10 Doctor Who Scenes Even More Impressive When You Know The Truth
Filming Doctor Who can be more dangerous than you realise...
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00:00 As much as we'd love it to be real, Doctor Who is unfortunately just a TV show.
00:05 It's filmed on a set, features actors, and the monsters and villains are just people in rubber
00:09 suits. Sorry to break it to you. But sometimes, what goes into making a scene in real life is
00:15 far more interesting than what ends up transmitted on screen. And so, with that in mind, I'm Ellie
00:20 with WhoCulture, here with 10 Doctor Who Scenes Even More Impressive When You Know The Truth.
00:25 Number 10. Dubai Disaster. With New Who on sabbatical following its fourth series,
00:30 the producers could afford to push the boat out with a handful of specials in 2009. And one such
00:36 special was Planet of the Dead, broadcast over the Easter period. It involved a doctor and a
00:41 bus full of people being stranded on a desert planet. As if that wasn't bad enough, they were
00:46 also stalked by a pack of flying, ravenous stingrays. Public transport. What a nightmare.
00:51 To achieve a more realistic feel for the episode, it was shot in Dubai. But this meant
00:56 transporting a double-decker London bus all the way out to the Middle East, which went about as
01:01 well as could be expected. The bus was seriously damaged in transit when a container was accidentally
01:06 dropped on it. After losing their minds for a while, the crew decided to simply incorporate
01:10 the damage into the story, explaining that the bus was damaged when it travelled through the
01:15 portal. It would have looked weird if the bus was pristine, so this accident actually improved
01:19 the episode. 9. Manning's mishaps
01:22 Katie Manning's original stint as companion Jo Grant stretched from 1971 to 1973, and though
01:28 she undoubtedly enjoyed her time on the show, it was incredibly difficult to film at times.
01:33 Not because of the long hours, the techno babble, or the endless quarries, but because she could
01:37 barely see where she was going. Manning suffered from extreme short-sightedness, and since she
01:42 wasn't allowed to wear the thick glasses which aided her vision, she would often lose track of
01:46 her surroundings. In fact, while filming her debut story, Terror of the Autons, she ran straight into
01:52 a rock and twisted her ankle. In Manning's own words, this forced John Pertwee to start "leading
01:57 me around like a mother hen" in order to avoid her injuring herself constantly. The master himself,
02:02 Roger Delgado, also helped Manning in a similar way. So, next time you're watching the third
02:07 Doctor pull Jo around by hand, it's likely that what you're actually seeing is Pertwee taking
02:12 care of his co-star. What a gent. Number 8, First Doctor Doppelganger
02:17 Doctor's past, present, and future combining forces to save Gallifrey is an all-time great
02:22 Doctor Who moment, especially when you think about how tricky it must have been to pull off.
02:27 Finding suitable archive clips for every single Doctor, piecing all their disparate lines together
02:32 to make them fit the scene, it's enough to give you a headache just thinking about it.
02:36 But as impressive as the scene is, there's one particular element that makes it even
02:40 more impressive than you realise. Though most of the dialogue was indeed plucked from prior
02:45 episodes, there's one notable exception. Because Gallifrey wasn't spoken on screen until the Third
02:51 Doctor's era, the First Doctor's line calling the War Council of Gallifrey "This is the Doctor"
02:56 wasn't possible to create with William Hartnell's voice. And with Hartnell having passed away in the
03:01 70s, he wasn't around to record it afresh. So, the production recruited voice artist John
03:06 Giler, whose First Doctor impression is so uncanny that it fits seamlessly into the scene,
03:11 and you never even notice that you're actually listening to an impersonator.
03:14 Another fun quirk in this sequence revolves around the Seventh Doctor. Due to his footage
03:18 being pulled from both his original run and the 1996 TV movie, his age, costume,
03:24 and TARDIS interior inexplicably change halfway through. Wibbly wobbly, indeed.
03:29 Number 7 - Prop Master Bond
03:31 There are countless Doctor Who props with interesting stories behind them,
03:35 but arguably none more so than this. Fourth Doctor serial Revenge of the Cybermen features
03:40 a secret radio transmitter, used by Kelman, which is disguised as a clothes brush. It's
03:46 an unassuming device and you wouldn't think there's anything special about it,
03:49 but this little prop had quite the journey en route to its Doctor Who role.
03:53 This exact same prop was used in the James Bond film Live and Let Die, which released two years
03:58 prior, but even better, it was actually given to the BBC by Roger Moore himself.
04:04 The Prop Master offered to pay two shillings and sixpence for the item, which is around 12p today.
04:09 Still, Moore gleefully accepted, telling the Radio Times that "I popped into the
04:14 Beeb for a cup of tea. I didn't expect to walk out with two and six."
04:17 Wherever the prop is, it will undoubtedly be worth more today, especially considering
04:21 that Tom Baker actually picked it up in Revenge of the Cybermen, which no doubt increased its value.
04:27 Number 6 - A Very Old Friend
04:29 Towards the end of Jodie Whittaker's final outing, The Power of the Doctor,
04:33 Yaz joins a support group of former companions who share stories of their adventures through
04:37 time and space. Present at the meeting are Yaz's friends, Graham and Dan, alongside seasoned
04:42 veterans like Ace, Tegan, Joe, Mel, Kate, and Ian. Played by William Russell, Ian appeared in the
04:49 very first episode of Doctor Who back in 1963 as one of the first humans to travel back in time
04:55 in the TARDIS. He left the show in 1965, making it a whopping 57 years before he returned in The
05:01 Power of the Doctor. Now, we covered that 57 year hiatus in our video about the longest gaps between
05:07 Doctor Who character appearances, but one detail we didn't mention, which somehow makes the scene
05:11 even more impressive, is that Russell also broke the Guinness World Record for the longest gap
05:16 between TV appearances. His return was truly heartwarming, as most of the other cast members
05:21 from that first episode are sadly no longer around. However, Ian's still here, alive and
05:26 kicking. Are we sure he isn't a real Time Lord?
