Every year, of the dozens of pilot episodes that are made for TV, some don’t get picked up, while others are changed significantly or even remade when they become a full series. Our series Pilot Error! takes a look at some of them, including the ones that got away.
For a series which started out on television, Doctor Who has accrued a considerable amount of audio material during the last 60 years. Back in October 1976, BBC Schools radio series Exploration Earth had an episode called ‘The Time Machine’, which saw Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen fighting Megron, the High Lord of Chaos, in Earth’s distant past as the planet is formed.
A couple of months earlier, the Fourth Doctor and Sarah took on the villainous Pescatons on 12” vinyl, in the first officially licensed audio drama based upon the series, entitled ‘Doctor Who and the Pescatons’. During the 18-month interregnum, when the programme was on hiatus between 1985 and 1986, Pirate Radio Four had a six-part story featuring Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant, called ‘Slipback’. Lis Sladen would return to radio in 1993, accompanying Jon Pertwee’s Doctor on BBC Radio 5 in ‘The Paradise of Death’, with a sequel tale -‘The Ghosts of N-Space’ – broadcast on Radio 2 some three years later.
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Of course, the main keepers of the series’ flame during six of those ‘Wilderness Years’ while it was being ‘rested’ were Big Finish, who began producing official audio dramas based on Doctor Who in 1999, and have since released many hundreds of adventures featuring numerous Doctors, as well as giving us a myriad of spin-offs. However, had history taken a rather different route, television’s Time Lord could have actually hit the airwaves much earlier, and probably not with the Doctor you would have expected. This is the tale of one of the most tantalising pieces of Doctor Who lost media – ‘Journey Into Time’, an unreleased radio pilot.
The episode had languished in obscurity for more than two decades, when in 1989 a letter was sent to the fanzine and reference work The Frame by reader Trevor Wells, who had passed on a copy of some publicity material he had received back in 1967 from a company named Stanmark Productions Limited, which was advertising a mooted radio serial based on Doctor Who, starring Peter Cushing. The brochure was reproduced in the magazine, but writer and co-editor of the magazine David J. Howe was unable to find out any further information at that time, and he ended up hitting a series of frustrating dead ends.
And so the trail had appeared to go cold on this mysterious project, until 2011, when the writer and researcher Richard Bignell was able to uncover a copy of the script for the pilot episode – ‘Journey Into Time’ – at the BBC Written Archives Centre. Bignell had been following up on leads in an effort to find out more about this pilot, and while going through a file containing enquiries from companies interested in Doctor Who merchandising opportunities, he located the complete script, which was the first tangible evidence – outside of the promotional material reproduced more than 20 years earlier – of the proposed radio series’ existence.
Bignell would go on to publish the full pilot script in January 2012 in his magazine dedicated to Doctor Who research and restoration, Nothing at the End of the Lane, along with the most detailed account to date in relation to this abandoned project and its history. His search had been prompted after contacting one of the men behind the project, Richard Bates, who suggested Bignell search some of the remotest parts of the BBC’s written archives which generally ended up being overlooked by fans. Bates’ own connection with Doctor Who had nearly pre-dated this pilot, as a result of his link with the man popularly credited with creating the series for television in the first place.
Canadian Sydney Newman (who was played by Brian Cox in 2013 docudrama An Adventure in Space and Time) came to England back in 1958, having been made the offer of a job at fledgling ITV franchisee ABC, after getting a reputation for his work at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. After a short while over here, he ended up becoming ABC’s Head of Drama, having initially been engaged as a producer. Having taken up his new senior role, Newman would then create The Avengers. Joining the show during its second series as story editor was Richard Bates.
Newman would go on to leave ABC for the BBC in December 1962, having been poached by the Corporation to become the Head of Drama. It was during the first few months that Newman was in place when he oversaw the genesis of what would go on to become Doctor Who. The programme would effectively be a product of a committee, with many creative voices playing a part in putting together what would go on to become the show which we know today. As well as reviewing and guiding what was being put together, Newman also had the say on picking who would become producer, and for this he would think of his former ABC colleagues.
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Bates was still working there when he received a phone call from Newman, asking if he would be interested in taking up the post as Doctor Who’s producer. Feeling that he lacked the necessary experience, Bates declined Newman’s offer, which is when – according to Bates’ account – he heard the phone ring in the next office, which belonged to one Verity Lambert, a young production assistant at ABC with whom Newman had worked during his time there. Although it has to be said neither Bates nor Lambert were the first choice to be the producer, Bates’ refusal and Lambert’s acceptance of the post were key events in the series’ foundation.
While still working at ABC, Bates set up a company, called Watermill Productions, with the intention of making radio dramas out of the books by his father, H.E. Bates, who had created The Darling Buds of May. Bates partnered up with Doug Stanley, a Canadian who had worked for British Forces Broadcasting in Cologne, before becoming a DJ on the first ‘Pirate Radio’ station, Commercial Neutral Broadcasting Company (or CNBC) in 1960. After CNBC went under, his next move was to Radio Luxembourg, an English language broadcaster who had a powerful enough transmitter based outside the UK for the signal to still reach here.
