The 26th season of Doctor Who premiered on 6 September 1989 with the serial Battlefield, and consisted of four serials, ending with Survival, which was the final episode of Doctor Who for over 15 years, until the show was revived in 2005. John Nathan-Turner produced the series, with Andrew Cartmel script editing.

Development Scrapped stories Multiple stories were scrapped from this season. This included Alixion, a three-part story written by Robin Mukherjee,. was considered for season 26 as the "spare" script. if another planned was no longer suitable. It was to take place on a monastic planet inhabited by humans and large beetles. The humans were monks who produced a special elixir that enhanced intelligence from beetles who fed on intelligent beings. The abbot wants to feed the Doctor to the beetles to produce a more potent elixir for himself. The script was not completed beyond a partial storyline; Mukherjee was unsure how events would have been resolved beyond a contest of wills between the Doctor and the abbot. Mukherjee would have been the first person of colour to write for the programme, had it been commissioned; eventually, Malorie Blackman would achieve this, 29 years later, with Rosa for Series 11. Mukherjee would later adapt this story for Big Finish's Lost Stories range.

Another scrapped story was Avatar, a four-part story written by David A. McIntee.. It would have been a Lovecraftian horror story. set in Arkham, New England (Later Cornwall) in 1927, which would have involved alien body-snatchers who could only inhabit the bodies of the dead, with one attempting to clone the body of a Silurian god to use as a body to inhabit. Illegal Alien by Mike Tucker and Robert Perry was also scrapped, which would have been a three-part Cybermen story set in war-torn 1940s London. Tucker and Perry had completed the first two episodes in script form and the final episode as a storyline which they were planning to submit at the start of season-26 production. Aaranovitch suggested the script be put to next season due to similarities with The Curse of Fenric, though this never came about to the show's cancellation. Tucker and Perry would later turn the story into a 1997 novel for the Past Doctor Adventures range from BBC Books.

Multiple stories written by Marc Platt were scrapped, such as Lungbarrow, which would have featured the Doctor and Ace visiting his ancestral home on Gallifrey; it would later be adapted into a novel of the same name. Another, Shrine, was discussed with script editor Andrew Cartmel which would have been about stone-headed aliens looking for their god-king in 19th-century Tsarist Russia..

Casting

Main cast Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor Sophie Aldred as Ace

Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred both continue their roles as the Seventh Doctor and Ace for their final season.

Recurring stars Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart Anthony Ainley as the Master

Nicholas Courtney returned to play Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart in Battlefield. He first appeared with the Second Doctor in 1968 in The Web of Fear before becoming a recurring character throughout the Second Doctor to the Fifth Doctor and last appearing in "The Five Doctors" (1983).

Anthony Ainley returned to play The Master in Survival, having last appeared in The Trial of a Time Lord (1986). This was Ainley's final television appearance in the role, though he portrayed the Master one last time in the 1997 computer game Destiny of the Doctors.

Guest stars Jean Marsh, who had portrayed Joanna in The Crusade (1965) and Sara Kingdom in The Daleks' Master Plan (1965–66), appeared in Battlefield playing the part of the main antagonist.

Serials

Season 26 continued Andrew Cartmel's trend of bringing a darker and more mysterious tone to the show, with a particular focus on Ace's past and the Doctor's manipulative nature. The season aired on Wednesdays, as per the previous season's schedule.

Broadcast The entire season was broadcast from 6 September to 6 December 1989. The Curse of Fenric was originally intended to be aired before Ghost Light, but was subsequently rescheduled.

Home media

VHS releases

DVD and Blu-ray releases

In print

Cancellation and scrapped revivals

Cancellation and scrapped Season 27 Following the airing of this season, Doctor Who was cancelled. Alan Kistler, writing in Doctor Who: A History, stated that the show had been losing popularity and viewing figures for sometime for a number of reasons, such as Star Trek: The Next Generation's popularity and depth compared to Doctor Who, as well as due to the BBC shifting McCoy's era of the show from its old Saturday evening time slot and placing it opposite popular ITV show Coronation Street, with the latter being seen as an indication that the BBC had "lost faith" in the show. McCoy also attributed the lower figures to a lack of advertising from the BBC, who believed they had a desire to set up the show for cancellation.

