The Children of January (unproduced TV story)
The Children of January was to be the last story of the original Season 23; when work on the season was aborted following the near-cancellation of Doctor Who, the script for this story was scrapped along with all the other proposed stories. The Children of January remains one of the few "lost" stories from the Sixth Doctor's era to have not been adapted, either into a novelisation or into a Big Finish audio adventure.
Some details do exist for the story, other than a statement made by writer Michael Feeney Callan on his website[1] in 2009 (look way below):
The story would see the Doctor and Peri land on a desert planet, thinking that the planet would be a perfect Beach to be on, they are caught from the Z'ros for accidentally trespassing on the conquered planet for no explanation why, they were being forced to execution but The Children of January (the outcasts), convince the Z'ros lieutenant to spare their lives. The Doctor thanks the outcasts, but needs a way to broker a peace to both opposing species.
I wrote a two-parter called The Children of January. It was to be a season closer, not a series termination. But the BBC decided in mid-season that the show had run its course and, in the middle eighties, I think they were right. But I loved my episode, which was delivered late in 1985. I created a race of runaway proto-humans called the Z'ros, sort of 'human bees', of which I still have the fondest nightmares. 'The Children of January', incidentally, refers to renegade outcasts of a dawning "parallel universe" civilisation that was abandoned.
