'Doctor-Light': The Doctorless 'Who' Stories

By Ben Rawson-Jones, Cult Editor (Digital Spy)

Let's face it - light, low-fat food products never really taste as succulent as the calorie-packed, artery-clogging real deal. Diet soft drinks merely serve to highlight Mary Poppins's belief in the importance of sugar. But what about the sci-fi equivalent? To tie in with the screening of 'Turn Left', which features companion Donna Noble going it alone, we take a look at the Doctor-light adventures of Doctor Who down the years and uncover why they were necessary...

Somewhat appropriately for a show about time travel, it's worth delving back several decades to find that the first 'Doctor-light' episodes were actually in the mid-1960s. This was when stories usually consisted of several 25-minute episodes broadcast over consecutive weeks, as opposed to today's largely standalone 45-minute instalments.

There was no artistic reason for there being no Doctor in the fourth episode of 'The Dalek Invasion Of Earth' back in 1964. Instead, his absence stemmed from an injury to actor William Hartnell, who was supposedly hurt filming a previous battle sequence with the villains from Skaro.

A brief shot of The Doctor was filmed using a stand-in and much of his expositionary dialogue was shifted to David Campbell, the young human resistance fighter who ultimately copped off with The Doctor's granddaughter Susan. It's worth bearing in mind that television production was vastly different several decades ago, with episodes being filmed just days before transmission. This meant that there was no chance of filming Hartnell's scenes at a later date when he was recovered.

The Time Lord's absence in the second episode of 1965's historical adventure 'The Time Meddler', set in England, 1066, was to allow Hartnell some time off for a holiday. The Doctor was conveniently locked up in a cell and a pre-recorded piece of Doctor dialogue was heard off-camera to remind viewers of the central character's incarcerated predicament.

Most audaciously, the 1965 episode 'Mission To The Unknown' didn't feature The Doctor, his companions, or the Tardis. To date, this is the only ever episode to do so. Its commissioning arose from previous story 'The Planet Of The Giants' being chopped from four parts to three to boost the flagging pace of the narrative, leading to a sudden gap in the schedule.

These thrilling 25 minutes, sadly only represented now by brief clips and audio recording, served as a standalone prequel to the 12-part epic story 'The Dalek Masterplan' later that year. Set on the jungle planet Kemble, it featured several agents from the Space Security Service finding out about a Dalek plot to conquer the universe. However, they were exterminated before they could provide sufficient warning.

Writer and Dalek creator Terry Nation hoped that the story would persuade overseas producers that the Daleks were a viable commodity in their own right and could sustain their own Doctor-free spinoff series. These plans never came to fruition despite a pilot script being written.

Towards the end of his tenure as the Doctor's first incarnation, Hartnell's health was increasingly poor. As a result, he had to withdraw from filming episode three of his swansong story 'The Tenth Planet' in 1966, which featured the debut of the Cybermen. The moment had been prepared for though, so there was minimal change required and a rewrite shifted his lines to other characters following a sudden collapse that neatly tied in with his impending regeneration.

Pick up your remotes and fast forward four decades. Doctor Who is still on air, but the televisual landscape has changed vastly. Episodes are filmed months in advance of transmission and schedules can be altered to suit an actor's availability. Yet the burden to the lead stars in Doctor Who is immense, causing the second season of the revived show to 'double bank' the filming of two episodes to ease things for David Tennant and Billie Piper.

Consequently, we were given 'Love & Monsters', with highly-regarded stars Peter Kay and Marc Warren helping to lessen the blow of The Doctor and Rose being relegated to cameos. Similarly, last year's brilliant 'Blink' featured The Doctor and Martha in tiny but pivotal roles as Sally Sparrow took on the sinister Weeping Angels.

The current season opted to split up The Doctor and Donna and give them their own adventures in 'Midnight' and 'Turn Left' respectively. But what of the future? Sadly, it seems that 2009 will be Doctor Who-Light, with only four specials and no series. But what will Steven Moffat do to the format when he takes over in 2010? Only time will tell...