Midway through 1989, Doctor Who's production team began initial planning for Season 27, which would have aired at the end of 1990. Andrew Cartmel and the writers he had worked with regularly, including Ben Aaronovitch, Ian Briggs, and Marc Platt, brainstormed possible story ideas. One of the major proposed plot points for Season 27 was the departure of Ace, who would have been taken to Gallifrey to become a Time Lord herself. This would also have seen the subsequent introduction of a new companion, planned as an "aristocratic cat burglar" named Raine Creevy. The cancellation of the series meant that no detailed work was undertaken beyond a few initial ideas.

Scrapped concepts included Bad Destination, a three-part story by Aaranovitch. which would have been a space opera with a race of samurai insect-like aliens called the Metatraxi;. Thin Ice, which would have been a four-part story by Platt featuring the Ice Warriors in 1968 London,. where Ace. would have left for the Prydonian Academy to become a Time Lord. and a recurring character with connections to the underworld would have been introduced; Action at a Distance, written by Cartmel, which was planned to introduce Creevy and expand on the underworld character; Blood and Iron, also by Cartmel, where the Seventh Doctor would have regenerated; Hostage, a three part story by Neil Penswick where soldiers are hunting down a pair of shape-shifting criminals;. Night Thoughts, set in an isolated house where a group of university staff are trapped, with one secretly being a murderer; and A School for Glory, written by Tony Etchells and another writer set during World War I with a story divided between the trenches and a British country house doubling as an army academy.

Attempted revivals

The cancellation of Doctor Who resulted in a period dubbed by fans as "The Wilderness Years". During this period, the show did not air, though many pieces of spin-off material were released. The Seventh Doctor and Ace's adventures continued in other spin-off media throughout the 1990s, such as via Doctor Who Magazine's comic strips and Virgin Publishing's Doctor Who novels. Both McCoy and Aldred would later reprise their roles for Big Finish Productions' audio drama ranges.

One scrapped revival was Lost in the Dark Dimension. Proposed by Alan Yentob of BBC2, the movie was intended to be a direct to DVD release that would have commemorated the show's 30th anniversary. The story was planned to feature the Fourth Doctor, portrayed by Tom Baker, whose regeneration to his next incarnation was halted by an evil villain. This story was also planned to feature Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and Ace as they worked to restore the timeline to its proper state. However, due to an ongoing film proposal by Philip Segal, the BBC ended up scrapping Lost in the Dark Dimension, instead producing Dimensions in Time, a fifteen minute charity special, to celebrate the anniversary.

Discussions for a film based on the series started in the late 1980s and carried on into the 1990s. Company Green Light, owned by Daltenreys, was planned to make a film, though progress was slow and the rights eventually relapsed to the BBC in 1994. They later partnered with French company Lumiere Productions to produce the film. Simultaneously, another proposal, headed by Amblin Entertainment and Philip Segal for an American produced Doctor Who television series, was being discussed. Lumiere would later leave Green Light after they believed Amblin's efforts would undermine interest in their film. Green Light's rights eventually reverted back to the BBC, and Segal's deal would fall through. However, Segal would eventually come into contact with Yentob, and the pair struck a deal to develop a BBC-Amblin co-production of the programme.

Universal Television funded the resulting TV movie, Doctor Who. Several plans by John Leekley for a series bible, involving a total continuity reboot and a plan to remake many classic Doctor Who stories, were scrapped. The movie would be pitched to Fox, who agreed to let it serve as a backdoor pilot to a further television series revival if it did well. Amblin would pull out of production, but the movie would be produced, and instead of a reboot, would carry the same continuity as the original programme, notably via McCoy's reprisal of the Seventh Doctor role at the start of the film. Though the movie did well in the UK, drawing in a viewing figure of 9.1 million, US viewing figures were low (5.6 million) due to heavy competition from rival networks airing popular shows in the same timeslot, and were deemed not enough to prompt a television show revival. Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor, who led the film, would subsequently be utilised in spin-off material for the series, and further adventures starring the character would be portrayed across comics, audio dramas, and novels throughout the 1990s.

The BBC would later attempt multiple spin-off revivals of the show, such as through webcast productions like Death Comes to Time and the 2003 animated production Scream of the Shalka. The latter was intended to start a series of webcasts to continue the show's story, and was marketed as an official continuation to the series, though this would end up being sidelined as a result of the series officially being revived in 2005 starting with Doctor Who series 1.

Revival of scrapped stories Big Finish would later adapt many of the scrapped concepts from Season 27, into audio dramas titled Doctor Who: The Lost Stories. This range would also revive the Raine Creevy character for this range as well.

References

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