I read hundreds Doctor Who-related scripts so you don’t have — no, wait, you do have to. Of course you do. This is at the very least a silver mine with more than 200 hours of drama screenplays. For free.
It’s also a growing list. I want to thank Mark Braxton for telling me about them first and then I want to thank you because in going back to check the list to write about it here, I found around 30 more had been added.
So now there are 254 scripts online, ranging across most of the 2005-2023 Doctor Who seasons, plus Torchwood, The Sarah Jane Adventures, and a couple more related shows. Read them all: it is the most enormous treat and I’d like to say it’s given me countless hours of pleasure, but presumably you can count it and you’d get a figure of no more than 254.
But if you are going to dip into the selection, please indulge me. I really have had a brilliant time reading the set but here are the ten that I especially want to run up to you to enthuse about.
Except…
You need to know a couple of things that limited my choice.
1) The set online is not complete. It is growing and at present the biggest last gap is Christopher Eccleston’s Doctor Who season, of which there are just two scripts online. But there was a book of them all in 2005.
2) Some of the scripts are post-production versions that look to me like Programme as Broadcast (PasB) administration forms. You can ignore a lot of the admin detail like the timing of music cues, but for a whole set during Chris Chibnall and Jodie Whittaker’s era, the available scripts are deeply hard to read. Dialogue has been moved to reflect when a character is seen, even if that’s before the script introduces them. And there are sections where dialogue and scene descriptions are borderline unreadable. Many times, I had to go watch a bit of an episode to understand what was intended. Consequently, there are no Jodie Whittaker-era scripts here: this list is entirely based on what scripts are a great read on the (available) page.
• There are no Ncuti Gatwa-era scripts either. The only aired episode script available is for the Christmas special, The Church on Ruby Road and it didn’t quite make my top ten. Although the very short Fifteenth Doctor’s audition script only dropped out at the last hour.
• Many scripts are two-, three- or more-parters and for the purposes of this rigorous statistical analysis, I’m counting each of those as just one single script.
• I didn’t always look for or notice the writer’s name until after I’d enjoyed the script. Now I have, I am as startled to see how few women writers there are in my top ten as I am to see how few women writers have worked on Doctor Who. It’s insane.
Now, finally, my top 10.
10. Doctor Who: The Girl Who Died by Jamie Mathieson and Doctor Who: The Woman Who Lived by by Cath Tregenna
I remember being annoyed by the title “The Girl Who Died” until I heard of the next part, “The Woman Who Lived”. That meant this wasn’t the usual use of “girl” in a title to mean a woman, and to mean the script was written by a man.
On the page, this is a pair of adventures and there is such pain, especially in the second half, that it again makes me envy the imagination of the writers.
9. Doctor Who: Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead by Steven Moffat
This two-parter starts with a totally impossible opening, which is just all the more delightful because of that impossibility — which then becomes entirely possible, entirely reasonable. To me, it’s an example of how shockingly imaginative modern Doctor Who is and how deep into the character of the Doctor it is able to go. The Doctor should be a cliche hero who knows everything, but in the best stories a depth to him is yanked up to the surface for us to see.
8. Doctor Who: Vincent and the Doctor by Richard Curtis
I don’t believe you can read this script and not cry.
7. Torchwood: Out of Time by Catherine Treganna
Torchwood was a very variable show but this episode appeared to be that standard thing of a regular character falling in love with a guest star who we know we’ll never see again, yeah, yeah, or that next week there’ll be a different love interest. But on the page, you feel the attraction, and if the guest does disappear, it’s upsetting rather than a plot convenience.
6. Doctor Who: Midnight by Russell T Davies
I am a complete sucker for contained dramas, stories that take place in confined spaces. Doctor Who has done many of them over the years — I’ve even written a couple of them for Big Finish myself — but Midnight is special. Above everything else in this world, I love the one-hour TV drama form, and never more so than when my entire, my entire attention is in the story, to the exclusion of anything else whatsoever. Just for an hour. Just while I’m being taken somewhere and I only feel where we’re going when it comes to a perfect end.
5. Doctor Who: The Girl in the Fireplace by Steven Moffat
I’m actually a sucker for a lot of things, it turns out, and several are in this. For one thing, it’s a romance and a thriller — come have a coffee and let me talk to you for hours about how I believe those two genres are practically identical — but it also really uses its form. This is a story that could not be told in any other show, not one single other series, not in this way, and to me that shows both mastery of a series and also demonstrates why we need this show. I am also definitely an anti-sucker for the use of the word “Girl” in a title, but in this case the character actually does start out as a girl, so.
4. The Sarah Jane Adventures: Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? Part 1 and Part 2 by Gareth Robert’s
I have not one thin clue how I missed The Sarah Jane Adventures when it aired, but a particular treat of this collection of scripts was how all five series of the show are here. There are some episodes that feel forced, but overall it’s both exciting and — to me — unexpectedly moving. Possibly no more so than in this two-part story.
3. Doctor Who: Blink by Steven Moffat
This is the only entry that I feel is a bit unfair. I surprised myself with some choices and some of the sequence, but I know Blink suffered because the script has been online for years and I must’ve read it five times by now.
2. Doctor Who: The Eleventh Hour by Steven Moffat
Just believe for 20 minutes. The best television drama takes you somewhere but only rarely this far into what for any other series would be practically farcical yet while you’re reading or watching is entirely reasonable. Sheer imagination again, such incredible pace and — this is far from always the case with Doctor Who — an ending that lands satisfyingly.
1. Torchwood: Children of Earth by Russell T Davies, John Fay and James Moran
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5
I obviously enjoyed reading all of the scripts in this top ten and in the entire Whoniverse, but out of more than 250 scripts, this set of five parts was fantastically compelling from start to the very satisfying finish. I do remember liking it hugely when I saw it air, but all memory of that viewing was pushed out of my head as I raced, raced, raced through the scripts, not just held, not just relishing them, but practically frantic to read what happens next.
Just by sheer statistics, you wouldn’t — or at least I wouldn’t — have guessed that a non-Doctor Who script would top my list. But then equally, yes, I knew this one would. It was reading this particular set of scripts that made me want to rush up to you with them all. So I’m still surprised, but equally not surprised at all.