Lords appear
Witch Mark by Andrew Hunt
Conglomerate by Nicholas Briggs
- First appearance of Congolmerate and Cuthbert
- Expanded adaptation of AudioVisuals story
Nightshade by Mark Gatiss
Love and War by Paul Cornell
- The Hoothi appear
- Kevin leaves, Bernice joins

Future History Arc
Cloud of Fear by Alan W. Lear
- First appearance of the Psionovores
The Highest Scienceby Gareth Roberts
- First appearance of the Chelonians
Hostageby Neil Penswick
- Version of OTL’s The Pit, closer to original television submission
The Destructor Contract by Nicholas Briggs
- Conglomerate and Cuthbert appear
- Expanded adaptation of AudioVisuals story
Shadowmind by Christopher Bulis
Lucifer Rising by Andy Lane and Jim Mortimore
- The Cybermen appear
- Version of the OTL novel of the same name, far closer to the original submission

Alternate Universes Arc
Blood Heat by Jim Mortimore
- The Silurians, UNIT, and the Brigadier appear
The Dimension Riders by Daniel Blythe
The Left-Handed Hummingbird by Kate Orman
Conundrum by Steve Lyons
- The Land of Fiction appears
Original Sin by Andy Lane
- The Meddling Monk appears
- Not the same novel as OTL

The Final Stretch
White Darkness by David A. McIntee
- Cthulhu appears
Subterfuge by Nicholas Briggs
- Conglomerate and Cuthbert appear
- Expanded adaptation of AudioVisuals story
Tragedy Day by Gareth Roberts
The Legacy of Peladon by Gary Russell
- The Ice Warriors, Alpha Centaurans, and the Pels appear
- First appearance of the Pakhars
- The Third Doctor and Jo cameo
- Adaptation of unmade AudioVisuals story
- Version of OTL’s Legacy
Theatre of War by Justin Richards
No Future by Paul Cornell
- The Timewyrm and the Brigadier appear
- Not the same novel as OTL

-

The Conglomerate and Cuthbert have been revamped recently for Big Finish. Not the first time they've redone something from their old fanfic Audio/Visuals!

 

[Lavanya Six]

I'm unclear on the Eighth Doctor's personality. She's described as being the Third in drag, as well as not having much of any personality beyond being from Lancashire.

 

[Charles RB]

My bad, I forgot to put in where the characterisation went...!

The basics:

* She started off as a Third Doctor style fop played for laughs. That can't be gotten away from too much so to a large extent, she's still playing the suave, wine-loving adventurer type (but with entirely the 'wrong' accent for the archetype) and given more dignity about it. RTD's first ep sees her entire wardrobe smarten up

* RTD can't play the working class angle he did with the Ninth Doctor OTL - though we'll get a "lots of planets have a north" line - but he would try to get in the 'slumming it' angle the Tenth had. There'd be a deliberate attempt to have the Doctor refer to things like Eastenders because we know he'd want to 'de-snob' the character.

 

[Orville_third]

One wonders- did "Who Killed Kennedy" still come out?

 

[Charles RB]

One wonders- did "Who Killed Kennedy" still come out?

A David Bishop book in the style of Marvels will almost certainly come out but the timeline's against it being Who Killed Kennedy. Rebecca Levene won't be having input (and he talked to her a lot about it) because the license vanishes from Virgin and the Kennedy angle would be out.

It might not even be the Third Doctor in this timeline.

It's a strong idea and Bishop REALLY wanted to do Who, so he'll still get it made

 

[Charles RB]

