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 suits.
00:10 Sorry to break it to you.
00:11 But sometimes, what goes into making a scene in real life is far more interesting than what ends up transmitted on screen.
00:18 And so, with that in mind, I'm Ellie with WhoCulture,
00:21 here with 10 Doctor Who Scenes Even More Impressive When You Know The Truth.
00:26 Number 10, Dubai Disaster
00:28 With New Who on sabbatical following its fourth series,
00:31 the producers could afford to push the boat out with a handful of specials in 2009.
00:35 And one such special was Planet of the Dead, broadcast over the Easter period.
00:40 It involved the Doctor and a bus full of people being stranded on a desert planet.
00:44 As if that wasn't bad enough, they were also stalked by a pack of flying, ravenous stingrays.
00:49 Public transport. What a nightmare.
00:52 To achieve a more realistic feel for the episode, it was shot in Dubai.
00:55 This meant transporting a double-decker London bus all the way out to the Middle East,
01:00 which went about as well as could be expected.
01:02 The bus was seriously damaged in transit when a container was accidentally dropped on it.
01:07 After losing their minds for a while, the crew decided to simply incorporate the damage into the story,
01:12 explaining that the bus was damaged when it travelled through the portal.
01:15 It would have looked weird if the bus was pristine, so this accident actually improved the episode.
01:20 Number 9, Manning's Mishaps
01:22 Katie Manning's original stint as companion Jo Grant stretched from 1971 to 1973,
01:28 and though 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,
01:36 but because she could barely see where she was going.
01:39 Manning suffered from extreme short-sightedness, and since she wasn't allowed to wear the thick glasses
01:44 which aided her vision, she would often lose track of her surroundings.
01:47 In fact, while filming her debut story, Terror of the Autons,
01:51 she ran straight into a rock and twisted her ankle.
01:54 In Manning's own words, this forced John Pertwee to start
01:57 "leading me around like a mother hen" in order to avoid her injuring herself constantly.
02:02 The master himself, Roger Delgado, also helped Manning in a similar way.
02:06 So, next time you're watching the third Doctor pull Jo around by hand,
02:09 it's likely that what you're actually seeing is Pertwee taking care of his co-star.
02:14 What a gent.
02:15 Number 8, First Doctor Doppelganger
02:17 Doctor's past, present, and future combining forces to save Gallifrey
02:21 is an all-time great Doctor Who moment.
02:24 Especially when you think about how tricky it must have been to pull off.
02:27 Finding suitable archive clips for every single Doctor,
02:30 piecing all their disparate lines together to make them fit the scene,
02:34 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
02:40 that makes it even more impressive than you realise.
02:43 Though most of the dialogue was indeed plucked from prior episodes,
02:46 there's one notable exception.
02:48 Because Gallifrey wasn't spoken on screen until the third Doctor's era,
02:52 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.
02:59 And with Hartnell having passed away in the 70s,
03:02 he wasn't around to record it afresh.
03:04 So, the production recruited voice artist John Giler,
03:07 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.
03:15 Another fun quirk in this sequence revolves around the seventh Doctor.
03:18 Due to his footage being pulled from both his original run and the 1996 TV movie,
03:23 his age, costume, and TARDIS interior inexplicably change halfway through.
03:28 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.
03:38 Fourth Doctor serial, Revenge of the Cybermen, features a secret radio transmitter,
03:42 used by Kelman, which is disguised as a clothes brush.
03:46 It's 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,
03:57 which released two years prior.
03:59 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,
04:07 which is around 12p today.
04:10 Still, Moore gleefully accepted, telling the Radio Times that
04:13 "I popped into the beep 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,
04:21 especially considering that Tom Baker actually picks it up in Revenge of the Cybermen,
04:25 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 time and space.
04:39 Present at the meeting are Yaz's friends, Graham and Dan,
04:41 alongside seasoned veterans like Ace, Teagan, Joe, Mel, Kate, and Ian.
04:47 Played by William Russell, Ian appeared in the very first episode of Doctor Who back in 1963,
04:52 as one of the first humans to travel back in time in the TARDIS.
04:56 He left the show in 1965, making it a whopping 57 years before he returned in The Power of the Doctor.
05:03 Now, we covered that 57-year hiatus in our video about the longest gaps between Doctor Who character appearances,
05:08 but one detail we didn't mention, which somehow makes the scene even more impressive,
05:12 is that Russell also broke the Guinness World Record for the longest gap between TV appearances.
05:18 His return was truly heartwarming, as most of the other cast members from that first episode are sadly no longer around.
05:24 However, Ian's still here, alive and kicking.
05:27 Are we sure he isn't a real Time Lord?
05:29 Number 5, Eleven Grabs a Bite
05:32 Whenever there's a scene in a TV show that involves inflicting pain on a character,
05:36 you'd rightfully assume that the entire thing was faked.
