Doctor Who: The Cancelled Years - The Definitive Edition | Part One: Season 27 Overview

By 1989, Doctor Who was a far cry away from the success it had once been. Once a firm viewing for families around the UK, the show was now seen by both audiences & those at the BBC as a relic from another time, which had long since passed its prime. The past five years have been troubled times for the show, with a hard decline in viewers & respect from the powers that be at the BBC.

With Part One of the Season 26 premiere, Battlefield, gaining a total of 3.1M viewers, the lowest ever rating for a Doctor Who story on initial broadcast, as well as BBC One controller, Jonathan Powell, having a distaste for Doctor Who in particular, it seemed there was nothing preventing Head of Series, Peter Cregeen, from ordering the death of Doctor Who.

As 1989 came to a close, and a new decade began, the question as to whether Doctor Who would return for a twenty-seventh season hung over both the fans & the production team. With the show being in the condition it currently was, being seen as a joke & an embarrassing relic from a bygone age by the wider public & the powers that be themselves, it would seem that the end of Doctor Who had finally come.

But, when there's hope, there's always a way. Despite Doctor Who's current situation, the show was given the green light for Season 27. With the fate of the show hanging by a thread, things needed to change & fast, or else Doctor Who would amost certainly fall dead...

 

SEASON 27 - 1990

With Season 27 being seen as a “final stand” for the show, it was clear that this season needed to work. Doctor Who had been given yet another chance to show it’s worth & this time, it mustn't mess up. This was to be a make-or-break season. The future of the show relied on this season. & if it failed to deliver, then the show's cancellation would be more than guaranteed. 

John Nathan-Turner was set to return for his tenth year as producer, despite being promised that he could leave after the previous meeting. However, after meeting with BBC1 controller, Jonathan Powell, Nathan-Turner was rewarded with the news that he would be allowed to leave the role of producer after Season 27 under one condition: that a successor could be found.

For the new season, a new script editor was required, after Andrew Cartmel left Doctor Who to work on Casualty. Originally, Nathan-Turner considered bringing in writer Colin Brake, who was enthusiastic about being involved with the show & had previously met with Nathan-Turner the following year. However, feeling as though someone who'd had experience writing for Doctor Who should be in charge, the gig didn't go to Brake, although he was given a chance to submit a story for Season 27. Instead, Nathan-Turner offered the role to Who writer Ben Aaronovitch. Aaronovitch was initially unsure about taking on the job. However, after discussing it with Nathan-Turner, he agreed to take over as script editor.

As well as a change in crew, there was also to be a change in cast. Plans had been made by Nathan-Turner & Aaronovitch to write out Ace 1/2 way through the season & bring in a new companion in the following story. Taking notes from his predecessor, Aaronovitch, with input from Nathan-Turner, devised the new companion, Raine Cunningham, a safe cracker from an upper-class background. 

For the part of Raine, several actresses were screen tested. The production team had hoped to cast actress Julia Sawalha in the part, however Sawalha declined to screentest. In the end, the role went to relatively new actress Julia Ormond.

Ace wasn't the only regular leaving, as early into production, Sylvester McCoy announced that he wished to leave the role of the Doctor. With there being a slim chance of a twenty-eighth season being commissioned & his replacement not yet been decided on, Nathan-Turner was therefore forced to cast the Eighth Doctor for a future season.

It was towards the end of production when the BBC found someone to replace Nathan-Turner. Following Nathan-Turner's recommendation, the BBC offered the role of producer to Production Manager Ian Fraser, who agreed to take over.

The last noteworthy change to the show was the inclusion of a new TARDIS interior set, after the previous one was mostly junked. For the new TARDIS, Nathan-Turner wished for something more radical & different in terms of structure & commissioned Mike Tucker to design a new interior. The result was a semi-traditional room but with a console that floats in the year, being held up by the central column, which is now much taller & goes to the ceiling height.

