The TARDIS might have travelled to the farthest reaches of the universe and back again, but there's one spot on Earth where it's always struggled to materialise – Hollywood.

There have been a number of efforts to bring Doctor Who to the big screen over the years, yet most of the planned movie projects failed to come together.

Here's a recap of every aborted attempt to make a film based on the BBC's landmark sci-fi series. (In some instances, you can see why Tinseltown might not have been interested...)

1. The Chase

Everett Collection

The only ever successful Doctor Who movie ventures were a pair of films released in the mid-1960s – remakes of the first two TV stories to feature the Daleks, they starred Peter Cushing as an eccentric human scientist whose name, brilliantly, was actually "Dr Who".

Plans were made for a third film to follow Dr Who and the Daleks and Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 AD, but disappointing box-office returns for the latter movie killed all enthusiasm for the project.

Little is known about this scrapped picture, though fans have always presumed it would have been based on the third TV Dalek story, 'The Chase' (nothing to do with the quiz show hosted by 2018 companion actor Bradley Walsh, FYI).

2. Doctor Who meets Scratchman

BBC

Sometime in the mid-1970s, Tom Baker and his Doctor Who co-star Ian Marter (who played companion Harry Sullivan) dreamt up a concept for a film spin-off – and Doctor Who Meets Scratchman sounds about as bonkers as you might expect.

The feature would have pitted the Doctor against the Daleks, the Cybermen, living scarecrows... and the actual Devil, with Vincent Price reportedly top choice to play Beelzebub.

Fashion icon Twiggy was also apparently part of the proposed cast list, while the film's climax would have taken place on a giant pinball table. Obviously.

Tragically, Scratchman never got made – though the script, rediscovered in 2006, is being adapted as a novel which will see the light of day in January.

3. Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen

Ed Kashi/Liaison

Douglas Adams, comic genius and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy author, was also a writer and script editor on Doctor Who in the late 1970s.

One of his rejected pitches for television, The Krikkitmen, was about a race of genocidal androids looking to free their time-locked planet using the Wicket Gate key, a device that resembled – to human eyes, at least – an oversized set of cricket stumps.

It was later adapted by Adams into a feature film treatment which he tried flogging to Paramount Pictures, but when it wasn't interested, many of the story's ideas found their way into his third Hitchhiker's novel, Life, the Universe and Everything, published in 1982.

(Like Scratchman, the original version of Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen has also been novelised.)

4. Michael Jackson IS the Doctor!

Kevin Mazur/WireImage

Having snubbed Adams' pitch, Paramount was nevertheless reportedly interested in producing a Doctor Who film in the 1980s.

Their pick to play the Time Lord? None other than Michael Jackson, at least according to author Charles Norton's book Now on the Big Screen: The Unofficial and Unauthorized Guide to Doctor Who at the Cinema.

Jacko was apparently "quite keen" – though if he had turned the part down, second choice was apparently Bill Cosby. (The less said about that, the better.)



5. Last of the Time Lords

Green Light

Unrelated to the 2007 TV episode of the same name, Doctor Who: The Last of the Time Lords was a late '80s effort to bring the series to the cinemas from a production company called Daltenreys, which had apparently acquired the film rights.

The movie would have pitted the Doctor against an evil Time Lord named Varnax – and according to behind-the-scenes book The Nth Doctor, Tim Curry and Donald Sutherland were being considered for the lead.

The project failed to attract financial backing and another company, Lumiere Pictures, stepped in, with rumours swirling that Star Trek's Leonard Nimoy would direct and Alan Rickman(!) would play the Doctor.

There was even a teaser poster produced for promotional purposes – see above – but sadly, as with the other pitches on this list, Last of the Time Lords came to nothing and the movie rights reverted to the BBC in 1994.

6. David Yates' "weird fantasy"

Jim Spellman Getty Images

Now this one's particularly odd.

Back in 2011, Fantastic Beasts director David Yates told Variety that he was absolutely, unequivocally working on a Doctor Who movie.

"We're looking at writers now," Yates said. "We're going to spend two to three years to get it right. It needs quite a radical transformation to take it into the bigger arena."

But then, just a few months later, the show's TV boss Steven Moffat insisted that Yates was absolutely, unequivocally *not* working on a Doctor Who movie.

"There isn't a film," Moffat told EW. "That was all some weird fantasy going on somewhere. I don't think [Yates] was ever signed to it. I never signed him, so he's not."

Sure enough, the alleged movie never happened – but was Yates ever actually attached or not? Seven years on and we still don't have a definitive answer.

7. 2015's leaked Sony movie

BBC

Remember those controversial Sony Pictures leaks in 2015, which saw the contents of hacked e-mails published in the wake of a cyber-attack?

Amongst *many* other things, the leaks featured a conversation between Sony's international chief Andrea Wong and Michael Lynton, Sony Entertainment CEO, in which the former told the latter that there was "tremendous interest" from the BBC in making a Doctor Who movie.

Danny Cohen [then-Director of BBC Television] had apparently advised Wong that while the TV show's creative team didn't "want to do [a film] at [that] moment", an "8-year timeline for the brand" was being drawn up.

"So the answer is that a film won't happen in the next year to 18 months, but it is expected that it will happen after that within the 8-year horizon," Wong concluded.

Technically, they still have until 2023 to make this happen.

8. K9: TimeQuake

BBC

Again in 2015, the official K9 Facebook page – for there is such a thing – announced that the tin dog would be starring in his very own movie. Aiming for a release date of 2017, K9: TimeQuake was allegedly going to have the mutt face off with legendary Doctor who villain Omega.

The project missed its proposed release date and updates were scarce until September of this year, when a new post claimed a "multi-million dollar series" was in the works, a "major project... which will establish the K9 'brand' prior to the release of the feature film".

It's all gone quiet on the K9 front again recently though. Fingers crossed that the finished movie will feature a remix of the K9 and Company theme tune from 1981, though.



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