The joint introductions of Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond is one of Doctor Who's most memorable scenes, but young Amelia's first onscreen appearance might have gone very differently. Steven Moffat had plans to introduce the character even if David Tennant's Tenth Doctor had stuck around.
Speaking to Doctor Who Magazine, Moffat explained his plans for one final year of the Tenth Doctor:
I only had the roughest idea. Had David stayed for one final year, it would certainly have been his last, so my pitch was that it would start with the Tardis crashing in Amelia’s back garden – as now – and a terribly battered and bruised Tenth Doctor staggering out.
Amelia finds him, feeds him fish custard (no that was for Matt, it would have been something more Davidy) and generally helps him. But we, the audience, can see he’s in a truly bad way. Dying maybe. Eventually he heads back to his TARDIS, and flies off.
But when he returns – many years later for Amy – he seems perfectly fine, and indeed doesn’t remember any of those events…And of course over time, we realise what we saw was the Tenth Doctor at the end of his life, about to regenerate. Events that we return to in Episode 13…
Steven Moffat’s Unused Doctor Who Story Arc – What If David Tennant Had Stayed For One More Year? [Bleeding Cool]