EARTH AID

WRITTEN BY: Ben Aaronovitch
DIRECTED BY: Alan Wareing
PARTS: 3

Earth Aid would’ve been set onboard a space vessel known as The Vancouver, with Ace acting as the captain & the Doctor as the medical officer. The ship is assigned with delivering food known as Grain to the planet Safenesthome. However, the vessel comes under attack from the Metatraxi; insectoid warrior aliens who can only attack its enemy if they themselves are armed.

We see the Doctor, Ace & the crew try to fend off the Metatraxi as they travel to Safenesthome. However, another problem soon emerges for the Doctor. It turns out that the grain supplies have been infiltrated by a hatching of Grubs, worm-like creatures with voracious appetites & capable of eating nearly everything they wish.

Eventually, The Vancouver arrives at Safenesthome, where the Doctor discovers that the planet is sentient & intelligent. The planet reveals that the Grub were the original inhabitants of the planet but they treated the planet poorly, consuming anything & everything. Because of this, the planet created the warrior-like Metatraxi in order to counteract the Grubs and eventually drive them off the planet. However, now that the planet has had time to rebuild itself, it forgives the Grubs & orders the Metatraxi to live with the Grub in peace.

 

THIN ICE

WRITTEN BY: Marc Platt
DIRECTED BY: Nicholas Mallett
PARTS: 4

Thin Ice would've been set in 1960s London, where the Doctor & Ace finds an Ice Warrior named Hhessh working with a gangster named Sam Cunningham, his partner, Sharon Graves, a member of MI6, & Northwade, another member of MI6, to retrieve ancient martian artefacts, belonging to an Ice Warrior Warlord named Sezhyr, from the government, who found it 40 years prior.

As the story progresses, Sharon reveals to Ace that she is carrying a child & that the father is Sam, however he doesn’t know yet & she’s afraid to tell him. Eventually, the group are able to recover Sezhyr’s armour & helmet from The London Dungeon, which is passing said items off as exhibitions. They then escape in a van, while being pursued by government agents, when suddenly, the van, and part of the road, are grabbed & pulled up into a martian spaceship. During which, Sharon breaks the news to Sam about the baby.

On board the spaceship, Sharon begins to feel as though Sezhyr is talking to her, tempting her to put on his helmet. Then, when no one is looking, she puts on the helmet & it begins to fuse & meld with Sharon’s body, slowly replacing her consciousness with that of Sezhyr’s. However, a more serious side effect begins to emerge, as the Doctor discovers that her birth acceleration rate has sped up, resulting in her quickly going into labour & the Doctor helping to deliver the baby.

With the baby now born, the Doctor gives Ace the baby to look after, before he & Sam enter the TARDIS & leave her behind. Ace believes the Doctor has a cunning plan up his sleeve to save the day as always. However, there is more going on in this story than Ace initially suspects. It turns out that all of this is a part of a test. A test setup by the Time Lords. The Doctor wishes to enrol Ace in the Prydonian Academy in order for her to become a Time Lord. Throughout the story, we see the Doctor making mental contact with a Time Lord Adjudicator discussing Ace’s future. Part of the test is that Ace must have no help from the Doctor, however the Doctor couldn’t help but meddle a tiny bit. However, after being picked up by the martian spaceship, the Adjudicator warned the Doctor that if he interferes again, the test will be abolished, so the Doctor has been forced to abandon Ace & let her solve things out on her own.

With Sezhyr resurrected, the spaceship returns to the Ice Warriors hide-out, a cold storage warehouse, where we learn about why Hhessh & his fellow Ice Warriors on Earth. It turns out that they fled from Mars as rival factions of Ice Warriors begin to emerge, and that the militaristic force on Earth are the last "true" Ice Warriors. Sezhyr is disgusted by the Ice Warriors for working with humans, even if it did result in his resurrection, as well as discovering that the humans have been using Ice Warrior technology & relics for their own purposes. With that, he pretends to make an alliance with Northwade, who's been using said Ice Warrior technology, to take over the Earth, although Sezhyr would end this alliance much later on, as he only worked with Northwade in an attempt to retrieve some energy cells .

