Shrine (unproduced TV story)

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Shrine was an unproduced serial due to be set in Season 26, written by Marc Platt following Andrew Cartmel's interest in Cat's Cradle.

It was based on Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace and would have featured stone-headed aliens looking for their reincarnated god in 1820 Russia. DWM 306 contained a description of the story's beginning, showing the Seventh Doctor and Ace arriving at an old manor and finding a greenhouse with a huge electric plant.

Cartmal and Ben Aaronovitch loved Shrine, but decided to have Platt write a different story. At first, Lungbarrow was planned, but John Nathan-Turner's influence led to Platt instead writing Ghost Light. (DWM 305) Stone-headed aliens, the Gryffnae, were later mentioned in Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible, and Platt later wrote a Who story in this era of Russian history with Mother Russia.