History RecycledScript / DoctorWho

* For "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS12E1Robot Robot]]", Creator/TerranceDicks drew on ''Series/TheAvengers1960s'' episode "The Mauritius Penny", which he co-wrote with Creator/MalcolmHulke, most notably for the scenes in which Sarah Jane infiltrates the meeting of the Scientific Reform Society.

* The story [[Recap/DoctorWhoS13E6TheSeedsOfDoom "The Seeds of Doom"]] (by Robert Banks Stewart) was recycled from ''Series/TheAvengers1960s''[='=] "Man-Eater of Surrey Green". (Stewart had written for ''The Avengers'', but not that episode, which was by Philip Levene.) "The Seeds of Doom" feels wrong for a ''Doctor Who'' story in many ways, since it follows the ''Avengers'' formula. For example, the Fourth Doctor casually jumps on top of a bad guy and punches him out!

* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E3TheCurseOfTheBlackSpot "The Curse of the Black Spot"]] (Eleventh Doctor) uses almost exactly the same TwistEnding as [[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E9TheEmptyChild "The Empty Child"]]/[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E10TheDoctorDances The Doctor Dances"]] (Ninth Doctor), revealing that the MonsterOfTheWeek was actually just medical software for an abandoned alien ship, and that its actions were the result of it blindly following its programming and trying to heal injured humans without understanding human physiology. The plot even involves a young boy's relationship with a distant parent that he barely knows. It takes place in UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfPiracy instead of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, and the monster is a [[EnthrallingSiren siren]] instead of a zombie, but the plots are otherwise exactly the same.

* The story [[Recap/DoctorWhoS13E6TheSeedsOfDoom "The Seeds of Doom"]] (by Robert Banks Stewart) was recycled from ''Series/TheAvengers''[='=] "Man-Eater of Surrey Green". (Stewart had written for ''The Avengers'', but not that episode, which was by Philip Levene.) "The Seeds of Doom" feels wrong for a ''Doctor Who'' story in many ways, since it follows the ''Avengers'' formula. For example, the Fourth Doctor casually jumps on top of a bad guy and punches him out!

** Aside from those, there's an apparently heavy influence from Creator/StevenMoffat's favourite [[Creator/ColinBaker Sixth Doctor]] episode, Rob Shearman's [[Recap/BigFinishDoctorWho014TheHolyTerror "The Holy Terror"]], which ''also'' features the Doctor trapped in an EpiphanicPrison shaped like an immense castle [[WorldLimitedByThePlot with no outside]], in which events eternally reset and recur. The only major differences being the Twelfth Doctor is alone, and he, not another character, is the prisoner.

* Creator/TerryNation rehashed "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS1E2TheDaleks The Daleks]]" for "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS10E4PlanetOfTheDaleks Planet of the Daleks]]". It contains some of the same plot devices, including: a group of Daleks in a city encountering the Thals on a ravaged planet; a deadly plague instead of a neutron bomb; someone using a Dalek shell as a disguise; the Doctor imprisoned in a cell and with paralysed legs; and the Daleks imprisoned in their city at the end of the story.

* The Master's latest plan involves creating a Cyberman army. A black character who is relevant throughout the series is KilledOffForReal and then reborn as a Cyberman while the companion goes though BreakTheCutie as a result. Now, are we talking about [[Recap/DoctorWhoS34E11DarkWater "Dark Water"]]/[[Recap/DoctorWhoS34E12DeathInHeaven "Death in Heaven"]] or [[Recap/DoctorWhoS36E11WorldEnoughAndTime "World Enough and Time"]]/[[Recap/DoctorWhoS36E12TheDoctorFalls "The Doctor Falls"]]? The main differences are [[spoiler:Clara's love interest is converted and her BreakTheCutie is due to grief in "Dark Water", while it is the companion herself who is converted and being forced to take TheSlowPath while separated from the Doctor and getting Cyber-converted is what breaks her in "World Enough and Time". Plus, there are two Masters running around in the latter, with one flipping sides.]] Thinking it through, some of this is intentional: [[spoiler:after Saxon regenerates into Missy offscreen, she tries his plot again with what's left behind from it but with a more — to her way of thinking — positive end in mind than he did. She'll fail, and eventually make her way to this point only to die because she forced him to regenerate, bringing her story tragically full circle.]]