During this, Northwade betrays Ace by locking her in a freezer. However, she is freed by a strange man named Valentin, who we know, and Ace eventually discovers to be the Time Lord Adjudicator, who accidentally reveals the Doctors plan to Ace, unaware that she wasn’t aware of his Master Plan. This angers Ace & causes her to lose all trust in him. Once again, he’s tricked & manipulated her & she is tired of it. Later on in the story, when Ace is eventually reunited with the Doctor, she refuses to listen or trust him. With this, Ace goes rogue from her basic morals & challenges Sezhyr to combat. Ace ends up winning the fight, resulting in the defeat of Sezhyr, Sharon being returned back to normal & the Ice Warriors leaving Earth.

After the fight, the Doctor goes to find Ace, but fails to find her, believing that she’s been taken to Gallifrey. He makes contact with the Adjudicator, who reveals that Ace has passed the test & has been accepted into the academy. The story would then end with the Doctor travelling to Gallifrey to say goodbye to Ace. The two of them are able to make some amends, with Ace agreeing to give the Academy a try, before they hug & the Doctor returns to the TARDIS.

 

CRIME OF THE CENTURY

WRITTEN BY: Colin Brake
DIRECTED BY: Michael Kerrigan
PARTS: 4

Crime of the Century would’ve been set on Earth in the late 1980s. We would begin with a safe cracker - Raine Cunningham. We see Raine breaking into a safe, where she finds the Doctor, seemingly waiting for her, inside. There, the Doctor helps Raine find the item she’s attempting to steal: a necklace. The two then make her escape, but Raine chooses to leave the Doctor behind at the last moment.

The next night, we see Raine in an alleyway holding a bag of items, including the necklace & a strange sword - a martian sword. Raine begins to examine the sword, only for the Doctor, who appears behind her, to ask what it is & startle her. We learn that Raine has been hired by someone to steal all of these items for a client. Then shortly after, we see Raine’s client arrive &, to her surprise, we see that her client is Sam Cunningham - Raine’s father.

We then see the Doctor & Sam reunite with each other, where we learn that Raine is actually the baby the Doctor helped deliver in the previous story. We also learn that the Doctor is actually Raine’s client & hired her to steal these items on the behalf of Sam. It turns out that these items used to belong to Sam, however he was forced to sell them due to a financial meltdown. Sam is overjoyed to see his items again, before the Doctor reveals that there is still one item missing: a Fabergé egg.

The Doctor explains that the Fabergé egg is actually an alien device, which is now in the hands of a private military group. He explains that, with help from Sam & Raine, he plans to steal & recover the egg, but there will be great difficulties along the way. We then see the Doctor taking Raine to Russia, where she must pretend to be a soviet agent.

We learn that Soviet Leader, Vadim Senkin, has recently been in contact with a race known as the Sharandos, creatures made of pure energy. They claim to be rightful owners of the egg, known as a Warpstorm, which they lost thousands of years ago, & that it's a part of an elaborate machine. They ask Senkin to find a way to retrieve the egg in exchange for materials that will make Russia the most powerful force on the planet.

The story would see Raine, with help from the Doctor & Sam, pretending to work with Senkin to infiltrate the private military in the UK & steal the Warpstorm. However, Raine is eventually found out & is taken prisoner by Senkin. The Doctor is able to retrieve the Warpstorm before Senkin however, meaning that he has a bargaining chip.

Senkin makes contact with the Sharandos, explaining the current situation. However, when he asks about how powerful Russia will be in the future, the Sharandos reveal themselves as the real villains of the story, as they reveal the Warpstorm is indeed a part of a machine: a machine that will destroy the cosmos. They then use their energy powers to attack Senkin senses & take over his mind.

