Rather obviously inspired by Siskoid's 5 Sci-Fi Films To Drop The TARDIS Into...
Doctor Who has never been above a bit of creative recycling. Quoting Robert Holmes: "We only use original ideas in Doctor Who. Not necessarily our original ideas." This was the writer-producer who set a Frankenstein story on a distant planet and did a Mummy story with robots, so he knew what he was talking about.
So anyway, four supernatural or paranormal threats and one exaggerated natural one. Going full paranormal or SF-horror would have been too easy...
The Haunting
A parapsychological experiment to find "sensitives" and study their responses to a house regarded as haunted, cursed or "unclean". Nothing is directly seen, but is the overwhelming sense of foreboding only the atmosphere of the house, or...? (For a less ambiguous version, maybe Poltergeist, complete with solvable mystery and big implosion at the end. But not the Haunting remake.)
Jaws
A natural threat, but far stronger than normal, threatens a tourist attraction, and the town's rulers won't listen to reason and warn people off. Put that in space and imagine the Doctor dealing with a monster he can't argue with and a human authority who ignores his arguments.
Something Wicked This Way Comes
A circus comes to a small Depression-era town, arriving unannounced, bringing strange temptations and perhaps, just perhaps, relating to a string of disappearances in other towns... (Ray Bradbury could fuel a series of Doctor Who by himself. And as an added bonus, its Big Bad was the Master for one night only.)
The Ring
A psychic entity that demands to have its story told... or it will kill you. Can its threat of death within seven days pursue a target through time?
The Omen
A child marked as a future apocalyptic threat to the world, protected by strange "accidents" and fanatical servants. Is he human? Is he innocent in all this? What do you do?
And the 2nd Doctor is already in that last one ;).
ReplyDeleteI think the Doctor could also do well with The Stepford Wives, Carnival of Souls, and if you don't emphasize the violence as much, even Suspiria. That last one, if done well with color gels on the lights and sound effects would certainly freak out the companions!
Great as Pete Postlethwaite always was, Sylvester McCoy taking over that role in the remake would have been much funnier. To me, anyway.
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