* "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS25E3SilverNemesis Silver Nemesis]]" received some complaints that it was the same basic plot as "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS25E1RemembranceOfTheDaleks Remembrance of the Daleks]]" (earlier in the very same season). Both concerned the Doctor arranging events so that he was ready to destroy an invasion of Earth by some of his deadliest enemies using an ancient piece of Time Lord technology (that the enemies themselves had hoped to gain control of). Both stories also feature themes of bigotry and racial purity, and a group of humans who naively try to ally themselves with the alien invaders.

* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E1SmithAndJones "Smith and Jones"]] gets its plot recycled for [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E1TheEleventhHour "The Eleventh Hour"]]. Both involve an alien convict with shapeshifting powers escaping to Earth and a group of alien police threating to kill innocent people if they cannot find it in a certain amount of time. This requires the Doctor and his new companion to find it first. Additionally, the Doctor's Sonic Screwdriver is destroyed at one point and a hospital is a major setting.
* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E3VictoryOfTheDaleks "Victory of the Daleks"]] borrows big chunks of the [[MissingEpisode lost serial]] [[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E3ThePowerOfTheDaleks "The Power of the Daleks"]], but with more of a knowing, InternalHomage[=/=]WholePlotReference approach. The stuff that's borrowed — Daleks feigning servitude to humans, the Doctor protesting that they're pure evil and no-one believing him, a quirky scientist who discovered them promoting them to the leader of his people as a new development that can solve all of their problems, the Daleks doing it all as a plan to grow their ranks — is all aesthetic stuff, and the actual plot machinery itself is fairly different. For example Power takes place on a human colony on another planet, Victory is set in WWII London.

* "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS25E3SilverNemesis Silver Nemesis]]" received some complaints that it was the same basic plot as "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS25E1RemembranceOfTheDaleks Remembrance of the Daleks]]" (earlier in the very same season). Both concerned the Doctor arranging events so that he was ready to destroy an invasion of Earth by some of his deadliest enemies using an ancient piece of Time Lord technology (that the enemies themselves had hoped to gain control of).

* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E3VictoryOfTheDaleks "Victory of the Daleks"]] borrows big chunks of the [[MissingEpisode lost serial]] [[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E3ThePowerOfTheDaleks "The Power of the Daleks"]], but with more of a knowing, InternalHomage[=/=]WholePlotReference approach. The stuff that's borrowed — Daleks feigning servitude to humans, the Doctor protesting that they're pure evil and no-one believing him, a quirky scientist who discovered them promoting them to the leader of his people as a new development that can solve all of their problems, the Daleks doing it all as a plan to grow their ranks — is all aesthetic stuff, and the actual plot machinery itself is fairly different.

* "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E8TheGunfighters The Gunfighters]]" has the same plot as "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E3TheMythMakers The Myth Makers]]", both by the same writer. A comedic historical story where the Doctor is mistaken for a historical figure (Zeus/Doc Holliday) and through a series of farcical events, people die.
* Not only is "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E6TheMoonbase The Moonbase]]" a SequelEpisode to "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E2TheTenthPlanet The Tenth Planet]]", it rehashes the same plot, just replace the South Pole with the Moon and the sub-plot involving the space capsule in danger with one about a mysterious illness.
* "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS9E1DayOfTheDaleks Day of the Daleks]]" was apparently a rush adaptation from ''Series/TheOuterLimits1963'' script "Soldier".
* Both "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS13E4TheAndroidInvasion The Android Invasion]]" and "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS13E5TheBrainOfMorbius The Brain of Morbius]]" — two consecutive serials! — feature a genius MadScientist who treats bodies like playthings and has a complex about creation and destruction, and a more sympathetic assistant who was rescued from a spaceship accident by the scientist and is missing a body part, who does a HeelFaceTurn upon discovering that the body part was actually accounted for all along. Part of this was because both scripts had to be heavily edited by Creator/RobertHolmes, who wrote most of the material between Styggron and Crayford in "The Android Invasion" to pad out the run time, and who adapted "The Brain of Morbius" to feature a mad scientist/TheIgor pair to [[BottleEpisode reduce the required budget]]; presumably he'd had this dynamic on the brain.
* The story "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS13E6TheSeedsOfDoom The Seeds of Doom]]" (by Robert Banks Stewart) was recycled from ''Series/TheAvengers''[='=] "Man-Eater of Surrey Green". (Stewart had written for ''The Avengers'', but not that episode, which was by Philip Levene.) "The Seeds of Doom" feels wrong for a ''Doctor Who'' story in many ways, since it follows the ''Avengers'' formula. For example, the Fourth Doctor casually jumps on top of a bad guy and punches him out!

