If you have ever wondered what an episode of Doctor Who looks like before it’s filmed—which is to say, on a page, fresh from the mind of the show’s many writers—you can now sate your curiosity many times over. BBC Writers, a group which describes itself as “the public face of the BBC to the UK writing community,” has added a whole pile of Doctor Who and Doctor Who-related work to their online script library.
It’s not just recent Who; it’s also scripts from Sarah Jane Adventures, the short-lived spinoff Class, and Torchwood, among other tidbits and interviews. Yes, I did immediately go read part of the script for Torchwood: Children of Men Part 1; yes, this was depressing; yes, now I want to watch the whole thing again. So the library is clearly doing its job and then some.
You can even read the audition piece Russell T Davies wrote for the Fifteenth Doctor, which is an intriguing inclusion that somehow manages to sum up decades of Who in just a short paragraph at the start:
THE DOCTOR is with ROBIN, a 21 year old modern-day HUMAN. They barely know each other; they’ve just been chased, by monsters, turned round a corner, ran into this room, and whup! they were sealed in. Now they’re calming down; though the Doctor is always thinking of 500 things at once, mind spinning, ticking, racing. And having fun too, nice & fast!
This scene goes on an on with the Doctor quoting song lyrics and movie lines and in fact I would like to see Ncuti Gatwa ask, “Aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper?” to be honest. But like so many good Who stories, this one has a twist, and it’s kind of a gut-punch even though the piece is only eight pages long.
Take your own deep dive into the Whoniverse scripts here.
