In his upcoming memoir The Queerest of Folk: A Life in Television (co-authored with Boyd Hilton), former showrunner Russell T Davies opens up about the ambitious storylines and scrapped projects originally planned for Doctor Who following the conclusion of Series 2.
The revelations provide a fascinating glimpse into the creative ideas already set in motion before the end of the Disney partnership.
Inside the unproduced Series 3 Scripts
Before the Disney deal ended, three scripts for Series 3 were already fully written, alongside several other high-concept episodes in active development:
The planned episodes included a historical epic about the Great Fire of London by Laurence Clark and Jack Thorne featuring high-budget realisation of 1666 London, as well as a Space Station Horror story by Lydia Adetunji centred on trypophobia on a NASA-style spacelab.
Additionally, Sharma Angel-Walfall scripted a Manchester Council Estate-set story described as a fusion between Doctor Who and the film Rocks.
Other ideas included Rogue’s return in 1980s Blackpool with writers Kate Herron and Briony Redman to bring back Jonathan Groff, alongside discussions with Juno Dawson that would feed into a massive, four-part Dalek epic finale.
The Proposed 2026 Christmas Special
In addition to Series 3 plans, Davies pitched a 2026 Christmas Special to the BBC.
The storyline intercut a quaint, ‘olde-worlde’ English village with a mysterious spaceship hosting an outer-space festival called Winternox. The special would have featured “lots and lots of Daleks” alongside a major hidden surprise.
Unrealised Spin-Off Concepts
The book also details spin-off concepts planned under ‘The War Between’ banner.
While The War Between the Land and the Sea was developed, other annual ideas were pitched, including The War Between the Earth and the Moon – a story following a tyrannical US president who commandeers UNIT’s Moonbase – as well as The War Between the Men and the Women and The War Between the Clever and the Not.
All these new revelations and more feature in The Queerest of Folk: A Life in Television by Russell T Davies with Boyd Hilton. We’ll have a review of the book for you later today…
