5 Starman

According to a strange guy who sits in the corner of my local pub, The Dead Lemming, a completely different script was penned for this episode by a being known only as Sparacus "Flamingo" Jones which was thrown out of rehearsals with bursts of hyena-like laughter.
Nicholas Courtney apparently threatened to commit suicide rather than appear in it.
Described by the author as "a serious piece of drama which both explores environmental issues and has a gripping sci-fi edge" and by everyone else as "a badly written and poorly executed synopsis of a wet dream and an insult to television viewers everywhere".
The synopsis is as follows -


2.4 - Major Tom:

With a truly baffling display of illogic logic and emotional blackmail, Rose convinces the Doctor to pilot the TARDIS to Cornwall. There are various archaeological sights there that Ben can use for Black Sabbath ceremonies while giving her a right royal seeing-to.

The TARDIS lands in spitting distance of the highly-unstable-glow-in-the-dark Farnwell Nuclear Power Complex with safety practices so poor not even Homer Simpson would work there.

Ben and Rose go off to take over a local archaeological dig of an iron age site, christen it and then start murdering passers-by. The Doctor wanders down a rugged Cornish beach complaining loudly of the company he has to put up with.

There the Doctor notices a strange object has been washed up on the beach – a piece of unearthly metal not found on Earth. The Doctor bitches loudly that it must be unscrupulous aliens manipulating mankind AGAIN. He just hopes that these are some kind, nice aliens who just accidentally left it behind while they passing.

He then finds a series of slaughtered sea animals and the mutilated body of an old man with a metal detector. The Time Lord giggles at the corpse's misfortune and decides to leave in the TARDIS and let the hideous sea mutants kill everyone in Cornwall.

Meanwhile Ben and Rose are chatting to Dr Maurice Kyle, head of the archaeological dig, getting ready to jump him and knife him to death. Kyle is bitching that the Farnwell nuclear station has decided to build a second and even more unsafe power complex on the land where the dig is located.

Kyle is so furious about his dig being sabotaged and he must finish up in two days for a nonsensical expansion that neither Ben nor Rose can get close enough to stab him to death.

Ben is incensed at the senseless pursuit of economic growth above environmental concerns but Rose calms him down by wrapping her arms around him and telling him they'll sacrifice Kyle to the liquid god Ashgotoroth and then starts gently kissing his neck and lips.

The Doctor pops by to assure his companions that nothing at all nasty is occurring here – the strange figures emerging from the sea are just fishing enthusiasts and the horribly murdered animals is just down to "very greedy otters". So he's just popping out for a quick trip in the TARDIS, OK?

At that moment a passing Cornishman runs into view, being chased by three armed security guards who shoot him, bundle the body in the back of a white van and drive off into the nuclear power station.

The Doctor adds, furthermore, that there is nothing suspicious about the power station at all. Rose and Ben challenge him to prove it and the Doctor finds himself piloting the TARDIS into the power plant – specifically in an office where Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, retired, is chatting to the sinister head of the power station, Doctor Ziggy Stardust (played unsurprisingly by David Bowie).

The Brigadier wearily covers up for a police box and three strangers appearing in the office as "a training exercise" and, as head of the local council planning committee in the nearby plan, has come to discuss with Stardust about this pointless and dangerous expansion of the power plant.

The Doctor meets his old drinking buddy and, after the discussion of certain photographs and money exchanging hands, the Brigadier changes his mind and cheerfully approves Stardust's proposals.

The Brigadier leaves and the Doctor thinks this is absolute proof to Ben and Rose that there is nothing suspicious about the project at all. Stardust thanks the Doctor for his help, then has his men beat the trio up and dump them outside.

As Stardust says to his henchmen, "Yeah, lads, this Doctor and love's
young dream have rumbled our operation, let's clobber them and let
them run around saying what we did - if that doesn't solve our
problem, than I'm a spider man from Mars!!"

As the TARDIS is now in the power station, the Doctor grudgingly admits that there IS something bad happening and they need some handy and dispensable environmentalists to use as cannon fodder.

Luckily, Doctor Kyle knows such a group lead by young protestor Adam Mitchell who sensibly took up the Doctor's advice of staying average and living quietly by becoming a committed peace campaigner and environmental activist. Who wears a lot of hats.

Adam agrees to help on the condition the Doctor removes the head implant from his skull. The Doctor agrees happily and this time Adam demands the proviso that he not only A) survives the process but also B) has it done under anaesthetic. The Doctor's reticence to agree proves that his regeneration hasn't changed him that much.

The new group will now use a plan cut-and-pasted from The Green Death in order to bring a suspicious power station to its knees.

The Doctor pretend to go in as "a scout" and, disguised as a German logger, breaks into the power station as the brutal security thugs really rather like loggers. In reality, the Doctor intends to escape in the TARDIS at the earliest opportunity and let the human race be destroyed by Stardust's machinations.

As he is about to leave, the Doctor notes an insurance claim on the table by Ziggy Stardust for his spaceship which has crashed into the Cornish sea. The Doctor rolls his eyes at yet another alien menace that can't reverse park.

The fact Stardust lists his occupation as "scavenger/a space pirate" suggests that the sinister figure is using his technology to wipe the minds of humans and reprogram them. Just like the last two alien foes the Doctor has faced.

Unable to cope with this mindless repetition, the Doctor prepares to leave in his time machine as Stardust enters dictating a blog entry about him using nuclear power to re-charge his ship and also to contact his group of fellow illegal developers who will join him and plunder the Earth of its natural resources.

The Doctor screams of "This is a rip-off of Boomtown!" attract Stardust's attention and the Time Lord is forced to flee into the next room – luckily, that is the security room and he is able to overpower the on-duty guard with Bruce Lee-style moves.

The security system is disabled and the protestors storm the plant and by sheer coincidence discover Stardust's evil office full of technology and wreck it. Stardust would use an amazing alien defense system and his evil thugs to stop the mob, but is too busy trying to explain and justify the guy he had shot and kidnapped.

Ironically, no one can hear this explanation over the noise and Stardust is forced to flee via a hatchway down to the beach. Unfortunately, Stardust has stupidly forgotten that the alien techniques he was using at the power station has flooded the nearby ocean with toxic waste and mutated sea life into identical hideous humanoid killers.

Stardust is eaten by a giant mutant seabass.

The Doctor, all depressed, rings the Brigadier and orders UNIT to arrive and destroy the mutant creatures which he dubs "Benroses"

The End.