Probably the last RTD quote of the week, again from Doctor Who Monthly:
“I’ve always got a much more complicated, science-fictiony version of each episode in my mind,” he persists, “and I always filter that out, and go for the more straightforward version – the more emotional, honest version.
”For example, there was a great, complicated version of ‘Tooth and Claw’ in my mind, where, at the end of the episode, Queen Victoria is killed, and that creates the parallel universe, which becomes the world of ‘Rise of the Cybermen’ and ‘The Age of Steel’. It would have been the most brilliant ending because the Doctor and Rose would have just stood there and gone, ‘That’s not meant to happen!’
“But it’s very subscription channel, cult audience male sci-fi. And I loved that version. In any historical adventure, with Queen Victoria, you know that she’s not going to die, so it would have been the most exciting thrill in the world. But the price we’d have paid for that would have echoed on. Three episodes later, they’d still be saying, ‘Ah, yes, when Queen Victoria was killed by a werewolf…’ That’s when you start to lose viewers. It’s a brilliant moment, but its legacy is too complicated, and too dark, in a boring way.”
Interesting, no?