* The Fifth Doctor story "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS21E1WarriorsOfTheDeep Warriors of the Deep]]" plot bears striking similarities to the final First Doctor story, [[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E2TheTenthPlanet "The Tenth Planet"]]. Both feature the Doctor and his companions accidentally arriving at an isolated military base and being mistaken for spies, and in both stories the Doctor's warnings go unheeded until the base is besieged by an alien threat. In both there is a section of the story where the alien invaders seize the bridge and the Doctor is forced by circumstances to stand by without interfering for a time.
* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E11FearHer "Fear Her"]] itself is very similar to [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E7TheIdiotsLantern "The Idiot's Lantern"]] from the same season. Both feature an alien who imprisons people during a major televised event in London (the Queen's Coronation and the Olympic Games) and a child with an abusive father. In both, at the climax, one of the protagonists falls victim to the alien, and the other must rescue them before time runs out. "Fear Her" was written in a hurry to replace a Creator/StephenFry-penned script that ultimately went unproduced, which could explain the recycling process. "Fear Her" goes on to be recycled ''twice'':

* The Minisodes "Meanwhile in the TARDIS 2" and [[Recap/DoctorWhoS33ShortClaraAndTheTardis "Clara and the TARDIS"]] are both virtually identical accounts of the Eleventh Doctor's companion getting the TARDIS to show them a slideshow of former companions (with the male ones conspicuously missing) and show comical disgust at the Doctor's [[TheCharmer perceived womanising]], as well as his [[GenderDynamicsIndex "typical male" interests in machines and women, with the implication that the TARDIS is doing it out of female jealousy]]. "Clara and the TARDIS" also swipes scenes from the [[Recap/DoctorWho2011RNDSSpaceAndTime Red Nose Day special]] where multiple Amys get stuck in a time loop and flirt with each other, when multiple Claras get stuck in a time loop and flirt with each other.

* "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS36E8TheLieOfTheLand The Lie of the Land]]" borrows a lot from past episodes. The Doctor and Bill recruit a group of soldiers to [[LaResistance take down a group of aliens]] with religious connotations that also shoot lightning like in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E13TheWeddingOfRiverSong The Wedding of River Song]]", the villain using a network of mind control devices to control and rule humanity — and the plan to turn it against them — plus the set up of the companion needing to save the Doctor while the villains have control of Earth first happened in the Series 3 finale, and the companion stopping the villains thanks to the memory of her deceased mother (with the fact that the memory is not real being important) comes from "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS33E7TheRingsOfAkhaten The Rings of Akhaten]]".
* The Master's latest plan involves creating a Cyberman army. A black character who is relevant throughout the series is KilledOffForReal and then reborn as a Cyberman while the companion goes though BreakTheCutie as a result. Now, are we talking about "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS34E11DarkWater Dark Water]]"/"[[Recap/DoctorWhoS34E12DeathInHeaven Death in Heaven]]" or "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS36E11WorldEnoughAndTime World Enough and Time]]"/"[[Recap/DoctorWhoS36E12TheDoctorFalls The Doctor Falls]]"? The main differences are [[spoiler:Clara's love interest is converted and her BreakTheCutie is due to grief in "Dark Water", while it is the companion herself who is converted and being forced to take TheSlowPath while separated from the Doctor and getting Cyber-converted is what breaks her in "World Enough and Time". Plus, there are two Masters running around in the latter, with one flipping sides.]] Thinking it through, some of this is intentional: [[spoiler:after Saxon regenerates into Missy offscreen, she tries his plot again with what's left behind from it but with a more — to her way of thinking — positive end in mind than he did. She'll fail, and eventually make her way to this point only to die because she forced him to regenerate, bringing her story tragically full circle.]]

