Given the understandable excitement that Russell T Davies will once again be the showrunner of Doctor Who, now is the perfect time to revisit what was thought to be his final episodes. "The End of Time" was a two-part epic depicting the final battle between David Tennant's Tenth Doctor and John Simm's Master, but it was almost a much smaller, more intimate affair.
Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale is a book compiling a series of emails between Davies and journalist Benjamin Cook, all written during the production of the show's fourth season. The paperback edition, given the additional subtitle The Final Chapter, concludes with the wrap of The End of Time, both Davies and Tennant's swansong. As documented in The Final Chapter, Davies presented two broad concepts for his departure on Apr. 21, 2008. While one of them clearly evolved into The End of Time, the other was vastly different.
Instead of sending him on the Master's trail, the clairvoyant Ood would have pointed the Doctor towards an alien family on, in Davies' words, "some poxy, battered little ship, creaking away in the middle of nowhere." He would then sacrifice himself for the family, replacing their father in the Engine Room to fix a leak that will inevitably irradiate him. Having struggled with his arrogance throughout his tenure, the Tenth Doctor would be forced to give his life for an ordinary person, to reinforce that he and his family are "as important as anyone."
This one-part story was the concept Davies felt most strongly about, but Cook and Davies' co-Executive Producer Julie Gardner preferred his idea for a two-parter about the Master, its potential scale being more appropriate for Tennant's finale. Despite this, Cook recommended parts of the rejected idea which were still worth using, and a few months later on Oct. 17, Davies told him exactly how he planned to incorporate them into the revised plotline.
One minor example was the "battered little ship," now the property of what became the Vinvocci, the spiky green aliens infiltrating the Immortality Gate project of David Harewood's Joshua Naismith. This was partly a practical decision, as moving the action there minimized any costly scenes after humanity transforms into copies of the Master. Nevertheless, Davies still attributed its appearance to "the original idea for the one-part finale, bleeding through!"
However, the major element which carried over was the Tenth Doctor's demise. Per Cook's suggestion in April, the Doctor would unexpectedly survive the major conflict, only to perform the more mundane sacrifice originally planned. Davies initially had the Doctor saving a trapped scientist from radiation about to flood the Immortality Gate, but he imagined children being disappointed to see their hero vanquished in this way. In the email, he remarked that the grander gesture would be for the Doctor to save Bernard Cribbins' Wilfred Mott, his old friend whom Davies planned to feature in the story.
It was at this moment that inspiration struck: instead of the random scientist, it would be Wilf at the mercy of the Immortality Gate. In a flurry of text, Davies described to Cook the mental image of Wilf pleading with the Doctor not to give his life for him, overjoyed at the prospect of the powerful performances it would inspire in Tennant and Cribbins. There is little question that the completed scene lived up to the version Davies saw in his head, and his correspondence with Cook provides a unique opportunity to read about one of Doctor Who's most tragic endings coming to life in real-time.
Indeed, this is one of just many insights into Russell T Davies' writing process that appears in Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale. The entire book details many key decisions made during Season 4, from bringing back Catherine Tate's Donna Noble to David Tennant's public announcement of his departure. Perhaps with Davies' return to Doctor Who, he may once again let Cook, and us, into his brain and the adventures it comes up with.