Until February 1971, it was still required for UK residents to have a radio licence, and the BBC had a monopoly on radio broadcasting in the country, with independent commercial radio not being legally established until 1973. Moving from presenting to production, Stanley would end up making 14 weekly shows for Radio Luxembourg, before establishing a company of his own, named Stanmark Productions, in the mid-1960s. Stanmark’s purpose was to make programming for radio stations based outside of the UK, and this included radio dramas.
In June 1965, Bates phoned the BBC with an enquiry about the possibility of his obtaining the rights to produce Doctor Who for radio, with the intention of selling the end product to stations based overseas. Bates followed up the call with a letter, laying out Watermill Productions’ plans, and he asked for permission to purchase a six-month option on the radio rights to the series, during which time he would then be able to explore just what opportunities were available in markets outside the UK to which he could then potentially sell a radio version of the BBC’s sci-fi programme.
By the middle of 1965, Doctor Who had already been sold to television stations based in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Singapore, Malta and Aden, with Nigeria, Rhodesia, Zambia and Trinidad & Tobago following suit by the year’s end. One of the distributors used by the BBC for its overseas sales was known as Television International Enterprises (or T.I.E.), and the company would go on to perform a similar role for Doug Stanley’s Stanmark Productions. As well as becoming known overseas, Doctor Who was also on quite a high domestically, thanks to the phenomenon known as ‘Dalekmania’.
Although there were concerns within the BBC that Doctor Who’s appeal was predominantly visual, meaning that it might not translate well to this different medium, and that a poorly-made adaptation might hurt the Corporation’s reputation abroad, a contract was signed in January 1966 to give a six-month exclusive option to Watermill for the radio rights to Doctor Who, expiring at the end of June. In the meantime, Watermill had picked an actor who they wanted to play the lead, and Bates was shortly due to have a meeting with the agent who represented their top choice: Boris Karloff.
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The erstwhile William Henry Pratt was known across the world for his portrayal of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein’s Monster for Universal, and on home soil, he had hosted ABC’s sci-fi anthology series Out of This World in 1962, which had featured two episodes by future creator of the Daleks, Terry Nation. In June 1966, the BBC were given a copy of the script which had been prepared for the pilot of the proposed radio series. Going by the title of ‘Journey Into Time’, this 17-page script had been written by one of Bates’ former colleagues from his time working as story editor on The Avengers, named Malcolm Hulke.
A couple of years earlier, Hulke had been asked by Newman – who, like Bates, knew him from The Avengers – to submit a story for the first season of Doctor Who. His proposal – ‘The Hidden Planet’ – went unproduced, after the tone was felt to be out of step with the new direction of the series following the success and explosion in popularity of the Daleks. Hulke also proposed another tale for the same season, ‘Britain 408 AD’, which would also be abandoned. After teaming up with David Ellis, another writer who had pitched unsuccessfully to the Doctor Who production team, Hulke and his new writing partner would be commissioned to pen a six-part tale, which ended up being aired in 1967 as ‘The Faceless Ones’.
‘Journey Into Time’ would run to 21 minutes in length, and it was split into five parts, allowing for adverts to be inserted during the broadcast by overseas commercial radio stations. While the Doctor’s origins were yet to be fully explained on television, it had at least been established that both he and his granddaughter Susan were aliens. In ‘Journey Into Time’, however, the character – named in Hulke’s script as ‘Dr. Who’ – and Susan both hailed from Earth, but from a time 3,000 years into the future. Dr. Who’s time machine was still called TARDIS (only without the definite article), which here was an acronym for ‘Time and Relative Dimensional Interplanetary Ship’.
Hulke’s script would also mention something that was called the ‘E.C.S.’ (or ‘electronic chameleon system’) as the device which was supposed to make (the) TARDIS blend in with its surroundings – a similar name would actually be used in the television series years later, dubbed the ‘Chameleon Circuit’. As well as foreshadowing that bit of lore, Hulke would go on to make a significant contribution to Doctor Who’s mythos, by co-creating the Doctor’s people – the Time Lords – with Terrance Dicks for Patrick Troughton’s epic 10-part finale in 1969, ‘The War Games’. Here, however, Dr. Who was simply a human from the future, with a hand built time machine.
‘Journey Into Time’ hit a stumbling block around the same time as the script was submitted to the BBC, as Watermill had been awaiting Karloff’s return to England, but a period of ill health led to the actor electing to remain Stateside until the autumn of 1966. Hoping to get the pilot’s production underway as soon as possible, discussions then began with British actor Robert Coote to portray Dr. Who. A request to the BBC for a brief extension of the six-month option was granted to Watermill until September 1966. However, their approach to Coote failed to work out, so consideration was then given to sounding out someone who was familiar with the part.
