What if Doctor Who ended in 1966?

I reckon the show would be left open ended with hopes of one day continuing the series, but without the regeneration, I think it's pretty likely that any revival or continuation would only cast an older actor in the role. That is, if the show isn't rebooted with a younger actor in the role. Inevitably, in this alternate reality, I'm pretty sure it would be exploited for name recognition, whether by Hollywood or the BBC.

I could actually see the original idea of the Doctor being basically a time agent becoming the new canon. At the very least, if there are Time Lords, they wouldn't have the same abilities they'd have if the show had continued.

As a series that HAD already seen Dalekmania run wild, it would have been remade at some point. Someone would have taken a punt on it. It had already proven to be a commercial success once.

Especially if they'd redone it to put some of the Massacre episode 4 at the end.

Sara dies. Stephen demands the Doctor let's him off at the next stop. We get that wonderful console room scene.

Cut to outside. Stephen comes running back, but the TARDIS fades out of sight before he gets there. The Doctor is going home.

I heard that they actually wanted to continue the series without Hartnell by casting a different actor. Supposedly Hartnell himself didn't want anyone to play the role the same way he did, though, he said the only actor good enough for the role was someone called Patrick Troughton (who I think had been Robin Hood previously) despite being too short and looking nothing like him. Mind you, a series with Troughton wouldn't have been such a disaster as the role he did take up. Troughton teamed up with Johnny Speight on a dreadful misguided sitcom called "Curry and Chips". Speight thought a white actor blacking up as an Indian would say something about racial attitudes; Troughton just thought if he looked different on TV to how he did in real life nobody would recognise him on the street.

I suppose there's a chance that if "Doctor Who" had carried on, Terry Nation wouldn't have been able to sell the Dalek TV series in America (although the Dalek/Mechanoid movie would surely still have happened regardless), and the 1970 revival of "Quatermass" probably wouldn't have happened either, since there would already have been a sci-fi show on the BBC.

I can't find it online now, but I remember seeing an article a year or so ago speculating who would have played the Doctor if the series had carried on, first Troughton and then others. There were some really stupid ideas; mostly comedy actors, for some reason. There was Jon Pertwee, for heaven's sake; would he have insisted on playing multiple parts, like on radio? Then there was Peter Davison, who did a load of sitcoms in the 1980s. And that guy in drag from "Rab C Nesbitt". I think it's lucky, all things considered, that we missed out.

Big Finish probably wouldn't exist

Cheers

Tony

... Oh, and it would be awfully quiet around here...