We then see the Doctor successfully tracking down Raine’s location to a soviet warehouse. There, he & Sam attempt to rescue Raine but are captured by Senkin & his men, who, seemingly unknowing to the Doctor, are also now possessed by Sharandos. The Doctor confronts Senkin, revealing that he knew the Sharandos were behind this from the beginning, having seen the egg in the past & recognising the technology. With Raine now being held directly at gunpoint, the Doctor is forced to exchange the Warpstorm in return for Raine’s safety. With the Warpstone now at their disposal, the Sharandos leave their host bodies as they collapse on the ground.

We then cut to the Sharando ship in orbit around the Earth. On the bridge, we see the captain planting the Warpstone into their machine & powering on, before announcing that the first target will be Earth. On Earth, we see the sky slowly turning orange. In the warehouse, we see Sam & Raine coming to realise that the end of the world is now. The Doctor, meanwhile, remains still, seemingly waiting. Then cut back to the Sharando ship & we see it explode in space.

The Doctor then explains to Raine & Sam that the Warpstone was indeed a part of a weapon. However, with the Warpstone being lost for thousands of years & several Sharando generations, the facts slowly got twisted. The Warpstone wasn’t a Sharando weapon. The Warpstone was a weapon for the Sharandos.

The story would then end back at Sam’s house, with the Doctor preparing to say goodbye to Sam & Raine. However, before leaving, Raine asks the Doctor if she could come with him. Sam says it’s alright with him, before the Doctor says he’d be delighted to have her onboard. Raine then runs back into the TARDIS, before the Doctor tips his hat at Sam, closes the door & we see the TARDIS take off.

 

ALIXION

WRITTEN BY: Robin Mukherjee
DIRECTED BY: Alan Wareing
PARTS: 3

Alixion would've been set on the planet Alixion. The Doctor & Raine arrive on the planet, where they discover the planet to occupy a relatively small population, which lives in a chain network of caves. They discover that the planet is inhabited by two similar, though different, races: The Alyx & the Akrons. Through some quick exploration, they discover that the two races have a long history of war but now coexist with each other, even if there is still tension in the air.

We see the people of the planet talking about a strange elixir & talking about a great scientist. Through some more exploration, the Doctor learns about their great scientist, an Alyx who goes by the alias of The Abbot. Using a farm of Time Beetles, the Abbot produced an elixir known as the Elixir of Youth, which rapidly slows down the ageing process & improves immunity against diseases. However, after meeting with the Abbot, the Doctor discovers a dark & twisted element to his work, as he discovers that the Elixir of Youth is produced by the Time Beeltes consuming the minds of living Akrons, as Akrons have a longer life span & have strange chemicals in their DNA, which Alyx’s don’t.

The Abbot has unlocked the powers to life itself. But it’s not enough for him. Now he knows that there's more to the universe beyond Alixon, he wants more power. He wants to become immortal. No, more than that. He wants to become god of the universe!

After learning the possibilities with the Doctor's TARDIS, he plans to harvest the powers of it. However, realising how deranged & dangerous the Abbot is, the Doctor refuses to reveal his secrets. But the abbot is determined to get the secrets off him. In an attempt to stop the Abbot, the Doctor seeks an audience with the council of the planet, which is an equal 50/50 split of Alyx's & Akrons. The Doctor & Raine try to expose the Abbot. However, with no evidence to back up their claims, they don’t believe him. So, realising that they need proper evidence, the two of them sneak back into the Abbot’s laboratory.

There, they’re able to get their evidence, as Raine uses a camera to record footage of an Akron having its mind being consumed. However, before they can escape unnoticed, the Doctor & Raine find themselves surrounded by monks, followers & assistants to the Abbot. Raine is able to escape with the camera, however the Doctor is captured, knocked out with a gas & taken to the Abbot.

Unsure of how much time she has before something serious happens to the Doctor, Raine is able to meet with the council & present her case, this time fully convincing them that the Abbot is dangerous. They agree that he must be stopped & go with Raine to stop him. However, upon reaching his laboratory, they find it to be burnt down, with no trace of the Doctor or the Abbot.

