Cancelled!

After 26 seasons, the Seventh Doctor and current companion Ace walked off into the sunset. Although Sylvester McCoy was expecting to play the Doctor for one more year before moving on, the decision was taken to ‘rest' the series.

Fan protests, including a mass phone-in to the BBC failed to produce results. Encouraging noises were made about independent production companies, but bids from such past Doctor Who luminaries as Terry Nation were not pursued.

Attempts to relaunch Doctor Who as a feature film franchise also came to nothing, despite such names as Pierce Brosnan, Dudley Moore and John Cleese being attached to the role.

Plans to celebrate the show’s 30th anniversary with a special story, The Dark Dimension, fell through. Instead, 3D filming technology was used to produce Dimensions in Time, two mini-episodes that featured all the surviving Doctors, several companions and the cast of Eastenders. It was as strange as it sounds.

Meanwhile, Hollywood producer Philip Segal, an ex-pat who had loved the show as a child, was working behind-the-scenes with the BBC and the American TV networks to get his own vision of Doctor Who off the ground.

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