Alixion (unproduced TV story)

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Alixion was a story that was to have been a part of Season 27 had Doctor Who continued to be produced beyond Survival. It would have been written by Robin Mukherjee.

Alixion was a three-part story that had been commissioned for Season 26, but was not produced due to the relative greenness of the writer in terms of television drama writing at the time.

Several details about the story have been revealed over the years. When the story was first commissioned for Season 26 Mukherjee originally envisioned the story as taking place on a monastic planet inhabited by both humans and giant beetles. The leader of the planet, the Abbot, has discovered that feeding humans to the beetles causes them to produce an intelligence-boosting elixir. The Abbot wants to see what happens when the Doctor is fed to the beetles. The story would've apparently concluded with a contest of wills between the Abbot and the Doctor.

DWM 255 however offered an alternative storyline in it's articles 27 Up? and What If? Potentially being a rewrite of the story for it's use in Season 27, the story described had the Doctor again being lured to a "monastic planet full with mystery and dark tunnels". However, this version removed the beetle element. Instead, the Doctor is lured to play a series of life or death games by a "rather gross Bank Manager", who was described by Mukherjee as "a bit of a wide boy, with a taste for cocktails and flamboyant dress and a wicked sense of humour". Mukherjee wanted to use this character as an equal to the Doctor, someone who shared his manipulative tendencies and was always one step ahead. The story would've ended with the Doctor regenerating due to psychic tension from facing the Manager, with Andrew Cartmel and Mukherjee envisioning McCoy's Doctor regenerating "straightjacketed and gagged in a confinement cell".

DWM 255 depicted an image of Richard Griffiths in the role of the Doctor, which would have been either in this story or the one that proceeded.

Cast changes
This story was to have been the final story for Sylvester McCoy. For the role of the Eighth Doctor, the actor Richard Griffiths has been suggested as the actor the producers of the time would have cast.