Bar a one-off TV film in 1996, Doctor Who was off the air for 16 years between 1989 and 2005.

But the top bods at the BBC hadn't actually turned their back on the series, nor were they just twiddling their thumbs for more than a decade and a half. In that period, there were a number of efforts to bring Doctor Who back, before everything finally came together in 2003, with a revived series following two years later.

These are the valiant attempts to land the TARDIS back on our screens, that nevertheless veered off-course.

1. Spielberg and the US revamp – 1994

Murray Close/Getty Images

TV producer Philip Segal, a British ex-pat who worked for Columbia Pictures' television department in the US, was the man who briefly brought Doctor Who back to television in '96 with the Paul McGann-starring movie.

He'd been negotiating with the BBC to relaunch the show ever since its initial cancellation in 1989, though, taking it to Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment in the early '90s.

Segal and Amblin were reportedly in negotiations with CBS to possibly produce an American revamp of Doctor Who to launch in early 1994, but the network eventually passed on the project.

2. The Chronicles Of Doctor Who?

Segal had worked with writer John Leekley on a 'series bible' for a US remake of Doctor Who – bearing the title The Chronicles Of Doctor Who?, it laid out a complex mythology that reimagined the Doctor and the Master as half-brothers, both sons of the lost Time Lord explorer Ulysses, and the Doctor's search for his missing father as the motive behind his travels.

After getting turned down by CBS, Doctor Who landed at rival network FOX, where the revival went through several drafts from a number of different writers. First, Leekley submitted a script drawing from his and Segal's bible – you can watch Paul McGann's original Doctor Who audition, performing material from this earlier draft, above.



Related: Paul McGann reflects on the Doctor Who TV movie 20 years on - and his triumphant comeback

Segal then asked Robert 'Bob' DeLaurentis to perform a rewrite. DeLaurentis's version would've had the search for the Doctor's father resolved by the end of the pilot film, with a potential series instead charting his pursuit of the renegade Master.

This new pitch also totally overhauled the Daleks, with the tank-like monsters now shapeshifting humanoids, and introduced a companion character named Jane McDonald – no relation to the cruise singer and media personality.

The BBC, FOX and Segal were all unhappy with this latest script and DeLaurentis exited the project in early 1995, being replaced by British-born writer Matthew Jacobs. It was Jacobs who suggested Segal should throw out the idea of a remake and instead pursue a continuation of the original series, which ended up being the '96 TV film.

3. Doctor Who 2000

Wendy Redfern / Getty Images

After the McGann movie failed to spark a series, Universal – who produced the film – allowed its rights to make new Doctor Who to expire, and so these rights reverted to the BBC in 1997.

Around the same time, Mal Young, a fan of the classic series, became controller of continuing drama series at the BBC and began looking into a possible revival.

Russell T Davies was recommended to Young as a writer who shared his enthusiasm for Doctor Who, with the media later seizing on news of Davies' involvement following the success of his Queer as Folk in '99.

But the project, branded Doctor Who 2000 by the press, never really got off the ground due to BBC Worldwide having conflicting plans to produce a Doctor Who movie. (In the event, of course, neither project materialised.)

4. Richard E Grant IS the Doctor!

With no live-action series in the offing, BBC Online – then known as BBCi – was able to commission a new animated effort in the early Noughties that was, at the time, promoted as a bona-fide continuation of classic Doctor Who.

Doctor Who - Scream of the Shalka [DVD] 2Entertain amazon.co.uk £6.87 Shop Now

Richard E Grant was cast to provide the voice for the then-official Ninth Doctor in first story 'Scream of the Shalka', consisting of six 15-minute episodes streaming on the BBC Doctor Who website.



Sophie Okonedo, shortly before receiving an Oscar nomination for 2004 film Hotel Rwanda, played companion Alison Cheney, with Derek Jacobi cast as the Master four years before he played the same role in the revived TV series.

'Shalka' sequels were plotted, but the announcement in late 2003 that Doctor Who would be returning to TV in live-action scuppered these plans. And with Christopher Eccleston now established as the *real* Ninth Doctor (well, until the War Doctor showed up anyway), Grant's animated incarnation was written off as 'non-canon'. Oh, the ignominy.

If you're interested, you can still pick up 'Scream of the Shalka' on DVD. It's actually pretty fun.

5. Freedman's fantasy retelling

BBC

Lorraine Heggessey became controller of BBC One in 2000 and was again enthusiastic about the idea of bringing back Doctor Who.

During this period, Heggessey reportedly received a number of pitches for a revival, including one from writer Dan Freedman described as a "fantasy retelling" of the original.

Freedman was known in fan circles for producing the BBC's first animated Doctor Who webcast, 'Death Comes to Time' (above), in 2001 – starring Sylvester McCoy, the story departed from established canon, apparently killing off the Doctor in his seventh incarnation, which could give some indication of the radical reinvention Freedman might've pitched.

6. Gothic reimaginings

Syfy/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images

Matthew Graham, co-creator and writer of Life on Mars, is also said to have lobbied Heggessey. Again, details are scant, but his version of a Doctor Who revival has been described as a "Gothic-style pitch" – though unsuccessful, Graham would go on to write three episodes of the revived series, 2006's 'Fear Her' and 2011 two-parter 'The Rebel Flesh / The Almost People'.

7. Mark Gatiss's 2002 relaunch

Anthony Harvey / Getty Images

Gatiss, like Graham, would go on to write a number of Doctor Who episodes under both Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat, as well as playing four different characters on screen between 2007 and 2017.

Years before, though, he'd pitched to bring Doctor Who back alongside co-writers Gareth Roberts and Clayton Hickman. This version would've opened in an English village, with a strange man in the local antiques store eventually revealed to be the Doctor.

"I’d written a pilot for a show called The Ministry of Time with Clayton and Gareth Roberts," Gatiss told Doctor Who Magazine in 2017. "And we’d also put together this proposal to bring back Doctor Who itself!"

Neither project took off, though it wasn't long before Gatiss was contacted by RTD, who'd been approached separately by Heggessey and Jane Tranter, the BBC's controller of drama commissioning, about reviving Doctor Who...

Want up-to-the-minute entertainment news and features? Just hit 'Like' on our Digital Spy Facebook page and 'Follow' on our @digitalspy Instagram and Twitter account.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io