Sean Connery almost played an unseen incarnation of the Doctor in a Doctor Who animated series. In 1989, the BBC canceled Doctor Who, its longest-running science-fiction TV show. In truth, Docctor Who had been living on borrowed time for years, with the BBC only relenting from an earlier attempt due to a backlash from fans. This time, however, there seemed to be no coming back for Doctor Who.Naturally, those enthusiastic fans - and, indeed, many producers - were unwilling to accept this. In addition to a popular range of novels continuing the Doctor's adventures, the next few years saw many figures approach the BBC with ideas for ways to regenerate the Doctor for the 1990s. This ultimately led to the 1996 Doctor Who TV movie, starring Paul McGann, which tried to Americanize the show. Sadly, the Paul McGann movie proved a failure, likely in part because an amnesiac plot meant the actor didn't really have a solid chance to give viewers an idea of what his Doctor was really like.Another attempted Doctor Who relaunch from this time has, however, been forgotten. The Bigger on the Inside podcast spoke to Ted Bastien, an animator who worked for a Canadian animation company called Nelvana, who revealed the BBC had approached them with the idea of an animated spinoff starring James Bond actor Sean Connery as an unspecified incarnation of the Doctor. The Doctor Who animated series was inspired by the success of Star Wars' Droids and Ewoks shows, and Bastien shared artwork clearly drawing inspiration from Doc in the Back to the Future films.
Why Sean Connery's Doctor Who Animated Series Didn't Happen
Unfortunately, the BBC really don't seem to have been convinced the Doctor Who animated series would work; Bastien recalls rumors the powers-that-be tried to persuade Nelvala to pay the budget. Matters would likely have been complicated by Doctor Who's labyrinthine character rights, more difficult to navigate than any time-space vortex. In the end, a rival studio based in the U.K. promised they could pull off a better animation for a cheaper budget, and the Nelvana series fell through. It didn't take long for those plans, too, to fail. Sean Connery never got his chance to play the Doctor.
Things do feel as though they worked out for the best, however. Had Doctor Who morphed into an animated series, it's hard to imagine the BBC green-lighting Russell T. Davies 2005 relaunch. The Eccleston, Tennant, Capaldi, and Whittaker eras would never have happened, and Doctor Who would likely never have become such a powerful international brand. Nelvana's Doctor Who pitch was an interesting one, but it's a good thing it never happened.