Doctor Who script books

Script books have sometimes been released giving the scripts — generally the shooting scripts — of various episodes of Doctor Who.

Overview[[edit] | edit source]

A television script can take various forms of revisions and drafts from the original submission of a storyline to the final broadcast. Not always, but often, the most common progression is as follows.

The script, as delivered by the author, is revised by a script editor to produce a rehearsal script. The director and production team work from the rehearsal script.

The rehearsal scripts are further revised by the actors in rehearsals, and for technical and aesthetic reasons. Camera operations and technical crew details are added and refined into a camera script.

The programme is made from the camera script. Once agreed this copy may be considered 'LOCKED', but this is not the end of the process.

The version of a script prepared before filming is more recently referred to as a shooting script (to which further last minute omissions and additional dialogue scenes may be added), these may be due to any number of reasons - practical reasons, timing, technical reasons, or simply changes from the actors themselves before all filmed material is submitted to the editing and post-production teams for a further series of, often quite radical, changes.

A final version of the script, reflecting what was actually transmitted, may also be produced. This is called a programme-as-broadcast script.

Doctor Who script releases[[edit] | edit source]

During the history of the Doctor Who franchise, a limited number of teleplay scripts have been commercially released. These have ranged from teleplays taken from the original 1963-89 TV series, to scripts from the 2005-present revival. Big Finish Productions has published several volumes of scripts taken from its ongoing line of audio dramas. And to date two books featuring three teleplays from unproduced stories have been published, all featuring abandoned First Doctor stories: The Masters of Luxor, Farewell Great Macedon, and The Fragile Yellow Arc of Fragrance; the latter is a single-episode script included in the same volume as Farewell Great Macedon. One script book, for the unbroadcast (but partially completed) Shada was also published with the UK release of a video of the story.