15 Amazing Doctor Who Stories That Didn’t Happen On TV

The best Doctor Who stories aren’t restricted to TV screens, as demonstrated by a raft of classic untelevised adventures from novels, comic books and audio plays. When Russell T Davies brought back Doctor Who in 2005, he adapted several of these stories for the screen. For example, the Christopher Eccleston episode “Dalek” was adapted from Robert Shearman’s excellent Sixth Doctor (Colin Baker) audio, “Jubilee”. More recently, Russell T Davies adapted Pat Mills and John Wagner’s classic comic strip “The Star Beast” for Doctor Who‘s 60th anniversary specials.

Doctor Who‘s TV adaptations of novels, comic strips, and audio dramas barely scratch the surface when it comes to the show’s expanded media. 265 original novels featuring the first eight incarnations of Doctor Who were published between the show’s cancelation in 1989 and its resurrection in 2005. However, even that is a drop in the ocean when it comes to the Doctor’s off-screen adventures from the past 60 years. Many of the best of Doctor Who‘s non-TV adventures are great because they could never be adapted for the screen without losing their unique appeal.

15 Five Things the Doctor Does in Any Worrying Situation (Thirteenth Doctor)

Written by Chris Chibnall

Jodie Whittaker’s COVID response came at a perfect moment in the pandemic for worried and anxious Doctor Who fans of all ages. Filmed on Jodie Whittaker’s phone, inside a wardrobe, with a script from Doctor Who showrunner Chris Chibnall, it was a perfect COVID-era minisode. Released on the BBC’s official Doctor Who social media accounts, the Thirteenth Doctor provided words of advice on how to survive the pandemic, while hiding from Sontarans in a wardrobe. The homemade, rough-around-the-edges charm of the video, and the warmth of Jodie Whittaker’s sentiment was perfectly on-brand for Doctor Who.

14 Dark Eyes (Eighth Doctor)

Written by Nicholas Briggs, Alan Barnes, Matt Fitton, and John Dorney

Dark Eyes was effectively a 16-episode season of Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann) adventures split across four Big Finish boxed sets, released between 2012 and 2015. Opening with a grieving and disillusioned Eighth Doctor in search of hope and a reason to live following the death of his companion Lucie Miller (Sheridan Smith). Instead, he’s tasked by the Time Lords to avert a plot to destroy the universe, which centers on a World War 1 nurse. Dark Eyes is an epic adventure which introduces one of the Eighth Doctor’s best companions, Liv Chenka (Nicola Walker), and also sketches out the early stages of Doctor Who‘s Time War.

13 Project: Twilight (Sixth Doctor)

Written by Cavan Scott and Mark Wright

Colin Baker’s unfairly maligned Sixth Doctor was revitalized at Big Finish, which allowed him time to soften the character’s edges. One of the early standout stories from the Sixth Doctor’s audio era is “Project: Twilight”, a dark and moody urban horror thriller.”Project: Twilight” is the beginning of the acclaimed Forge arc, which takes place across Big Finish’s Sixth and Seventh Doctor ranges. A helpful Redditor has provided a comprehensive guide to the chronology of the Forge arc, from 2001’s “Project: Twilight” to 2010’s “A Death in the Family”. It’s one of Doctor Who‘s most ambitious and emotionally rewarding story arcs on or off-screen.

12 Father Time (Eighth Doctor)

Written by Lance Parkin

Lance Parkin’s Father Time gave the Doctor a daughter long before 2008’s disappointing episode “The Doctor’s Daughter”. Father Time sees an Earthbound Eighth Doctor adopt Miranda, a fugitive alien child, to protect her from the warring factions that want her dead. Because “Father Time” is a novel and not a television episode, it has the opportunity to properly dig into what it means for the Eighth Doctor to become a father to an adopted daughter. The Doctor and Miranda’s relationship is richly drawn by Parkin, and builds to a genuinely emotional climax.

