Idea for new Doctor Who range ...Troubled Productions

I could *maybe* see the value in doing something like that for The Power of Three, where the originally planned ending was unusable because of a cast member outright sabotaging the production, or the original version of The Three Doctors before they realised William Hartnell would be too ill to take an active role in filming (which BF have strongly intimated we're getting). I don't think the world particularly needs remade versions of TV stories that aren't considered very good (and there's absolutely no problem whatsoever with the script for Paradise Towers, its problems are solely in how it is realised onscreen).

They even say so the DVD extras (not sure if there was an audio commentary) but during my very first watch of the DVDs while becoming a Whovian, this was one of the things I learned right away.

Didn't you know?

Guest Star Stephen Berkoff spent 6-8 hours getting made up as the Shakri, stepped on set and indicated  he wasn't going to perform such a poor Script, so Director Mackinon (apparently after several choice words with Berkoff and a call to an Exec Producer), rewrote it to keep the Actor's Role to the minimum.

Regards

mark687

HOW VERY DRE YOU insult Horny Nimons. It’s perfect.

Hm... at the risk of coming across as overly contrarian, I don't really think a new range like this would really offer all that much. Doctor Who in general -- and Big Finish especially -- have never really shied away from iterating and reiterating on the same premises. There are plenty of story concepts that didn't work out so well the first time or two, but we're eventually nailed. My favorite example is probably the case of The Dark Flame (MR 042) and Dark Universe (MR 260). Assuming I'm not getting misremembering the titles, the latter is essentially a reimagine of the former, the one being one of the worst MR releases, the other one of the best. (Well, YMMV: I know some of y'all were kind down on it but I loved Dark Universe.)

And I think there's an immense amount of value in keeping this process of remaking/reimagining older stories unspoken. The moment you explicitly state that you're rewriting a story, you're effectively making a qualitative judgment -- not just of the original story, but the people who worked on it. And that's... kind of unpleasant. As it stands, to go back to that example, Dark Universe is just a good story that happens to share a great many similarities with an older story. But what if Big Finish had come out and said, "Yeah, The Dark Flame didn't turn out so well, so we're gonna do a do-over." That framing changes things -- the older story is now an embarrassing mistake, the latter a correction.

It also more directly invites comparison, which can be a pretty mixed bag, I think, for fairly obvious reasons.

Further, just from a creative standpoint, I think premising a story as a remake is unnecessarily inhibiting. The writers' goals shift from simply telling the best story possible to "fixing" another story -- or, to use another word, "adapting" it. This can lead to the remake feeling obligated to retain more of the original story than it maybe should. When the process is more... informal, more implicit, I think writers generally have a freer hand to make more drastic alterations, additions and subtractions.

Hm... hopefully I'm articulating my thoughts clearly here, and not coming off as rude or dismissive or anything. I've had a very rough day and have... a few more chemicals riding through my bloodstream right now than is typical. Basically, the gist of what I'm saying is that I think taking concepts from stories that didn't turn out so well and trying them again is a good and necessary idea, but one that I think is already in practice, if informally, and that formalizing the process to a specific range would be unduly limiting.

You make a good point, apologies if my original post implied any unfair criticism of the original writers.

I suppose the lost stories range operates within the remit of allowing writers who feel their original ideas were unrecognisable on screen to have another chance to realise that idea.

If I put some thought in to many of the episodes suggested, the good ideas have probably resurfaced in new stories.

For fans of derided serials, a retcon, no matter how small would be dissapointing. I certainly didn't like the way legacy characters were revisited in the Star Wars sequels, nothing to do with any of the silly toxic fandom stuff, just that the stories in my head were always going to mean more to me than what Hollywood producers imagined were the best choices.

Perhaps my idea is best left to my imagination, as it is boundless and pleases an audience of one.