* "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS37E4ArachnidsInTheUK Arachnids in the UK]]", like "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS10E5TheGreenDeath The Green Death]]", has mutated invertebrates caused by the illegal dumping of toxic waste into a mine shaft by a CorruptCorporateExecutive.

* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E8TheGunfighters "The Gunfighters"]] has the same plot as [[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E3TheMythMakers "The Myth Makers"]], both by the same writer. A comedic historical story where the Doctor is mistaken for a historical figure (Zeus/Doc Holliday) and through a series of farcical events, people die.
* Not only is [[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E6TheMoonbase "The Moonbase"]] a SequelEpisode to [[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E2TheTenthPlanet "The Tenth Planet"]], it rehashes the same plot, just replace the South Pole with the Moon and the sub-plot involving the space capsule in danger with one about a mysterious illness.
* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS9E1DayOfTheDaleks "Day of the Daleks"]] was apparently a rush adaptation from ''Series/TheOuterLimits1963'' script "Soldier".
* Both [[Recap/DoctorWhoS13E4TheAndroidInvasion "The Android Invasion"]] and [[Recap/DoctorWhoS13E5TheBrainOfMorbius "The Brain of Morbius"]] — two consecutive serials! — feature a genius MadScientist who treats bodies like playthings and has a complex about creation and destruction, and a more sympathetic assistant who was rescued from a spaceship accident by the scientist and is missing a body part, who does a HeelFaceTurn upon discovering that the body part was actually accounted for all along. Part of this was because both scripts had to be heavily edited by Creator/RobertHolmes, who wrote most of the material between Styggron and Crayford in "The Android Invasion" to pad out the run time, and who adapted "The Brain of Morbius" to feature a mad scientist/TheIgor pair to [[BottleEpisode reduce the required budget]]; presumably he'd had this dynamic on the brain.
* The story [[Recap/DoctorWhoS13E6TheSeedsOfDoom "The Seeds of Doom"]] (by Robert Banks Stewart) was recycled from ''Series/TheAvengers''[='=] "Man-Eater of Surrey Green". (Stewart had written for ''The Avengers'', but not that episode, which was by Philip Levene.) "The Seeds of Doom" feels wrong for a ''Doctor Who'' story in many ways, since it follows the ''Avengers'' formula. For example, the Fourth Doctor casually jumps on top of a bad guy and punches him out!
* The Doctor is coerced into leading his companions on a key FetchQuest, which takes them to a wide variety of locales. Among the obstacles encountered are a KangarooCourt trial at which one of them is sentenced to death. Upon completion of their mission, they [[spoiler: must ''not'' turn the found items over to the one who demands them]]. Is this the First Doctor tracking down the [[Recap/DoctorWhoS1E5TheKeysOfMarinus Keys of Marinus]], or the Fourth [[Recap/DoctorWhoS16E1TheRibosOperation looking]] [[Recap/DoctorWhoS16E2ThePiratePlanet for]] [[Recap/DoctorWhoS16E3TheStonesOfBlood the]] [[Recap/DoctorWhoS16E4TheAndroidsOfTara Key]] [[Recap/DoctorWhoS16E5ThePowerOfKroll to]] [[Recap/DoctorWhoS16E6TheArmageddonFactor Time]]?
* The Fifth Doctor story [[Recap/DoctorWhoS21E1WarriorsOfTheDeep "Warriors of the Deep"]] plot bears striking similarities to the final First Doctor story, [[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E2TheTenthPlanet "The Tenth Planet"]]. Both feature the Doctor and his companions accidentally arriving at an isolated military base and being mistaken for spies, and in both stories the Doctor's warnings go unheeded until the base is besieged by an alien threat. In both there is a section of the story where the alien invaders seize the bridge and the Doctor is forced by circumstances to stand by without interfering for a time.

* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS36E8TheLieOfTheLand "The Lie of the Land"]] borrows a lot from past episodes. The Doctor and Bill recruit a group of soldiers to [[LaResistance take down a group of aliens]] with religious connotations that also shoot lightning like in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E13TheWeddingOfRiverSong "The Wedding of River Song"]], the villain using a network of mind control devices to control and rule humanity — and the plan to turn it against them — plus the set up of the companion needing to save the Doctor while the villains have control of Earth first happened in the Series 3 finale, and the companion stopping the villains thanks to the memory of her deceased mother (with the fact the memory is not real being important) comes from [[Recap/DoctorWhoS33E7TheRingsOfAkhaten "The Rings of Akhaten"]].
* The Master's latest plan involves creating a Cyberman army. A black character who is relevant throughout the series is KilledOffForReal and then reborn as a Cyberman while the companion goes though BreakTheCutie as a result. Now, are we talking about [[Recap/DoctorWhoS34E11DarkWater "Dark Water"]]/[[Recap/DoctorWhoS34E12DeathInHeaven "Death in Heaven"]] or [[Recap/DoctorWhoS36E11WorldEnoughAndTime "World Enough and Time"]]/[[Recap/DoctorWhoS36E12TheDoctorFalls "The Doctor Falls"]]? The main differences are [[spoiler:Clara's love interest is converted and her BreakTheCutie is due to grief in "Dark Water", while it is the companion herself who is converted and being forced to take TheSlowPath while separated from the Doctor and getting Cyber-converted is what breaks her in "World Enough and Time". Plus, there are two Masters running around in the latter, with one flipping sides]]. Thinking it through, some of this is intentional: [[spoiler:after Saxon regenerates into Missy offscreen, she tries his plot again with what's left behind from it but with a more — to her way of thinking — positive end in mind than he did. She'll fail, and eventually make her way to this point only to die because she forced him to regenerate, bringing her story tragically full circle.]]

* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS37E4ArachnidsInTheUK "Arachnids in the UK"]], like [[Recap/DoctorWhoS10E5TheGreenDeath "The Green Death"]], has mutated invertebrates caused by the illegal dumping of toxic waste into a mine shaft by a CorruptCorporateExecutive.

* The Master's latest plan involves creating a Cyberman army. A black character who is relevant throughout the series is KilledOffForReal and then reborn as a Cyberman while the companion goes though BreakTheCutie as a result. Now, are we talking about [[Recap/DoctorWhoS34E11DarkWater "Dark Water"]]/[[Recap/DoctorWhoS34E12DeathInHeaven "Death in Heaven"]] or [[Recap/DoctorWhoS36E11WorldEnoughAndTime "World Enough and Time"]]/[[Recap/DoctorWhoS36E12TheDoctofFalls "The Doctor Falls"]]? The main differences are [[spoiler:Clara's love interest is converted and her BreakTheCutie is due to grief in "Dark Water", while it is the companion herself who is converted and being forced to take TheSlowPath while separated from the Doctor and getting Cyber-converted is what breaks her in "World Enough and Time". Plus, there are two Masters running around in the latter, with one flipping sides]]. Thinking it through, some of this is intentional: [[spoiler:after Saxon regenerates into Missy offscreen, she tries his plot again with what's left behind from it but with a more — to her way of thinking — positive end in mind than he did. She'll fail, and eventually make her way to this point only to die because she forced him to regenerate, bringing her story tragically full circle.]]

* The story [[Recap/DoctorWhoS13E6TheSeedsOfDoom "The Seeds of Doom"]] (by Robert Banks Stewart) was recycled from ''Series/TheAvengers'' "Man-Eater of Surrey Green". (Stewart had written for ''The Avengers'', but not that episode, which was by Philip Levene.) "The Seeds of Doom" feels wrong for a ''Doctor Who'' story in many ways, since it follows the ''Avengers'' formula. For example, the Fourth Doctor casually jumps on top of a bad guy and punches him out!

