Doctor Who unmade film script from Dalek movie writer featured two Doctors

By Morgan Jeffery

Published: Monday, 20 June 2022 at 12:00 am

A pair of Doctor Who movies starring Peter Cushing – Dr. Who and the Daleks and Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. – were released in the mid-1960s and have now been painstakingly remastered for a new 4K Ultra HD release, but with this release has also come new information about a proposed third movie.

It has been suggested over the years that a third film would, like its predecessors, have been based on a TV serial featuring the Daleks – specifically 1965 story The Chase – but that underwhelming box office returns for the second movie saw these plans abandoned.

Appearing on a panel at the BFI Southbank in London to promote the 4K release of the existing two films, Dmitri Subotsky – son of the original films’ writer Milton Subotsky – produced a document from his father’s archives dated December 1964 that laid out an agreement between the BBC, Daleks creator Terry Nation and AARU Productions Ltd.

“People have often asked about the third movie – this first agreement was for two films,” Subotsky clarified. “As long as [the first movie] was made within a year, then the second option could be exercised… the rights to make the second movie.”

However, Subotsky revealed that a second deal was negotiated following production of 1965’s Dr. Who and the Daleks which would indeed have allowed for a third film. “There was a further agreement that was entered into, to give the rights to make a third movie, which of course was never done,” he explained. “It was on the same terms as the original films, so my feeling is… the option lapsed.”

Though a third movie never materialised, Subotsky further revealed that his father did in fact produce a screenplay for the proposed sequel that remains in his family’s possession and was also displayed at the BFI event – this script, however, was not an adaptation of any existing Doctor Who television serial.

“Many years later, maybe 15 years later, it was clearly still on his mind, because he had prepared a script called ‘Doctor Who’s Greatest Adventure’ which actually was a repurposed script of a horror film entitled ‘King Crab’… the original title was even worse, it was ‘Night of the Crabs’!

“It was with two Doctors – a young Doctor and an old Doctor – which is an idea that has been returned to.”