Even with the show currently off the air and with its future uncertain, Doctor Who Day is finding a great way to be celebrated this year. On November 23, 2026, an iconic two-parter starring David Tennant's Tenth Doctor is being screened at selected cinemas around the world. However, rather than simply showing "The Impossible Planet" and "The Satan Pit" as a double feature, the BBC has announced that both 45-minute episodes will be edited together to form a two-hour movie.
The additional 30 minutes will be filled by restoring deleted scenes and adding never-before-seen footage to make the event even more exciting. The 20-year-old two-parter is one of the best choices for a project like this, but it isn't the only one that deserves such treatment.
Doctor Who's modern era is filled with other examples that could work just as well as "The Satan Pit" when edited into a feature-length production, if not even better. Let's go through some of the alternatives that will hopefully undergo a similar transformation in the future.
"The Empty Child" & "The Doctor Dances"
Doctor Who's 2005 revival transformed the show's format. While the classic era favored serials, with the same storyline spread out over multiple episodes, the modern episodes are largely self-contained adventures. There is certainly still connective tissue tying the seasons together, but it's a markedly different and updated approach to how Doctor Who guides the audience through the narrative. "The Empty Child" & "The Doctor Dances" aren't the first two-parter since the 2005 revival, but they are the earliest ones to have made such a lasting impact.
What makes its ongoing success even more impressive is that the two-parter is Steven Moffat's first Doctor Who script. Centered around the Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) and Rose Tyler (Billie Piper), the World War II narrative comes tinged with just enough sci-fi worldbuilding without completely ungrounding it from the central conflict. Furthermore, the debut of John Barrowman as Captain Jack Harkness helps inject even more charisma into proceedings. I would love to see additional footage restored as part of a feature-length sci-fi war epic.
"The End of Time" Parts 1 & 2
Even though I can barely tolerate the emotional strain of Ten's exit on the small screen, I'd still love to see it play out in all its cinematic glory. What's particularly interesting about this action-packed, poignant two-parter is that both episodes were specials rather than part of a standard Doctor Who season. Even a rudimentary stitching together of the two installments would result in a feature-length edit exceeding two hours. It wouldn't even need any additional, unseen footage to make it a substantial trip to the cinema.
That being said, I'm sure there were several scenes that were cut for time, and restoring them would almost definitely elevate what is already one of the best Doctor Who adventures of all time. While the cliffhanger of the Time Lords' imminent arrival on Earth at the end of Part 1 would be lost in this format, it'd be a small price to pay, and I doubt it would be missed all that much given the potential for narrative momentum that would be gained in the trade-off. Perhaps the only downside is that it would end with Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor in the TARDIS, which would be too open-ended to serve as a satisfying conclusion.
"The Rebel Flesh" & "The Almost People"
Matt Smith starred in some phenomenal Doctor Who two-parters during his time leading the show, but very few of them would work as retroactive movies. They often paid off broader storylines, the nuances of which could only be fully appreciated when watching the previous episodes. "The Rebel Flesh," on the other hand, begins a standalone adventure that then concludes with "The Almost People." It's about as clean-cut as Doctor Who two-parters can get, a little like "The Satan Pit."
Plus, I doubt this two-parter has much of any real worth that landed on the cutting room floor. The lore of the Gangers and how they work is thoroughly addressed as the story goes on. If there are any worthwhile deleted scenes, then sure, add them into the mix. Otherwise, this could be a nice, digestible 90-minute edit that captures the very essence of what spooky Doctor Who narratives are all about.
"The Girl Who Died" & "The Woman Who Lived"
Game of Thrones' Maisie Williams made the leap to Doctor Who for this 2015 two-parter, while she was also still busy playing Arya Stark over on HBO. Although there is admittedly a more solid divide than usual between these two episodes, they still directly connect to one another and aired in successive weeks. It would take more editing than usual for them to make sense as a feature film, but it could certainly work.
The biggest challenge is bridging the hundreds of years between when Twelve (Peter Capaldi) and Clara (Jenna Coleman) leave Williams' character (Ashildr) in "The Girl Who Died" and when they're reunited in "The Woman Who Lived," when she's significantly older but visibly identical. Plus, as part of the editing process, maybe something can be done about those awful special effects used to project Odin (David Schofield) into the sky.
"Wish World" & "The Reality War"
It will take a long time for the dust to settle in the wake of Doctor Who's divisive Disney era, but I truly believe that years from now, Whovians will look back on this two-parter more fondly than they do in 2026. Although the return of Omega was disappointingly brief, there's a lot of intrigue surrounding both versions of the Rani and lots of cinematic sequences that belong firmly on the big screen.
Plus, a re-edit of this 2025 two-parter can fix perhaps the biggest Doctor Who sin of all time.
Rather than ending with Ncuti Gatwa's Fifteenth Doctor regenerating to make way for stunt-casting Billie Piper, a feature-length edition of "Wish World" & "The Reality War" can cut to black before we find out what the Doctor's new face will look like. Not only that, but the all-but-confirmed reshoots that were carried out to account for Gatwa's sudden exit can be reversed. Maybe we'll see Fifteen's final adventure as we were always meant to, rather than having it blown apart by confusingly bold last-minute changes. From there, Doctor Who can resume without dealing with the less thought-through facets of the RTD2 era.
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