Big Finish reviving “lost” Doctor Who script by Russell T. Davies
By Michael East
Colin Baker returns as the Sixth Doctor in an adaptation of a “lost” Doctor Who story by former showrunner Russell T. Davies.
As the man who brought back Doctor Who to British TV screens in 2005, Russell T. Davies will always have a place in the hearts of fans across the globe. He famously introduced the world to the Ninth Doctor and Rose back in 2005, but his involvement in the series goes back even further than that.
In 1986, when Colin Baker was playing the Sixth Doctor, Davies wrote a script for an episode called “Mind of the Hodiac,” and recently, he found it again. “I was preparing for Emily Cook’s Doctor Who tweetalong for ‘The Runaway Bride,’ reached for the script, pulled an old stack of papers out of a box… and there was ‘Mind of the Hodiac!'” he remembered. “I’d forgotten all about it. It’s one whole hour-long episode, plus a detailed synopsis of the second, final episode. Starring the Sixth Doctor and Mel!”
That would be Mel Bush (Bonnie Langford), the penultimate companion of the classic series. The existence of this “lost” story written by a man so intimately connected with Doctor Who set the fandom aflame, with some enthusiastically tagging Big Finish, which makes Doctor Who audio dramas. Big Finish already has a hugely popular Doctor Who Lost Stories range, having previously mounted productions of unproduced stories like as “The Masters of Luxor” and “The Nightmare Fair.”
When the show closed down in 1989, I had a letter from Andrew Cartmel saying ‘Thank you for your idea, I liked it and put it to one side for consideration but now we’ve closed down…’ (Contrary to what he says in next month’s DWM, fact fans) #SantasARobot pic.twitter.com/VI2UTBuvST
— Russell T Davies (@russelldavies63) December 18, 2020
Davies wrote “Mind of the Hodiac” at 23 on “an electric typewriter in a bedsit in Roath, Cardiff.” At the time, Davies was just getting his foot in the television door, working in graphic design at BBC Wales’ children’s department and submitting scripts for shows like the soap opera Crossroads. Davies would make his name not long after with BBC series Dark Season and Century Falls, both of which take some inspiration from Doctor Who. “Mind of the Hodiac” was forgotten.
But no one was going to let a Russell T. Davies Doctor Who script vanish back into a box. Soon enough, conversations were underway about bringing the story to life. Big Finish’s audio version will be released next year, with Colin Baker and Bonnie Langford returning as the Sixth Doctor and Mel. Langford called the script “fascinating” during an appearance on the Spill The Tea Podcast.
Meanwhile, Davies has dropped a few hints about the plot, saying that the episodes will feature “a galaxy-spanning adventure as the mysterious Hodiac begins a deadly hunt, putting an ordinary Earth family in terrible danger.”
Doctor Who – The Lost Stories: Mind of the Hodiac will be released in early 2022 by Big Finish Productions and is available to preorder now as a collector’s edition CD box set or digital download.
Next. Doctor Who: Ranking the top 10 David Tennant episodes. dark
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