Meanwhile, we cut to the Doctor, as he awakens in a dingy laboratory, tied down in a straight jacket. He looks to his right & sees strange equipment as well as his TARDIS. He then looks to his left & sees the Abbot. There, we discover that the Abbot, aware that his time was short, destroyed his laboratory & moved to his emergency laboratory, located far outside the major cave network, which is all but abandoned. Believing that nothing can stop him now &, knowing that the Doctor won’t give up his secrets voluntarily, he plans to find a way to extract the Doctor's memories from his mind. He tries several tactics, such as mind battles, hypnosis & mind downloads, but the Doctor always has a trick up his sleeve.

Then it hits the Abbot. It was obvious & staring him in the face all this time: The time beetles. He plans for the time beetles to absorb the Doctor’s mind, extracting his memories into an elixir which he can easily consume. He then drags the Doctor to the machine, ties him down & turns on the machine, as the beetles prepare to feed on his mind.

This is intercut with Raine & the council attempting to locate the Doctor. They eventually discover the Abbots' locations through one of his followers, who cracked under pressure. We see the group travelling across the wasteland to the Abbot’s laboratory. However, as night falls, abominations, failed experiments created by the Abbot long ago, begin to emerge from the darkness & begin to pick off some of the council members. However, Raine is able to scare them away by igniting the Elixir of Youth, which acts like a firecracker, scaring off the monsters.

Eventually, the group reaches the Abbot’s laboratory. There, they push their way through the Abbot’s army of followers, before eventually reaching the Abbot himself. In a last ditch effort, the Abbot attempts to kill Raine, but is forced down to the ground by the will of the council, who tell him that he is guilty of crimes against Akron rights. The council then joins hands, before a flash of light surrounds them & they teleport away, presumably back to the main city, where the Abbot will either be executed or imprisoned.

Raine then dashes into the far room, where she finds the Doctor in great pain, as the beetles continue to consume his mind. Raine dashes over the control panel & presses every button until the machine finally stops. Raine attempts to comfort the Doctor but she’s too late, the Doctor is dying. He tells Raine that there’s not much time & that they need to get to the TARDIS before it's too late.

Raine carries the Doctor through the laboratory to the TARDIS. She takes the key out of his coat & unlocks the door, as she carries the Doctor over her arm. Once inside, the Doctor is able to get the TARDIS in flight, before collapsing to the ground.

Raine rushes over to his body, believing him to be dying. The Doctor wipes a tear from her eye, telling her that it’s okay & that he’s had a good run, but this life is over. He tells Raine to be strong, as his successor is going to need all the help he can get. The Doctor breathes in heavily one final time, before shutting his eyes one final time. Then suddenly, a white swirl of energy begins to surround the Doctor's face. We see the thoughts of the Doctor's mind presented before him, as he imagines the faces of his companions; Mel, Ace & Raine. They smile at the Doctor, before declaring “thank you, Doctor”, before transitioning into the face of the next companion. The final face fades away, leaving us looking at nothing but the swirling energy. It engulfs the screen more & more, with the music & noise building & building until finally, it ends. The music stops, the noises stop & the swirling energy dissolves into the air, as we’re introduced to the new Doctor: Richard Griffiths.

CONCLUSION

Season 27 would’ve been one of the most troubled & tense seasons in the show's history, with the threat of cancellation never coming closer. Reviews & viewing figures, while still not amazing, were noticeably slightly better than last seasons, with no episode reaching the same lows as Battlefield, Part 1. Despite this however, the BBC ultimately decided to renew Doctor Who for a new season. Feeling as though a new Doctor & Producer could bring in a breath of fresh air, the powers at be decided that the gamble was worth taking.

Doctor Who had saved itself… for now. 1991 wouldn’t be much easier. With a new Doctor & Producer at the realm, ready to introduce a new era to the show, it was vital that this era worked, or else it could spell the end for Doctor Who…

TO BE CONTINUED

 

Special thanks to The Dalek Hunter for their continual support with the series