05:29 Number 5 - Eleven grabs a bite
05:31 Whenever there's a scene in a TV show that involves inflicting pain on a character,
05:35 you'd rightfully assume that the entire thing was faked. But in one particular case in Doctor
05:40 Who's fifth series, you'd be wrong. Amy Pond does not have a nice day out in the time of Angels and
05:45 Flesh and Stone, with the dastardly Angel Bob gleefully informing the Eleventh Doctor that
05:50 there's something in her eye. That something being a weeping angel. Not great. This Angel
05:56 sends Amy on a massive trip, with dust pouring from her eye and an ominous countdown leading
06:01 to her death. At one point, it also appears to turn her hand into stone, locking her in place.
06:06 Proving that it's just a trick, the Doctor bites her hand, and the shock of this action allows her
06:11 to move it. What you probably didn't know is that Matt Smith completely and utterly bit Karen Gillan's
06:17 hand in this scene, as revealed by the actress on the episode's commentary track. Her yelp of pain
06:22 was completely genuine, so perhaps Smith got a bit too method here.
06:25 Number 4 - Having a Blast
06:27 Doctor Who has been around for 60 years, but it might not have lasted past six years if this
06:32 moment from 1969's The War Games had gone differently. During a scene which required
06:37 the three leads to stand near an explosion, second Doctor Patrick Troughton was unhappy
06:42 with their positioning. The fact that the explosives expert on set was missing some
06:46 of his fingers certainly didn't help matters. To reassure himself, Troughton asked to see a
06:51 practice run of this stunt. The crew obliged, setting off the explosion, and a huge rock
06:56 landed directly at the spot where the actors were supposed to stand. If the actor hadn't raised his
07:01 concerns, the second iteration of The Doctor might have been the final one. Thankfully though,
07:06 Troughton was confident enough to speak up, and we were saved from finding out whether the actors
07:10 who play The Doctor can regenerate themselves. Spoiler, probably not.
07:15 Number 3 - Master of Mime
07:17 Catherine Tate wasn't known as a dramatic actress before Doctor Who,
07:21 which caused a good amount of scepticism when she was announced in a recurring role.
07:25 She soon proved the doubters wrong, of course, with several powerful, emotionally charged moments
07:30 in her second episode, The Fires of Pompeii. But what wasn't a surprise was that she absolutely
07:35 nailed the comedy. Her debut episode, Partners in Crime, features her funniest Doctor Who moment,
07:40 with the Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble communicating via mime. It seems like the sort of thing that
07:44 would be meticulously planned beforehand, but that wasn't actually the case. Tate was given
07:50 very little guidance on how to perform the mime, with the script simply reading "Donna does a
07:54 little mime." Naturally, she asked director James Strong if he had any thoughts on the scene.
07:59 He didn't. Before turning to showrunner Russell T. Davis, who wasn't much help either, responding,
08:04 "See what Catherine comes up with." And so Tate invented the whole thing on the day.
08:09 The scene could very easily have been awkward rather than funny, so it's a testament to her
08:13 comedic abilities that it turned out so well. Number 2, Wartime Wilf
08:18 One of the most impactful scenes in Doctor Who has nothing to do with aliens or explosions.
08:24 It's two men having a conversation, and it's brilliant. After escaping Earth following the
08:29 Master's conquest of the planet, the Doctor and Wilfred Mott sit down, watching the big blue ball
08:34 spin. After a heartbreaking exchange, Wilf begs the Doctor to take his old service revolver and
08:39 kill the Master with it before he gets the chance to kill him. As always, the Doctor says no to the
08:44 gun. During this chat, Wilf recounts his time in the military, telling the Doctor about when he
08:48 was stationed in Palestine after World War II. Bernard Cribbin's delivery of these lines sounds
08:54 convincing, and that's because he was actually there serving as part of a parachute regiment.
08:59 Furthermore, the blizzard of bullets Wilf describes actually happened to Cribbin,
09:03 who used his time in the army to inform his performance. From soldier to singer to one of
09:08 the greatest companions of all time. Just another chapter in the extraordinary life of the late,
09:15 great Bernard Cribbins. Number 1. A Bizarre Interruption
09:19 Like Planet of the Dead, 1984's fifth Doctor serial, Planet of Fire, was shot in an exotic
09:25 location. In this case, Lanzarote, one of the Canary Islands. With less control over this
09:31 location than there would be in a studio, one particular moment was interrupted in the most
09:35 bizarre of circumstances. In one scene, Perri Brown, played by Nicola Bryant, nearly drowns.
09:41 Bryant must have given a stellar performance because a passerby thought she was actually
09:45 in trouble and tried to save her while the scene was being filmed. The man, who just so happened
09:50 to be a German nudist, was kindly told that he'd ruined the shot for a very popular BBC show.
09:56 Said man then decided to get some revenge by purposefully ruining more shots, and so he ran
10:01 through the back of a scene set on the beach. Watching Perri almost drown is a very different
10:05 experience when you know that a man with his tackle out very nearly ruined the whole thing.
10:09 And that concludes our list. If you think we missed anything, then do let us know in the
10:14 comments below, and while you're there, don't forget to like and subscribe, and tap that
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10:22 us there, and Instagram as well, and I can be found across various social medias just by searching
10:27 Ellie Littlechild. Don't forget to also look out for Sean Ferrick too, and Dan The Meeks as well.
10:32 I've been Ellie with WhoCulture, and in the words of River Song herself, goodbye, sweeties.