* The Master's latest plan involves creating a Cyberman army. A black character who is relevant throughout the series is KilledOffForReal and then reborn as a Cyberman while the companion goes though BreakTheCutie as a result. Now, are we talking about [[Recap/DoctorWhoS34E11DarkWater "Dark Water"]] or [[Recap/DoctorWhoS36E11WorldEnoughAndTime "World Enough and Time"]]? The main differences are [[spoiler:Clara's love interest is converted and her BreakTheCutie is due to grief in "Dark Water", while it is the companion herself who is converted and being forced to take TheSlowPath while separated from the Doctor and getting Cyber-converted is what breaks her in "World Enough and Time". Plus, there are two Masters running around in the latter, with one flipping sides]]. Thinking it through, some of this is intentional: [[spoiler:after Saxon regenerates into Missy offscreen, she tries his plot again with what's left behind from it but with a more -- to her way of thinking -- positive end in mind than he did. She'll fail, and eventually make her way to this point only to die because she forced him to regenerate, bringing her story tragically full circle.]]

* The Master's latest plan involves creating a Cyberman army. A black character who is relevant throughout the series is KilledOffForReal and then reborn as a Cyberman while the companion goes though BreakTheCutie as a result. Now, are we talking about [[Recap/DoctorWhoS34E11DarkWater "Dark Water"]] or [[Recap/DoctorWhoS36E11WorldEnoughAndTime "World Enough and Time"]]? The main differences are [[spoiler: Clara's love interest is converted and her BreakTheCutie is due to grief in "Dark Water", while it is the companion herself who is converted and being forced to take TheSlowPath while separated from the Doctor and getting Cyber-converted is what breaks her in "World Enough and Time". Plus, there are two Masters running around in the latter, with one flipping sides]]. Thinking it through, some of this is intentional: [[spoiler: after Saxon regenerates into Missy offscreen, she tries his plot again with what's left behind from it but with a more -- to her way of thinking -- positive end in mind than he did. She'll fail, and eventually make her way to this point only to die because she forced him to regenerate, bringing her story tragically full circle]].
** Also, a common complaint about the denouement was that it meant that two of the Twelfth Doctor's companions had virtually the same final fate. [[spoiler: Both Clara Oswald and Bill Potts end up staving off death by becoming immortal or close enough to it, leave with another immortalized woman to travel the universe for more adventures, and neither bid the Doctor a proper final goodbye due to him being amnesiac of them/apparently dead at the time, meaning he doesn't know until the end of his incarnation what actually became of them. (It's even more similar for those who ship Clara and Ashildr/Me, as Bill and Heather are canonically lovers.)]]

** Also, a common complaint about the denouement was that Bill Potts's departure from the Twelfth Doctor was near-identical to that of his previous female companion Clara Oswald. [[spoiler: Both end up staving off death by becoming immortal or close enough to it, and leave with another immortalized woman to travel the universe. (It's even more similar for those who ship Clara and Ashildr/Me, as Bill and Heather are canonically lovers.)]]

** Also, a common complaint about the denouement was that Bill Potts's departure from the Twelfth Doctor was near-identical to that of his previous female companion Clara Oswald. [[spoiler: Both end up staving off death by becoming immortal or close enough to it, and leave with another immortalized woman to travel the universe. It's even more similar for those who ship Clara and Ashildr/Me, as Bill and Heather are canonically lovers.)]]

* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E11FearHer "Fear Her"]] itself is very similar to [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E7TheIdiotsLantern "The Idiot's Lantern"]] from the same season. Both feature an alien who imprisons people during a major televised event in London (the Queen's Coronation and the Olympic Games) and a child with an abusive father. In both, at the climax, one of the protagonists falls victim to the alien, and the other must rescue them before time runs out.
* Also the story [[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E9NightTerrors "Night Terrors"]]. A child in an everyday contemporary Earth environment turns out to be an alien whose reality-warping powers cause his fears to threaten his family and neighbours. [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E11FearHer When did we see that before?]]
* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E11FearHer "Fear Her"]] also was revisited in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS34E9Flatline "Flatline"]] in Series 8: The antagonists in both stories can turn two-dimensional things into three-dimensional ones and vice versa. The Doctor ends up trapped by them and can only assist his female companion from afar in protecting others and ensuring his return, whereupon he sends the antagonists back where they came from. The main difference is that the "Flatline" antagonists, the Boneless, are malicious rather than misguided-but-sympathetic.