Having played Dr. Who on the big screen in 1965’s Dr. Who and the Daleks, and finished filming the sequel earlier that year, Peter Cushing was at that point the only actor besides William Hartnell to take on the mantle of the Doctor. After agreeing to return as Dr. Who – albeit not the same version he had portrayed in the movies – Cushing recorded the pilot script, alongside a small cast, the exact details of whom are frustratingly unknown. Once competed, a copy of ‘Journey Into Time’ was sent to the BBC in July 1966, and it received what were generally very positive noises.
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The storyline of the pilot would share some similarities with the first episode of the TV series’ opening tale, ‘An Unearthly Child’. Dr. Who and granddaughter Susan would materialise on Earth in 1967, about 3,000 years off course, and TARDIS would take on the form of a Police Box as camouflage. Susan would be enrolled at a local school, and appear astoundingly brilliant to her teachers and classmates alike, one of whom – Mike Logan – would follow Susan home. Hearing her voice coming from inside a Police Box, young Mike would force his way inside TARDIS and set the ship in flight, taking himself, Susan and Dr. Who right into the very heart of the American Revolution for the cliff-hanger ending.
The contract signed with the BBC had been for a series of 52 radio episodes to be distributed outside of the UK. However, overtures were made to the BBC about the possibility of the series being sold for broadcast within the home territory. It also became the case that the radio version of Doctor Who would begin to have Stanley’s Stanmark Productions being used in connection with promoting the project, and August 1966 saw Stanmark prepare promotional literature, which took the form of a leaflet with four sides of a Police Box on it which could be then assembled into a freestanding replica of TARDIS, with sales and contact information being printed on the other side.
The promotional leaflet did give some hints as to where the Doctor Who radio series would go, if it were picked up for a full 52-episode run across a two-year period. As well as the American Revolution, and “the sailing of The Mayflower to the “New World””, Dr. Who’s radio exploits would have mirrored at least some of the TV adventures, as he would have run into “Neanderthal Man” (as seen in ‘An Unearthly Child’), “Julius Caesar” (‘The Romans’ saw a trip to the heart of the Roman Empire, and perhaps Hulke would have adapted his unused ‘Britain 408 AD’ story), and “Marco Polo” (the show’s fourth story on TV was called ‘Marco Polo’), plus “invincible robots” (possibly inspired by the Daleks) and “giant insects” (like the Zarbi and Menoptera in ‘The Web Planet’).
There were some rumblings internally at the BBC about the proposed series, and it was deemed to be unacceptable that the show should be sold to any broadcasters – such as Radio Luxembourg, with whom Stanley had an established history – who would be able to transmit it illegally into the UK from abroad. In late September, Stanmark’s intention to proceed with a full 52-episode run was communicated to the BBC. It was suggested within the Corporation that the series may be suitable for inclusion on the BBC’s Light Programme (which was a national station replaced in 1967 by Radio 1 and Radio 2). A re-edit of the pilot was submitted to the BBC in January 1967, but failed to elicit any interest in the Light Programme airing it.
With no domestic sales opportunities available, and the BBC not agreeing to varying the terms of the original agreement so that the Doctor Who radio series could be offered for sale to the likes of Radio Luxembourg, the project began to falter. With insufficient interest or opportunities to make it viable, the planned series never went beyond the pilot episode, and so the contract duly expired. Before the first UK commercial broadcaster could go on air in 1973, following new legislation legalising competition to the BBC, Stanmark would close up shop, winding down at the end of 1972. With their archives being scrapped as a result, no recording is known to exist of ‘Journey Into Time’, despite intensive efforts to try and track down a copy.
However, nothing truly remains gone forever, and several versions of Malcolm Hulke’s ‘Journey Into Time’ script have been recorded unofficially by fans over recent years: one by Beermat Productions, another as one of the ongoing series Doctor Who: The Nick Scovell Adventures, and a third being released on the original TV show’s 57th anniversary in 2020. A novelisation of the script has been published by Obverse Books, as part of a range which is based around the concept that the Doctor Who movies starring Cushing had carried on beyond 1966’s Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D., and – as with the first two films – adapted stories originally made for television.
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Funnily enough, Cushing would get to appear as Dr. Who on radio in the UK after all, despite the Watermill / Stanmark venture not taking off. During the 1960s, the BBC’s Light Programme had a regular weekly series called Movietime, which would feature condensed versions of popular motion pictures. With the show presented by film critic Gordon Gow – who would also prepare the adaptations – one of the half-hour instalments, broadcast on Friday November 18th 1966, would be a heavily condensed version of Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D., one which – just like ‘Journey Into Time’ – is now missing, presumed lost.
However, perhaps one day there will be a copy of either one or both of Peter Cushing’s audio exploits as Dr. Who which will unexpectedly materialise out of thin air. The prospect of this must surely be considered – as in the words of Cushing’s portrayal in his first appearance in Dr. Who and the Daleks – most exciting.