Laika's Theme

Continuing with Doctor Who: The Space Race, how was it changed for the second draft? Well, there don’t seem to be many deleted scenes. Most of the changes are additions rather than deletions. I see that I was asked to remove references to Laika undergoing dissection, and this bit too:

DOCTOR

Sergeant, I’d be grateful if you could avoid killing Laika. She may still be able to help us.

ALEXEI (VIA INTERCOM)

I can’t make any promises, Doctor.

FX: MOVE TO CORRIDOR.

This is a good example of the sort of boring, unnecessary explaining-stuff-that-doesn’t-need-explaining that should get cut:

PERI

It would be easier to go in the TARDIS.

DOCTOR

If it was working. I’ve nearly finished repairing the circuit. Give me something to do on the flight.

PERI

Can’t it wait? Haven’t we got enough to deal with down here?

In the second draft I added the scene with the two maintenance workers being attacked by dogs, and then rewrote the following scene:

42C. INT. MISSION CONTROL.

ALEXEI ENTERS.

ALEXEI

General LeonovAnd by the time the guards got there, the two men had gone.

MIKHAIL

Sergeant, I’m rather busy right now, can What do you mean, ‘gone’?

ALEXEI

The dogs had dragged their bodies away, we don’t know where. I watched the whole thing on the security cameras.

PERI

And you’re sure Laika did this wait?

ALEXEI

It’s the escaped animals, sir. I’ve just had a report of them attacking one of our maintenance workers.

Oh, yes. She was leading the pack.

MIKHAIL

What do you mean, attacking?

ALEXEI

I mean, they killed him, sir. Savaged him to death. In front of his wife. Then they dragged his body away.

PERI

Laika did this?

ALEXEI

According to the wife’s description, she was leading the pack, yes.

Can’t remember why I cut the next bit. Because I was told to, I expect. Pity, I think it’s a nice little moment. It’s quite common for stories to have bits where characters think somebody is dead but where there isn’t time to explore their reaction. But, of course, it happens so often in Doctor Who that if someone got upset every time they thought the Doctor had been killed they would be upset so often it would become ridiculous.

PERI

No. I’ve thought him dead dozens of times before, and he’s always turned up, out of the blue. Usually with a bad joke.

LEONID

You were close to him?

PERI

He was... is the most wonderful person I’ve ever met. And the most infuriating.

LEONID

You loved him?

PERI

No, not like that. I love being with him. Because he makes me a better person. That’s what he does. He makes people better.

LEONID

Well, he is a Doctor.

For the scene where the Doctor encounters the alien probe, I was asked to give specific quotes of things we might hear rather than generalisations:

FX: A BRIEF BURST OF COPYRIGHT-FREERANDOM RADIO, TELEVISION AND FILM CLIPS PRECEDING 1963. SPEECHES BY RAMSAY MACDONALD, LENIN, KENNEDY, NEWSREELS AND MUSIC: JAZZ, CLASSICAL MUSIC AND EARLY ROCK’N’ROLL, CLASSICAL, HYMNS. WEDDINGS, . CROWDS AT FOOTBALL MATCHES, AUDIENCES LAUGHING AT GOONS.MIXED IN WITH:

RADIO ANNOUNCER ONE:

- Finisterre and Biscay, winds moderate. Rockall, gale warning.

RADIO ANNOUNCER TWO:

And as Maurice Leyland steps up to the wicket -

And finally, I cut the final two lines from the story. Too soppy, too corny, too on-the-nose. Ah well, you throw this stuff out there, some of it sticks, some of it doesn’t.

DOCTOR
Not just mankind. No. It’s a message to the rest of the universe. After all, you never know who might be listening....

PERI

And all because of what happened back on November the twenty-third, nineteen sixty-three.

DOCTOR

Yes. That was quite a day. A day of endings and of magnificent, wonderful beginnings.