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11 Master (Seventh Doctor)

Written by Joseph Lidster

Joseph Lidster’s “Master” is one of the best stories about the relationship between the Doctor and the Master in Doctor Who. An atmospheric chamber piece about grisly goings-on at a dinner party gives way to an exploration of the Doctor and the Master’s childhood and how it shaped each of their characters for good and ill. Steven Moffat would later take elements of Joseph Lidster’s story for the Twelfth Doctor (Peter Capaldi) and Missy (Michelle Gomez). Both “Master” and “The Doctor Falls” end with the Doctor refusing to give up on their wayward old friend.

10 Children of the Revolution (Eighth Doctor)

Written by Scott Gray

Scott Gray’s “Children of the Revolution” ran in Doctor Who Magazine between 13th December 2001 and 2nd May 2002. The Eighth Doctor adventure was a sequel to the Patrick Troughton serial “The Evil of the Daleks”, reuniting the Time Lord with the humanoid Daleks that he had helped to create. Scott Gray’s script does some fascinating things with the Doctor’s oldest enemies, by confronting the human’s prejudice against these more benevolent Daleks. Artist Lee Sullivan and colorist Roger Langridge give the story a suitably technicolor feel, making “Children of the Revolution” one of the more visually memorable Eighth Doctor comic adventures.

9 Sympathy for the Devil (Unbound Doctor)

Written by Jonathan Clements

Big Finish celebrated Doctor Who‘s 40th anniversary with a miniseries of “What If?” stories, the best of which introduced David Warner’s Unbound Doctor. “Sympathy for the Devil” posed the question of what would happen if the Doctor had been exiled to Earth in 1997, rather than 1970. David Warner proved to be the best Doctor that never appeared on TV, paired with an older Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart in Hong Kong on the eve of the handover. “Sympathy for the Devil” perfectly adapts the tropes of a Jon Pertwee era UNIT story for the 1990s, right down to an appearance by the Master (Mark Gatiss).

David Warner continued to play the Unbound Doctor in multiple Big Finish releases between 2003 and his death in 2022. Warner’s last appearance as the Unbound Doctor was alongside Christopher Eccleston’s Ninth Doctor in the 2023 anniversary release, “Time Lord Immemorial”.

8 The Chimes of Midnight (Eighth Doctor)

Written by Robert Shearman

“The Chimes of Midnight” is the best Doctor Who Christmas special that never aired on TV. Written by Robert Shearman, “The Chimes of Midnight” is an evocative Christmas ghost story that has a complex time paradox at the heart of it. Set in an Edwardian manor house on the night before Christmas, the Eighth Doctor and Charley Pollard (India Fisher) have to solve a series of macabre murders that take place on the hour, every hour. One of the early standouts in Big Finish’s Eighth Doctor range, “The Chimes of Midnight” is perfect listening for a cold, wintry night.

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7 Doctor Who and the Iron Legion (Fourth Doctor)

Written by Pat Mills and John Wagner

“The Iron Legion” was another classic Doctor Who comic strip by Pat Mills and John Wagner, with artwork by comics legend Dave Gibbons. The story is wildly imaginative, with the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) stumbling upon an alternate Earth where the Roman Empire advanced into the galaxy. It was the first-ever story published in the pages of Doctor Who Weekly, and has a level of scale and ambition that would be impossible to realize on TV, even with the increased budgets from the Disney+ deal. Mills and Wagner nail the characterization of the Fourth Doctor, making the whole adventure an utter joy.

6 Lungbarrow (Seventh Doctor)

Written by Marc Platt

Marc Platt’s Lungbarrow began life as a pitch for televised Doctor Who, but producer John Nathan-Turner nixed the idea because it revealed too much about the Doctor’s origins. Platt eventually got to realize his vision of the Doctor’s familial home and Gallifreyan origins in the final Seventh Doctor novel of the Virgin New Adventures range. A rich gothic fantasy that draws comparisons with Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast, it’s a fascinating take on the Doctor’s mysterious origins. The novel has become the stuff of legend, and fetches a hefty price tag on eBay, thanks to its position in Doctor Who canon.

