The Cartmel Masterplan was a term invented by fans and popularised by Doctor Who Magazine[1] that very roughly described the overall "vision" script editor Andrew Cartmel and his cadre of writers, including Marc Platt and Ben Aaronovitch, had for re-introducing mystery and general darkness into the character of the Seventh Doctor in the waning seasons of the 1963 version of Doctor Who.

The "plan" — although Marc Platt has called it "more of a mood and direction" than a detailed plan[2] — would have dropped hints of the Doctor's actual origins throughout the later part of Sylvester McCoy's tenure as the Doctor. Due to the show's cancellation and John Nathan-Turner's occasional tinkering with scripts, however, very little of the "masterplan" was ever seen on screen. The "plan" was largely left to play out in other media and was an especially profound part of the Virgin New Adventures range in general and the novel Lungbarrow in particular.

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Overview Edit

Purpose and origins Edit

The "masterplan" was an attempt to restore some of the mystery of the Doctor and the Time Lords after years of overexposure and overfamiliarity.[1]

The Cartmel Masterplan is generally considered a fan-conceived term and came about around the same time that the discussion of canon first came to the attention of Doctor Who fandom.[1]

The plan Edit

The overall plan for Cartmel was to reveal that the Doctor was some form of a reincarnation of the Other, a mysterious figure from Gallifrey's past who helped form the Time Lords' society and perfect the time travel technology of the Time Lords. An early draft of Ghost Light, set, at this stage, not in Gabriel Chase on Earth but the Doctor's ancestral home on Gallifrey, was planned as the lead-in to this reveal but the script was shot down by series producer John Nathan-Turner. Cartmel's plans were later incorporated into the Virgin New Adventures series, to which Cartmel and other writers from the late McCoy era contributed, paying off in the final New Adventure novel to feature the Seventh Doctor, Lungbarrow. Lungbarrow had as its origins a proposed early draft of "Ghost Light". The earlier version of "Ghost Light" in turn evolved into a new story and the new story into the novel.

A direct reference to the Other appears in Ben Aaronovitch's novelisation of Remembrance of the Daleks in a flashback sequence with him, Rassilon and Omega.

At some point before 1992, Cartmel, Aaronovitch and Platt sat down and gathered their ideas about Gallifrey. These were passed onto then-New Adventures editor Peter Darvill-Evans, who incorporated them into a Doctor Who writer's guide.[3]

References Edit

Seasons 25 and 26 Edit

Seasons 25 and 26 included hints toward this new direction. Some were included in the broadcasts and some were not:

As well as these, it seems the Doctor also gains new powers previously unseen in the show.

In Battlefield , at the end he defeats Mordred by seemingly putting his hand on his head and giving him a sharp mental shock which knocks him out. He simply states that "time and Time Lords wait for no man". (TV: Battlefield )

, at the end he defeats Mordred by seemingly putting his hand on his head and giving him a sharp mental shock which knocks him out. He simply states that "time and Time Lords wait for no man". (TV: ) The Doctor is visibly capable of incapacitating Sergeant Paterson by simply pressing his index finger against the latter's forehead. The Doctor comments on the matter by echoing Paterson's earlier statement, "one finger can be a deadly weapon" (TV: Survival)

An unfilmed scene from Survival was to feature the Master challenging the Doctor's identity and true nature. The Doctor would argue that we must all "evolve" in some way. This scene was cut when it appeared that the series had come to an end. Rather than finishing the series on such an inconclusive note, the production team decided to go with a different ending scene.

Planned season 27 Edit

Had a twenty-seventh season been developed, Marc Platt's Ice Time would have revealed that Ace had been trained by the Doctor to become a Time Lord, her rebellious attitude helping to reshape Gallifrey's policies and role in the safeguarding of time and space. This is mentioned by the Doctor to Ace in the novels Set Piece and Lungbarrow. Something roughly similar happens in the online original story Death Comes to Time.

Ice Time would also have introduced a petty criminal from the 1960s whom the Doctor would help. Following Ace's departure, a subsequent story, set in the 1980s, would have this character's daughter, an aristocratic cat burglar, join the Doctor as his new companion. The intended finale of this twenty-seventh season was to have been Alixon, a story which may or may not have seen the Doctor regenerate into his eighth incarnation and the departure of McCoy.

These story concepts were much later developed into full audio scripts as part of Big Finish Productions' The Lost Stories range.

Other media Edit

Andrew Cartmel added further aspects of his ideas when he started writing comic strips for Doctor Who Magazine, beginning with his debut story, Fellow Travellers, in which it is revealed that the Doctor has maintained contacts with humans on Earth for years and has purchased a house there. The more sophisticated and mature Virgin New Adventures line made the Doctor a more morally ambiguous, unreadable character who had extensive powers and an unknown history. Fans nicknamed the Doctor in his period as "the dark Doctor" or the "arch-manipulator". The novel Lungbarrow, the final Seventh Doctor novel, written by Marc Platt, revealed the Masterplan in detail.