05:39 But in one particular case in Doctor Who's fifth series, you'd be wrong.
05:42 Amy Pond does not have a nice day out in the time of angels and flesh and stone,
05:47 with the dastardly Angel Bob gleefully informing the Eleventh Doctor that there's something in her eye.
05:52 That something being a weeping angel.
05:54 Not great.
05:55 This angel sends Amy on a massive trip, with dust pouring from her eye and an ominous countdown leading to her death.
06:02 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, though, the Doctor bites her hand, and the shock of this action allows her to move it.
06:12 What you probably didn't know is that Matt Smith completely and utterly bit Karen Gillan's hand in this scene,
06:18 as revealed by the actress on the episode's commentary track.
06:21 Her yelp of pain was completely genuine, so perhaps Smith got a bit too method here.
06:26 Number 4, Having a Blast
06:28 Doctor Who has been around for 60 years, but it might not have lasted past 6 years if this moment from 1969's The War Games had gone differently.
06:36 During a scene which required the three leads to stand near an explosion,
06:40 second Doctor Patrick Troughton was unhappy with their positioning.
06:43 The fact that the explosives expert on set was missing some of his fingers certainly didn't help matters.
06:49 To reassure himself, Troughton asked to see a practice run of the stunt.
06:53 The crew obliged, setting off the explosion, and a huge rock landed directly at the spot where the actors were supposed to stand.
07:00 If the actor hadn't raised his concerns, the second iteration of The Doctor might have been the final one.
07:06 Thankfully, though, Troughton was confident enough to speak up,
07:08 and we were saved from finding out whether the actors who play The Doctor can regenerate themselves.
07:14 Spoiler, probably not.
07:15 Number 3, Master of Mime
07:18 Catherine Tate wasn't known as a dramatic actress before Doctor Who,
07:22 which caused a good amount of scepticism when she was announced in a recurring role.
07:26 She soon proved the doubters wrong, of course, with several powerful, emotionally charged moments in her second episode, The Fires of Pompeii.
07:33 But what wasn't a surprise was that she absolutely nailed the comedy.
07:36 Her debut episode, Partners in Crime, features her funniest Doctor Who moment,
07:40 with the Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble communicating via mime.
07:43 It seems like the sort of thing that would be meticulously planned beforehand, but that wasn't actually the case.
07:49 Tate was given very little guidance on how to perform the mime, with the script simply reading "Donna does a little mime."
07:55 Naturally, she asked director James Strong if he had any thoughts on the scene.
07:59 He didn't.
08:00 Before turning to showrunner Russell T. Davis, who wasn't much help either, responding,
08:04 "See what Catherine comes up with."
08:06 And so Tate invented the whole thing on the day.
08:09 This scene could very easily have been awkward rather than funny, so it's a testament to her comedic abilities that it turned out so well.
08:16 Number 2, Wartime Wilf
08:19 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.
08:28 After escaping Earth following the Master's conquest of the planet, the Doctor and Wilfred Mott sit down, watching the big blue ball spin.
08:35 After a heartbreaking exchange, Wilf begs the Doctor to take his old service revolver and kill the Master with it before he gets the chance to kill him.
08:42 As always, the Doctor says no to the gun.
08:45 During this chat, Wilf recounts his time in the military, telling the Doctor about when he was stationed in Palestine after World War II.
08:51 Bernard Cribbin's delivery of these lines sounds 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, who used his time in the army to inform his performance.
09:07 From soldier to singer to one of the greatest companions of all time, just another chapter in the extraordinary life of the late, great Bernard Cribbin.
09:17 Number 1, A Bizarre Interruption
09:20 Like Planet of the Dead, 1984's fifth Doctor serial, Planet of Fire, was shot in an exotic location.
09:26 In this case, Lanzarote, one of the Canary Islands.
09:30 With less control over this location than there would be in a studio, one particular moment was interrupted in the most bizarre of circumstances.
09:37 In one scene, Perrie Brown, played by Nicola Bryant, nearly drowns.
09:41 Bryant must have given a stellar performance because a passerby thought she was actually in trouble and tried to save her while the scene was being filmed.
09:49 The man, who just so happened 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 through the back of a scene set on the beach.
10:03 Watching Perrie almost drown is a very different experience when you know that a man with his tackle out very nearly ruined the whole thing.
10:10 And that concludes our list. If you think we missed anything, then do let us know in the comments below.
10:15 And while you're there, don't forget to like and subscribe, and tap that notification bell so you never miss a WhoCulture video again.
10:21 Also, head over to Twitter and follow us there, and Instagram as well, and I can be found across various social medias just by searching Ellie Littlechild.
10:28 Don't forget to also look out for Sean Ferrick too, and Dan The Meeks as well.
10:33 I've been Ellie with WhoCulture, and in the words of River Song herself, goodbye, sweeties.