How a Doctor Who movie got Lost in the Dark Dimension...
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00:00When Christopher Eccleston stated that multi-Doctor stories are cash grabs, he wasn't far wrong.
00:06While the show was off the air, BBC Enterprises, the corporation's marketing arm, went all in on
00:12video releases, books on tape, recorded soundtracks and novels to keep fans appeased during the
00:18wilderness years. Their biggest Doctor Who-related project, however, actually ended up unmade.
00:24Designed as a celebration of the show's 30th anniversary, Doctor Who The Dark Dimension
00:30was intended to be a feature-length straight-to-video movie. Now, The Dark Dimension, like Shada,
00:35is one of the Doctor Who fandom's great obsessions. Despite having never fully entered production,
00:41there have been many attempts by fans to realise the story as originally intended.
00:47So, with the 60th anniversary fast approaching and rumours of a multi-Doctor story back in the
00:54news once again, now seems like the perfect time to take a look at this abandoned special.
00:59So, with that in mind then, I'm Ellie with Who Culture, here with the true story behind
01:04Doctor Who's abandoned anniversary movie.
01:07Number 10. BBC Enterprises plans an anniversary movie.
01:13According to The Dark Dimension scriptwriter Adrian Rigglesford, the planned movie was at
01:18the behest of Tom Baker. Speaking to the Space Mountain Convention in Clacton-on-Sea in 1993,
01:24Rigglesford told fans that Tom Baker went to the BBC and said,
01:28I would like to be Doctor Who again, and that's the reason why it happened.
01:31Baker also apparently suggested that the script should be written by Douglas Adams.
01:36So, in light of this and the strong performance that Doctor Who was having in the home entertainment
01:41charts, BBC Enterprises started planning something special in September 1992.
01:47A brand new feature-length episode for exclusive home video release to celebrate Doctor Who's
01:5430th anniversary in 1993. Rigglesford's script was commissioned about a month later,
02:00specifically written with Tom Baker's requests in mind.
02:04The plot revolved around Hawkspur, a villainous alien who murders the seventh Doctor and alters
02:09the Doctor's personal timeline so that Tom Baker's incarnation never regenerated.
02:14This older fourth Doctor would team up with Ace and the Brigadier to put history back on
02:19course, with the other surviving Doctors making brief cameo performances throughout.
02:24Now, while this may have satisfied fans and some BBC high-ups who felt that the series had
02:30lost its way in the 1980s, it was a storyline that proved to be quite controversial further
02:35down the pre-production process.
02:39Number 9. Graham Harper comes on board to make Doctor Who scary again.
02:44Now, while BBC Enterprises wrangled over the project with the controller of BBC One, Jonathan Powell,
02:51who is one of Doctor Who's greatest enemies, Rigglesford had managed to bring a director on board.
02:57And he chose Graham Harper, a fan favourite director who was responsible for two of Doctor Who's most
03:04atmospheric and acclaimed stories of the 1980s, The Caves of Androzani and Revelation of the Daleks.
03:10Harper was reportedly very excited to make Doctor Who scary again, and was certainly a great choice for
03:17the darker, more grown-up tone that Rigglesford's script was aiming for.
03:21Now, at this stage, the film was planned for exclusive VHS release, which meant that the target audience were older fans,
03:29who had paid employment and disposable income.
03:32But that all changed in early 1993, when Jonathan Powell was replaced as controller of BBC One by Alan Yentob.
03:41Now, Alan Yentob was a supporter of Doctor Who and cult television in general,
03:47and had actually overseen some classic Who repeats over on BBC Two throughout 1992 and into 1993.
03:55And with the support of Charles Denton, the new head of series and serials,
04:00he gave his blessing for The Dark Dimension to be aired on BBC One,
04:06with the VHS release then potentially including extra footage as an added selling point.
04:11Number eight, monster redesigns begin in earnest.
04:15Now that the project had the blessing of BBC One, the focus turned back to Rigglesford's script.
04:21As this was to be an anniversary special, there was a desire to include not just the surviving past
04:26Doctors, but several classic monsters. The sixth Doctor was to meet the Ice Warriors,
04:32while the fourth Doctor would confront a Dalek in a Victorian graveyard, and the fifth Doctor would be
04:37thrown into the Cyber Wars. Now, in order to update some of these classic foes for a 90s audience,
04:44designers were brought in from a variety of sources, including Jim Henson's Creature Workshop.
04:50Henson's team were assigned the Cybermen, with Rigglesford giving an insight to some of the designs
04:55at the Space Mountain Convention, stating,
04:58The guy who designed it, Nigel Johns, was trained by alien designer H.R. Giger.