* The Master's latest plan involves creating a Cyberman army. A black character who is relevant throughout the series is KilledOffForReal and then reborn as a Cyberman while the companion goes though BreakTheCutie as a result. Now, are we talking about [[Recap/DoctorWhoS34E11DarkWater "Dark Water"]] or [[Recap/DoctorWhoS36E11WorldEnoughAndTime "World Enough and Time"]]? The main differences are [[spoiler:the companion's love interest is converted and the companion's BreakTheCutie is due to grief in "Dark Water", while it is the companion herself who is converted and being forced to take TheSlowPath while separated from the Doctor and getting Cyber converted is what breaks her in "World Enough and Time". Plus, there are two Masters running around in the latter, with one flipping sides.]]

* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS34E11DarkWater "Dark Water"]]/[[Recap/DoctorWhoS34E12DeathInHeaven "Death in Heaven"]], the Series 8 finale, combines the central plots of two previous season finales: [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E12ArmyOfGhosts "Army of Ghosts"]]/[[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E13Doomsday "Doomsday"]] in Series 2 and [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E12TheSoundOfDrums "The Sound of Drums"]]/[[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E13LastOfTheTimeLords "Last of the Time Lords"]] in Series 3. In Series 2, beings that are assumed to be the souls of deceased humans turn out to be Cybermen planning an invasion of Earth via a parallel universe; Series 8 has deceased humans being tricked into letting their consciousnesses and remains becoming the basis for a Cyber-army. In both Series 3 and 8, a recurring background character is revealed to have been a regeneration of the Master all along, planning to wipe out humanity with an army of robotic minions — leading to a pivotal scene aboard an airborne UNIT base where "The President" holds court as Earth's representative. Replace ghosts with skeletons, "Mr. Saxon" with "Missy", the Toclafane with the Cybermen, ''Valiant'' with "Boat One", and the President of the United States with the President of Earth! All three stories also end with the Doctor and his current companion parting ways under unhappy circumstances, but that's par for the course for [=NewWho=] season finales; notably, all three companions are reunited with the Doctor sometime afterward.

* Not only is [[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E6TheMoonbase "The Moonbase"]] a SequelEpisode to [[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E2TheTenthPlanet "The Tenth Planet"]], it rehashes the same plot, just replace the North Pole with the moon and the sub-plot involving the space capsule in danger with one about a mysterious illness.

* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E3VictoryOfTheDaleks "Victory of the Daleks"]] borrows big chunks of the [[MissingEpisode lost serial]] [[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E3ThePowerOfTheDaleks "The Power of the Daleks"]], but with more of a knowing, InternalHomage/WholePlotReference approach. The stuff that's borrowed — Daleks feigning servitude to humans, the Doctor protesting that they're pure evil and no-one believing him, a quirky scientist who discovered them promoting them to the leader of his people as a new development that can solve all of their problems, the Daleks doing it all as a plan to grow their ranks — is all aesthetic stuff, and the actual plot machinery itself is fairly different.

* The Minisodes "Meanwhile in the TARDIS 2" and [[Recap/DoctorWhoS33ShortClaraAndTheTardis "Clara and the TARDIS"]] are both virtually identical accounts of the Eleventh Doctor's companion getting the TARDIS to show them a slideshow of former companions (with the male ones conspicuously missing) and show comical disgust at the Doctor's [[TheCharmer perceived womanising]], as well as his [[GenderDynamicsIndex "typical male" interests in machines and women, with the implication that the TARDIS is doing it out of female jealousy]]. "Clara and the TARDIS" also swipes scenes from the Red Nose Day special where multiple Amys get stuck in a time loop and flirt with each other, when multiple Claras get stuck in a time loop and flirt with each other.