DOCTOR WHO: Anniversary Specials From The Scrapheap - THE DARK DIMENSION - Warped Factor - Words in the Key of Geek.

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DOCTOR WHO: Anniversary Specials From The Scrapheap - THE DARK DIMENSION

For this week's 'Story From The Scrapheap'. Christopher Morley examines the proposed 30th Anniversary adventure, The Dark Dimension.


What would have happened had the Fourth Doctor not been killed after being pushed off that radio telescope by the Master in Logopolis?



That's the question posed by The Dark Dimension, a planned celebration of Doctor Who's thirtieth anniversary in 1993, which was to have been produced by BBC Enterprises as a video-only special. In fact, the title rather gives the story away- the central plot of Adrian Rigelsford's piece being that some malevolent entity mucks about with time to the extent that the Doctor is forced to take action to ensure that he & his past/future incarnations aren't completely removed from time.

But why was the Fourth to be the leading Doctor? As Rigelsford recalled:
"Tom Baker went to the BBC and said 'I would like to be Doctor Who again', and that's the reason why it happened.''
That's that then.

Alongside him would have been Jon Pertwee as the Third Doctor, Peter Davison as the Fifth, Colin Baker as the Sixth & Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh. Companion-wise we'd have seen Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, Ace & Bernice Summerfield.

As for enemies, where to start? The Ice Warriors & Yeti would have featured, alongside radically redesigned Cybermen & Daleks.



We turn to Rigelsford again for more:
"'The Cybermen were not like any we've ever seen before . There was a specific Cyberman who was being made by the people at Henson's Creature Workshop. The guy who designed it was Chris Fitzgerald . It had holes in its knuckles and there was a point where it held up its hand, made a fist, and six-inch blades shot out of its knuckles! It was like Wolverine out of the X-Men comics; Cyberrine!'"
The plans for the new Daleks were inspired by those seen in the Seventh Doctor story Remembrance Of The Daleks, including the Special Weapons model:
"'The Daleks were going to have laser-guns that were going to be done with computer animation so the laser bolts would be in 3-D rather than just going 'Zap!' with a blue line . The bolts were going to be like spears coming out in 3-D.'"
Jean-Marc Lofficier's book The Nth Doctor contains an outline of how things would have unfolded-
In 2525 the Seventh Doctor battles a Creature composed of entirely of chronal energy. He is joined in his fight by a group of Eco-Troopers led by a woman named Summerfield. The Doctor is killed, but Summerfield traps the Creature and sends it back in time to its death at the beginning of Creation. However the Creature escapes and finds itself on Earth in 1936.

Exiled in the past, the Creature takes over the body of would be time traveller Professor Hawkspur ( who was to have been portrayed by the late Rik Mayall) . Remembering its encounter with the Seventh Doctor, whom it knew to be a time traveller, the Creature deduces that the Doctor must have visited Earth at some time in his past. The Creature waits for the Time Lord and locates him in 1980 at the Pharos Project where it knows the Fourth Doctor will fall to his death from the radio telescope. Before that happens the Creature intervenes and saves the Fourth Doctor by not letting the normal regenerative process take place, simultaneously capturing him and wiping out his memories. As result, the Creature creates an alternate dimension of time, a "Dark Dimension", one in which it now has a second chance to eradicate Mankind.
Why did it not see the light of day? The official version of events was that...
'BBC1 Controller Jonathan Powell heard of the project and objected to Enterprises making the production on the grounds that it was a marketing wing of the BBC and not a drama production unit.'
However, an animated reconstruction does exist.............

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