5 The Flood (Eighth Doctor)

Written by Scott Gray

“The Flood” was the epic finale to Doctor Who‘s Wilderness Years, ending the Eighth Doctor’s comic strip run. Featuring one of the sleekest and most memorable versions of Doctor Who‘s Cybermen, “The Flood” was an urban thriller that added new dimensions to the classic villains. Interestingly, “The Flood” featured the Cybermen converting Earth’s populace by nanotechnology hiddent inside rain clouds, something that would eventually feature in the Peter Capaldi story “Dark Water/Death in Heaven”. Originally, DWM and Russell T Davies considered regenerating the Eighth Doctor into Christopher Eccleston’s Ninth Doctor, but they relented, freeing McGann’s Doctor to have countless further adventures.

4 Timewyrm: Revelation (Seventh Doctor)

Written by Paul Cornell

Timewyrm: Revelation was the first Doctor Who novel by Paul Cornell, and is one of the author’s more experimental pieces. Revelation depicts Ace and the Doctor journeying into the Time Lord’s psyche to defeat the super being known as the Timewyrm. Cornell’s novel conjures up some extraordinary images like a child-sized astronaut and the Doctor’s past incarnations existing inside the Time Lord’s mind. Both of these big ideas would later be revisited by Steven Moffat in “The Day of the Moon” and Chris Chibnall in “The Power of the Doctor”. However, Timewyrm: Revelation is a hugely influential novel that’s well worth reading beyond its influence on televised Doctor Who.

3 The Glorious Dead (Eighth Doctor)

Written by Scott Gray

“The Glorious Dead” was an epic battle for the omniverse between the Eighth Doctor and the Master, written by Scott Gray. Taking place across ten issues of Doctor Who Magazine between January and September 2000, “The Glorious Dead” was a wild trip through multiple realities. One memorable cliffhanger saw the Eighth Doctor wake up in bed next to Grace Holloway (Daphne Ashbrook), the Doctor’s love interest from the 1996 TV Movie. Hilariously, the Doctor woke up wearing question mark underpants, something that the Twelfth Doctor would later admit to wearing in “The Zygon Invasion”.

2 Spare Parts (Fifth Doctor)

Written by Marc Platt

Televised Doctor Who has adapted elements of Marc Platt’s Cybermen origin story over the years, but they’ve never come close to matching the quality of “Spare Parts”. Depicting the Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison) and Nyssa (Sarah Sutton) witnessing the birth of the Cybermen on Mondas, it’s an utterly chilling story that restores proper body horror to Doctor Who‘s second-best monsters. “Spare Parts” also acknowledges the death of Adric, by having the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa clash over interfering in the Cybermen’s origins. “Spare Parts” is an exceptional audio drama that remains one of Big Finish’s finest hours, two decades on from its original release.

1 Damaged Goods (Seventh Doctor)

Written by Russell T. Davies

The Virgin New Adventures novel Damaged Goods was Russell T Davies’ first officially licensed Doctor Who work. Published in 1996, and set predominantly on an English housing estate, Damaged Goods prefigures many of RTD’s innovations as Doctor Who showrunner in 2005. One of the key plot points in Damaged Goods is a baby being abandoned on Christmas Eve, something that RTD would later revisit in Doctor Who‘s 2023 Christmas special, “The Church on Ruby Road”. However, Russell T Davies’ novel is a far darker, more grown-up take on his version of Doctor Who, which was why he declined an offer to republish the novel while he was showrunner.

Doctor Who

Originally premiered in 1963, Doctor Who is a sci-fi series that follows a powerful being known as a Time Lord, referred to as the Doctor. Using an interdimensional time-traveling ship known as the TARDIS, the Doctor travels time and space with various companions as they solve multiple problems and help avert catastrophe as much as they almost cause it. Though the Doctor is always the same character, they experience regenerations, allowing them to be recast every few seasons as a unique immortal being with new personality traits.