[FONT=&quot]"“I thought that it needed an English writer,” says Philip Segal “in order to have that quirky Who feel to it, and it had to be a writer with passion. It also couldn’t be a writer from the old show because Paramount wanted someone who’d worked in America. Matthew Jacobs was the man for the job.” [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]…[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]“When Jacobs came on board, there were only two demands: it had to be set in contemporary America and Segal wanted the Doctor to be a ‘john doe’ rushed into a hospital. “And this was the first problem,” says Matthew Jacobs. “I asked Phil if that meant the Doctor was going to be a man again and that kicked off a huge fuss.’”[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- Doctor Who and the Warring Companies by David Bishop[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]“Horrocks goes out with a bang in Human Nature. Over the past two years, we’ve seen her transform into an elegant adventurer that you laughed with and with just enough flashes of working class edge (“lots of planets have a north”) to imply part of it was a front. And suddenly, all of that’s gone. Nurse Smith has the elegance and intelligence but can’t show it. Nobody around her cares about it and she’s ‘respecting her betters’. It’s uncomfortable viewing that no previous historical episode has dared touch on … Seeing her rise to the occasion during the attack is a triumph, and then when the Doctor comes back at the end….”[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Blog Bechdel[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]“Definitely my fave episode. There’s a whole world of things that the Doctor can’t do but ‘Nurse Smith’ could. The Doctor takes down an alien, I do that all the time but when Nurse Smith does…"[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- Jane Horrocks, Hello, Nurse DVD feature for Human Nature[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]“Frustrating. That’s the printable way I’d put it. The show was running again and people are picking up on what we’re doing, there’s press coverage and people were taking the show seriously. ‘Doctor Who Regenerates Into A Good Show’, some guy at the Times said. And in the middle of it, I have to tell Paul we’re definitely going on hiatus. He’s just done Human Nature and we’re going on hiatus!”[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Russell T Davies, DWM #300[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]“Russell had made friends at CBBC [1] so as soon as we got the word, we were pitching Sarah Jane Investigates and they said ‘yes please!’.”[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Paul Cornell, We Meet Again DVD feature for Sarah Jane Investigates S1 feature[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]“Memories of K9 and Company were quickly erased. … It was a strange thing, being the mentor to children and the fount of the knowledge. The Doctor had gone and left Sarah Jane as the Doctor. … I’m forever grateful for Miranda and Jane for clearing the way for me.”[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Who’s That Girl?[/FONT][FONT=&quot] by Elisabeth Sladen[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]“Sarah Jane Investigates was going into production while Paramount was still arguing. Many within Paramount felt that a male lead would be more commercial; others were clear that most Americans who’d heard of the show knew the Doctor was a woman. Jacobs was leaning towards the first camp out his own nostalgia [2] but he had a second aim, to tie the US show to the UK with the first on-screen regeneration since 1984. That, however, would mean regenerating a woman into a man and Segal was pretty sure that would be considered strange. “The transvestite Doctor wouldn’t play in Peoria,” he said.”[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- Doctor Who and the Warring Companies by David Bishop[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]“‘When is this sparkly US show?’ ‘Oh, we’re not sure.’ Sarah Jane was airing and still, ‘we’re not sure’. We were off the telly because of the tail wagging the dog and it wasn’t even bloody wagging. … I might have stayed on a bit longer if I’d felt the bosses cared but with Sarah Jane, I’d been on this for three years and that was a good enough run.”[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Russell T Davies, DWM #300[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]“And that’s how I ended up a show producer, Gareth Roberts ended up head writer for me, and we both watched that git Russell do Queer As Folk for BBC2 [3] and win all the BAFTAs.”[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Paul Cornell, DWM #305[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]“In January 1997, it had become clear that Paramount didn’t care enough about Doctor Who to resolve their issues – some were just glad to have dealt with a rival to Star Trek. In a final roll of the dice, Matthew Jacobs pitched a complete reboot of the show patterned on An Unearthly Child in which ‘John Doe’ would play the Susan role and Ian & Barbara were a policeman and a doctor, respectively. “The Doctor would drop a few references so he could be the original,” he says “but at least this meant we could keep the spirit of the original.””[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- Doctor Who and the Warring Companies by David Bishop[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]“Ian and Barbara are shocked when the patient enters a bizarre ‘blue box’ – and it turns out to be the interior of a vast spaceship. … When the Master assaults the TARDIS, the Doctor throws them at random through time and space and the cast find themselves in the middle of Pearl Harbor on December 6.”[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- [/FONT]Doctor Who and the Lost Stories by Paul Cornell & Marc Topping[FONT=&quot][/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]“Paramount decided to hand the script over to Trek’s Berman and Braga for further development but, due to work on Voyager, the script would miss several deadlines. In June of 1997, when Sarah Jane Investigates series 2 was ending, Paramount formally decided to rest the project. The BBC was now left with a show that had lost its production team, its lead, and its momentum.”[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- Doctor Who and the Warring Companies by David Bishop[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]​

--

[1] Two of his earliest shows were for CBBC and he’d done them a solid by making Century Falls when he was employed at Granada

[2] Jacobs was not only a childhood fan, his father was in The Gunfighters – ‘male Doctor’ would be ingrained.

