"So if you could choose 13 writers, living or dead, to write scripts for a Doctor Who series, but none of them could be people who have written Who scripts before, who would you choose and what do you imagine they might write?"
Many interesting answers were given, but having asked the question I thought I ought to offer mine in full;
1. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - The mystery of the broken robot.
The murder of a young woman in 18th century London appears to have been committed
by a 19th century mechanical man. Yet there is no apparent evidence of time
travel involved. How did the robot get there, how was such a thing created and
what possible motive could be behind the killing? The Doctor investigates this
series of impossible events.
2. H.G. Wells - The Creatures that Owned the Universe -
The Doctor meets a race who claim to have come from a time before this universe
began, they have come to claim back all the particles of matter that were taken
from their universe to create ours. Apart from the moral quandary of the
situation, the Doctor is faced with the very real possibility that he is
powerless to defend his universe against the power of a race that can move
across the boundaries between universes and control the powers of creation.
3. Joss Whedon - Time Girl and the Race of Judges.
The Doctor arrives on a planet where humans are kept like pets by godlike creatures
who claim to be saving them from their own tendency for self destruction, but
one girl who has the power to change moments in time is disrupting the seemingly
perfect balance of power. Will she make things better or worse and will the Doctor
have to save her from herself or vice versa?
4. Jules Verne - Into the Eye of the Eagle - The Doctor Takes his companion on a
sightseeing trip of the Eagle Nebula only to find that a race of giant
space dwelling creatures is building vast and terrible things with the stardust
there; things of equal parts beauty and horror.
5. Philip K. Dick - Perhaps we may be born soon.
After the TARDIS crashes on a seemingly uninhabited world, the Doctor and his
companion regain consciousness, only to find themselves transformed into the
unborn offspring of an alien creature. The two of them along with three other temporary
residents in this mysterious womb, await their immanent rebirth, but is
anything here what it seems to be?
6. Ronald D. Moore - Civilian - it is 96th
Century earth and war has thrown much of the planet back to the dark ages. The
Doctor can use Gallifreyan technology to bring the war to an end but at what
cost? And who has disrupted the human time line? A mysterious figure claims to
know the Doctor and begs him not to end the war for the sake of the human race.
7. Voltaire - The Perfectors - The Doctor, in search
of long lost Gallifrey, stumbles upon a space station supporting the lives of
64 living members of the race of Time Lords. They have long gone undetected as they
have renounced time travel and regeneration, choosing instead to travel
silently among the stars, observing as they go and seeking to make no impact on
any situation they observe. The Doctor, to the great distress of his travelling
companion, is of the mind to settle down with these peaceful folk and make a
life there, to make peace with the demons of his past and to take no more
measures to interfere with the ways of the universe, but there is more than
meets the eye in this tale of simplicity and natural living, for not all that
seems natural was meant to be.
8. William Shakespeare - A Time Lord is as a Time Lord does
- The TARDIS arrives in the court of a Saxon King. The King's daughter is
betrothed to the son of a neighbouring king, but witnessing the mysterious
arrival of the heavenly TARDIS, she thinks him to be a creature sent to her by
God and in a moment's glance, she falls in love. There are monsters in the
woods that only the Doctor has either the will or the wiles to slay, but in
slaying them he may only deepen the love of the princess and thus also slay the
kingdom's hope for peace. Comedie may in time descend to love's sweet tragedie
as our hero must seek to seem as that which he is not, if he is to remain true
to that which he must be.
9. C.S. Lewis - The Cup of Rassilon - An iron age group of humans in Britain
share the legend of an ancient cup of Rassilon that offers regeneration to
those who drink from it. The tribe divides between those who wait faithfully
for a revelation about the cup and those who wish to go out and seek the cup.
The Doctor becomes obsessed with working out how the tribe have any knowledge
of Rassilon in the first place, but a mysterious old woman tells the Doctor he is
looking in the wrong place for the truth. 'Sometimes it is the boat that
carries the river' she says 'but foolishness and greed are the same wherever
they come ashore.'
10. Hayao Miyazaki - The Tree of Stolen Histories -
The TARDIS lands on a planet where sentient plants burrow into the circuitry
and begin to open up portals to the Doctor's past destinations. Wonderful and
terrible things occur when time and place begin to mingle, but out of this the
most unexpected friendship occurs.
11. Isao Takahata - Orphans of the Time War - The TARDIS
is transported by the Tree of Stolen Histories to a once idyllic planet, now
populated by children of species that now never existed as a result of the Time War. Time scavengers regularly raid the planet to claim residents for food or
slavery. Can the one who helped create this tragedy bring any hope to this hopeless
place? Or is it the Orphans who bring redemption to him?
12. JRR Tolkein - The Dark Chronicle of the Daleks -
It has often been asked, what might make such a race of soulless creatures as
the Daleks, what motivates such evil and destruction? Long ago before the fall
of Kaled City, before radiation flooded the planet of Skaro; when the Thals and
the Dals lived upon the surface and the name of Davros had not yet been
uttered, a dark seed of hate was planted. A hate that goes deeper than the
desire to survive, a hate more hideous than revenge or jealousy; this seed was
the hatred for life itself. The seed was
planted by a time traveller and the reason for its planting was a secret to all
races and all generations; the name of the time traveller was never spoken and
his secret was known only by the one who gave him the seed. Wars would be
fought and planets would fall, races would disappear into the annals of history
before the truth would be known as to why the seed was planted...
13. Aaron Sorkin - What kind of Time Lord have I been? The
Doctor is arrested by the shadow Proclamation and has to stand trial for crimes
against innocent species caught up in the Time War. But here's the thing, and
there's no two ways about it; the Doctor can't call on past versions of himself,
or companions who would have his back, even if all hell broke loose on this Time
Lord from Gallifrey, because everyone already knows that's what they'll do.
Instead he calls for his oldest enemy; Missy/the Master to plead his defence.
What ensues is not a war of worlds, but of words; not of guns, but ideas. And
in the end, perhaps the best voice to speak for Doctor's innocence is the one
who would, in any other circumstance, feed him to the wolves.
...
For anyone confused by the premise - please don't think that any of these stories actually exist or that any of the people mentioned above have had anything to do with these synopses. BTW - I asked Bill Shakespeare, but he said he's currently locked into the next two series of NCIS New Orleans and couldn't possibly consider a script for the BBC at this point.
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