05:03So you can imagine that this particular Cyberman looked terrifying. It had holes in its knuckles,
05:09and there was a point where it held up its hand, made a fist, and six-inch blades shot out of its knuckles.
05:15It was like Wolverine out of the X-Men comics. Cyberene.
05:18Now, these new Cybermen are the overriding image of the Abandoned Project, and they really give an
05:25insight into the more horror-inducing adult tones that they were clearly aiming for.
05:31Number seven, Rick Mayall, David Bowie, and Brian Blessed were tipped to play the villain.
05:37There were a number of enticing star names linked to the role of the central villain Hawkspur.
05:42Rigglesford had previously written a book with Brian Blessed, so had suggested him for the role.
05:47Another name, David Bowie, was of course familiar to the team from Jim Henson's Creature Workshop,
05:52who had worked with him on Labyrinth. Now, it's not clear how advanced these
05:56discussions were past names on a list, and given how enterprises approached the casting of the
06:02Doctors, but more on that later, it's highly likely that they didn't get very far.
06:07Now, one of the most enticing names for potential actors to play the villain was Rick
06:12Mayall. And Graham Harper had worked with Mayall on The New Statesman, where Mayall had played the
06:17role, Alan Bastard. So, given their working relationship, it's highly likely that Mayall was
06:23Harper's top choice for the role. But the prospect of Rick Mayall killing Sylvester McCoy and then
06:30facing off against Tom Baker in a Doctor Who story is one of the series' greatest what-ifs. And despite
06:37the clear flaws in the project, having Rick Mayall and Tom Baker involved would have at least ensured
06:43that it was nothing less than memorable. Number 6. Pre-production begins, casting does not.
06:51Establishing a production office in June 1993, BBC Enterprises won the bid to produce the project,
07:00with a tender of £75,000. But BBC TV were concerned that the budget was too low and the enterprises had
07:09no experience in producing original drama. But despite this, design work continued on the monsters,
07:16updating the Daleks' extermination effects to 3D bolts. Test shoots began, costumes and sets were being
07:24designed for the special, the Pertwee-era variation of the theme tune was decided upon, and a new title
07:31sequence concept was being drawn up. Kevin Davies, who would later direct the fondly remembered
07:37anniversary documentary More Than 30 Years in the TARDIS, was put in charge of realising the concept
07:43of incorporating all five Doctors' faces into the old-fashioned Howl Around intro. The only problem was,
07:50no one had contacted the five Doctors. In an interview with TV Zone, Fifth Doctor actor Peter
07:55Davieson said that, they never returned my agent's calls when this project was floating around. I was
08:01then sent a script later on saying, we hope you like the script, we look forward to working with you,
08:05and still, no one had contacted my agent. And it would only get worse from there.
08:11Number 5. Most of the Doctors aren't impressed.
08:15As news of the project started to filter around fan circles in June, it wasn't until July that the
08:22news of the project was broken in the 202nd issue of Doctor Who magazine. Now, fans were incredibly
08:29excited about the prospect of Doctor Who returning to BBC One after three years, but most of the Doctors
08:36were less excited. In the years following the project, John Pertwee, Peter Davieson, Colin Baker,
08:42and Sylvester McCoy have been vocal on the script's many problems, not least the fact that they were
08:48all overshadowed by Tom Baker. As Colin Baker remembered in an interview with TV Zone magazine,
08:54it's not a very sound strategy to present it in. The way it was presented, i.e. that one
08:59is much more important than the other four. John Pertwee, meanwhile, objected to how the script
09:04approached Doctor Who in general, telling Starburst magazine, it should have been given to a writer that
09:09knows something about what we're doing. Someone like Barry Letts. Sylvester McCoy later tapped into
09:15the inherent problem with the proposed story. He told TV Zone, I don't think it was even the kind
09:20of story fans would want to see for the 30th anniversary. They want to see all the Doctors together.
09:27Number 4. Budget miscalculations lead the project to be abandoned.
09:32Fan excitement over the project was short-lived. A BBC board meeting held on the 10th of July decided
09:39that the anniversary multi-Doctor story was just a hastily cobbled cash grab. Citing the upset the
09:46project caused for past Doctors and the unrealistic production schedule, the board decided to send BBC
09:53Enterprises a memo that cancelled the Dark Dimension for financial and logistical reasons, and rumour has it
10:00that those financial reasons related to the fact that the broadcasting costs hadn't been factored
10:07into BBC Enterprises' budget. Now this wasn't quite the end of the project however, and Rigglesford set
10:13about rewriting his script for a potential Christmas 1993 release. Meanwhile in America, Philip Siegel,
10:21working at Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, had heard about the project and was concerned. In a DVD
10:27interview for 1996's Doctor Who TV movie, Siegel said,
10:32I read the script and it was awful. It was really embarrassing and it was silly and we were going to
10:38march out all of the old Doctors and it just felt wrong. It was going to muddy the waters and confuse
10:44people, especially as we were so close to delivering our bible and our script. Siegel requested that the BBC
10:51Enterprise's senior manager Tony Greenwood put a stop to the project and thus the final nail was put in the Dark Dimension's coffin.