[3] His career ITTL has kept him at the BBC and not shifting to Channel 4. (Queer As Folk wouldn’t have been his first new show but it’s the important one)

 

[Plus-Sized Scribe]

Internal politics kills Doctor Who yet again. Typical.

Loving this still. I'm keeping a running season log for you too, as I showed.

 

[Plus-Sized Scribe]

Just checking to see if this is still going!

 

[Charles RB]

[FONT=&quot]“The Rob Grant Doctor was the third pitch in late 1997 and the only one that got through to a script. … It was assumed that Horrocks, who had since taken other work, would only be able to return for the regeneration scene. Grant used that by opening with the end of a Doctor Who plot, with the Doctor saving a spaceship, only to be suddenly shot in the back by a Sontaran. The colonists, not realising she’s regenerating, stick her into cryogenic sleep and the new, male Doctor awakens several generations later to find the colony ship’s eugenic programme and hierarchy has resulted in a race of idiots…[1]”[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Doctor Who and the Lost Stories[/FONT][FONT=&quot] by Paul Cornell & Marc Topping[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]

[/FONT][FONT=&quot]“I did write a Doctor Who script but I wasn’t expecting it to actually happen. It was just about being paid to have some fun. … Here’s what says it all, I’d be told to make it funny because someone thought the last Horrocks series was too serious and then they said ‘this is funny, it’s not meant to be funny’.”[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- Rob Grant interview in the Sunday Times in 2004 (Big Smeg On Big Screen)[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]

[/FONT][FONT=&quot]“This Ninth Doctor is hapless and easily bewildered, reacting to the madness around him; Grant’s notes say this is to be the default. “The Doctor should be an underdog figure.”.”[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]- [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Doctor Who and the Lost Stories[/FONT][FONT=&quot] by Paul Cornell & Marc Topping


[/FONT][FONT=&quot]“We did ask about having the Doctor appear on Sarah Jane but it was denied; so we asked for the Brig and same again, so we asked for Kevin and this time we got a proper reason, that Lee [MacDonald] was playing Angelo on CITV. The others got ‘not at the moment’. It was a mess. In the end we just bulled ahead with the best Sarah Jane show we could make. It started to feel like this was it.”[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Paul Cornell, DWM #305[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]

[/FONT][FONT=&quot]“That was a time when the readers would genuinely believe that the comic was creating its own Ninth Doctor; having her ‘regenerate’ into Nick Briggs’ Audio/Visuals Doctor was just to fully sell it. We got so much mail for that fake regeneration and we rubbed our hands with evil glee at every ‘how could you’.”[2][/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Scott Gray, Doctor Who: Threshold graphic novel[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]

[/FONT][FONT=&quot]“Big Finish had only intended to lease the rights to Doctor Who for two audios … “Benny and PROBE were doing okay but we knew that many Who fans would only get a Who related audio if Who was on first. We asked the BBC about the rights, thinking we’d just about be able to afford it, and then they said we could just have the rights to make Doctor Who radio plays for peanuts.” Nicholas Briggs pretends to stare into something. “That’s odd, this horse seems to have all its teeth…””[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Big Up! Talking To Big Finish[/FONT][FONT=&quot] article at Den Of Geek[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]

[/FONT][FONT=&quot]“After trailing with Benny Summerfield and the Last Nimon (with Colin Baker) and P.R.O.B.E.: Operation Blue Box (with Peter Davison) earlier in the year, Big Finish released The Sirens Of Time on 19th July 1999. This had to be heavily rewritten when it became clear Tom Baker wouldn’t return; instead of a structure of a Doctor per episode and a team-up in the fourth, Sirens spent its second half on a double-act.”[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Wikipedia on The Sirens of Time[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]

[/FONT][FONT=&quot]“Miranda Richardson and Lee MacDonald will return for a trilogy of 7th Doctor stories, starting with October’s The Fearmonger.[3] … “It’s like I’ve never been away,” says Richardson. “I’m 29 again!””[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]- [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Gallifrey Guardian[/FONT][FONT=&quot] in Doctor Who Magazine #288[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]​

-

[1] Who-version of Rob Grant’s Colony novel

[2] This happened in OTL with McGann’s Doctor for much the same reason

[3] Early 7th Doctor audio in OTL but it’s a very McCoy S26/early NA type story, which was unlikely to be pitched for Davison or Baker