After completing "Snakedance", Saward requested that writer Christopher Bailey devise another story. The initial outline for "May Time" was commissioned on 24 August 1982 and was about the Doctor and his companions arriving at the court of Byzantium. Full scripts were commissioned on 16 September 1982 with the new title "Man-watch", but the scripts were dropped from production for unclear reasons. A second attempt at the story under the title "Children of Seth" was attempted as a Sixth Doctor story, for which the scripts commissioned on 14 July 1983. This failed because of Bailey's failure to devise a structure for the new doctor's new 45-minute episode format and a tangible villain for the Doctor to face. It was later adapted as "The Children of Seth" by Marc Platt for Big Finish's "The Lost Stories" in December 2011.