11:02Number three, Dimensions in Time replaces the Dark Dimension.
11:07Now if Siegel was concerned that the script for the Dark Dimension was silly, then who knows what he must have thought
11:14about the script for its replacement, the infamous Dimensions in Time. Fans were understandably
11:21disappointed that a dark and brooding 96 minute feature length movie special was replaced by a light
11:26and fluffy romp through Albert Square in 3D for 1993's Children in Need Telethon.
11:33Viewed through the prism of an anniversary special Dimensions in Time is unbelievably disappointing.
11:39It's a crossover with BBC soap EastEnders. The Doctors don't quite feel right, the companions are
11:44thumbnail sketches of how the characters are remembered by writers John Nathan Turner and David
11:49Roden. And worse than that, Tom Baker still doesn't share screen time with the other Doctors.
11:55But really, fans should have just lightened up. Dimensions in Time was just a bit of daft
12:00fun for a really good cause. And actually, funnily enough, Adrian Rigglesford's wish for light
12:06entertainment host Noel Edmonds to introduce the Dark Dimensions in Noel's Who Party actually came
12:13true. Edmonds announced the winner of the phone vote that would decide which EastEnders character
12:18would save the Doctor from the part one cliffhanger. He was then joined by John Pertwee in character
12:24as the Doctor, who instructed audiences to put on their 3D glasses. Look, it wasn't a feature length
12:30movie, but it was still a good laugh. Number 2. Adrian Rigglesford unsuccessfully
12:36tries to publish the making of the Dark Dimension book. Now, before the Dark Dimension was abandoned,
12:43Virgin Publishing were interested in publishing a novelisation. But when Greenwood pulled the plug
12:48on the project, the publishers decided it wasn't really worth it anymore. After all, they had several
12:55Seventh Doctor stories to be working with and were starting to create new stories for the previous six
13:00incarnations. But undeterred, Rigglesford continued to seek publishing opportunities for his unmade Doctor
13:07Who story. He considered a script book with Titan Books, but then the BBC clamped down on making the
13:14script public. And it was this clampdown that also ensured that the unofficial making of book failed to
13:21surface on the three potential publishing dates between 1994 and 1995, despite a dust jacket featuring
13:29the new style's Cyberman being designed. Eventually, details of the Dark Dimension appeared in Virgin's
13:35reference book, The Nth Doctor by Jean-Marc Leffissier. The book contained various background notes and a full
13:42synopsis for the unmade adventure, which sparked the imagination of several creatively-minded fans.
13:50Number one, the project is eventually realised by fans. Now, if we learned anything during the
13:56wilderness years of the 1990s, it's that if Doctor Who fans aren't satisfied with existing Doctor Who,
14:02then they make it themselves. Doctor Who DJ, Missing Episode Hunter and continuity advisor Ian Levine
14:10has funded many such projects for his own private collection. He finished work on his version of
14:16the Dark Dimension back in 2012, and he even managed to secure Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred to voice
14:23their respective characters. And there have been many other similar attempts to realise the potential
14:29of Rigglesford's script over the years. Now, the most high profile and accessible of these is Faros
14:36features audio adaptation of a leaked version of the Dark Dimension script, featuring a cast of fans
14:43and realised by fan artists. The 2021 adaptation of The Abandoned Project was recorded during the pandemic.
14:52Script editor and Fourth Doctor Matthew Toffolo told We Are Cold,
14:56It's been a great pleasure playing a weary 90s-era Fourth Doctor and hearing the project come together with
15:02incredibly talented voice acting, editing, sound design and an equally impressive soundtrack.
15:09Now, it is still available on YouTube and it's likely the closest fans will ever get to The Dark Dimension.
15:16And there you have it, the true story behind the abandoned Doctor Who movie. Now, if we missed out
15:22any details, then do let us know in the comments below. And while you're there, don't forget to like,
15:26and subscribe and tap that notification bell. Also, head over to Twitter and follow us there at WhoCulture
15:33and I can be found across various social medias just by searching Ellie Littlechild.
15:37I've been Ellie with WhoCulture and in the words of Riversong herself, goodbye, sweeties.