Doctor Who/Season Twenty-Three

Season Twenty-Three
Doctor Who
Season Premiere	September 6, 1986
Season Finale	December 6, 1986
Episode Count	14
Previous Season Twenty-Two	Next Season Twenty-Four

Season Twenty-Three of Doctor Who premiered on September 6, 1986.

Aborted season 23

The production of the show was put on hiatus following the 22nd season, due to financial reasons, with the premiere of season 23 pushed from early 1986 to September of the same year. Originally under the impression that the 23rd year was going to consist of 13 45-minute episodes, the show's producers were finalizing the plans for the season, when BBC decided to instead have the season comprising 14 episodes of 25 minutes. The new conditions had the original plans for the season completely scrapped, as the producers agreed to try writing the entire season as an ongoing story, The Trial of a Time Lord, divided in for parts, each consisting of two or four episodes.

The aborted season 23 would have included six stories - five two-parters and one three-parter. Although it was common - both before and after season 23 - that individual scripts, outlines, concepts, and ideas, were abandoned before being made into actual episodes, this is the only example in Doctor Who history to have an entire season shelved. Out of the six scripts, the first three were completed prior to the change of directions, with the authors eventually adapting the scripts into novels released by Doctor Who publisher Target Books under the moniker The Missing Episodes. While the fourth story - the supposed three-parter - was only completed as a story outline, the author of the fifth story came to adapted the script into an audio drama in 2010 (the same was done with the first and third story). The sixth and final story of the supposed season, had just been commissioned as the news of the new directions hit the production team, but remained a contestant for later seasons - it was however never materialized.

#	#	Title			Airdate
1	1	The Nightmare Fair			1989 (as novel); 2009 (as audio)
2	2	The Ultimate Evil			1989 (as novel)
3	3	Mission to Magnus			1990 (as novel); 2009 (as audio)
4	4	Yellow Fever and How to Cure It			unproduced
5	5	The Hollows of Time			2010 (as audio)
6	6	The Children of January			unproduced