10 Doctor Who Behind The Scenes Secrets You Need To Know
Uncovering some of Doctor Who's most intriguing behind the scenes secrets.
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00:00 As with any storied entertainment franchise, there are so many
00:03 fascinating things to find out about the making of Doctor Who.
00:06 It's like Wester Drumlins or Gabriel Chase, a creaky old
00:10 house full of secrets just waiting to be uncovered.
00:13 So let's uncover some.
00:14 I'm Ellie for Who Culture here with 10 Doctor Who
00:16 behind the scenes secrets you need to know.
00:19 Number 10, Codenames Keep Things Quiet.
00:22 Doctor Who is one of the most scrutinized shows in the world,
00:25 and both the press and fans alike want to know what the next
00:28 big scoop is going to be.
00:29 So certain measures are taken to keep things hush-hush,
00:32 including a tactic the Doctor themselves would be proud of,
00:35 fake names.
00:36 Before the Twelfth Doctor's new companion, Bill Potts,
00:39 was officially revealed, the role was known as
00:41 Mean Town behind the scenes.
00:42 That's an anagram of ten women, as Bill was the tenth companion
00:46 of the tenth modern series.
00:48 Sneaky.
00:49 Jenna Coleman and Karen Gillan had to tell their family and
00:51 friends they were auditioning for shows called Men on Waves
00:54 and Panic Moon, respectively.
00:56 Men on Waves is an anagram of Woman 7, since Coleman was
01:00 auditioning for Series 7, and Panic Moon is the word
01:03 Companion scrambled up.
01:04 Meanwhile, the codename for current Doctor Who filming is
01:07 reportedly The Bridge.
01:09 And if you think all of this is ridiculous, then just remember
01:11 that this is a show that made an entire spin-off based
01:14 on an anagram.
01:15 Number nine, The Candyman vs Bertie Bassett.
01:18 The Candyman was an android made of candy, and not even the
01:21 good stuff either.
01:22 Licorice all sorts.
01:24 They're disgusting.
01:25 Can you give us a robot made of gummy bears?
01:26 Now then, we'll talk.
01:28 Licorice all sorts?
01:29 Really?
01:29 In the seventh Doctor serial, The Happiness Patrol,
01:31 the TARDIS drops in on a society where sadness is
01:34 punishable by death.
01:35 The Candyman adds to this subversion as he may look sweet
01:38 on the outside, but he's actually an unstoppable
01:40 killing machine.
01:41 Well, unless you have some lemonade handy.
01:43 In reality, he was defeated by a much more terrifying prospect,
01:46 a lawsuit.
01:47 After part two of the serial went out, the show got a letter
01:50 from H.B.
01:51 Stokes, chairman of confectionery company Bassett.
01:53 Stokes pointed out that The Candyman bore a striking
01:56 resemblance to his company's mascot, Bertie Bassett,
01:59 who was also an anthropomorphised pile of sweets.
02:02 Even though Doctor Who was cleared by the BBC
02:04 copyright department, it was promised that The Candyman
02:07 would never appear in the show again.
02:08 So for those of us who've been gunning for his return since
02:11 2005, unfortunately, we're out of luck.
02:14 Genuinely, I'd love to see The Candyman return.
02:16 Number eight, Not Everything is an Original Creation.
02:20 Doctor Who has utilised so many props and costume pieces
02:23 over the decades.
02:24 But did you know that many of them actually belonged
02:26 to the actors?
02:27 The third Doctor's weird hovercraft car, the Who-mobile,
02:30 wasn't built by the props department.
02:31 It was brought in by John Pertwee, who had personally
02:34 commissioned it himself.
02:35 It was also Pertwee who gave it the name Who-mobile.
02:38 Oh, we love you, John, but maybe stick to the acting, eh?
02:41 Though not nearly as impressive as having an entire car built,
02:44 David Tennant also brought his own possessions
02:46 to the character.
02:47 The tenth Doctor's iconic Converse shoes were Tennant's
02:49 idea, and for the first few episodes, he wore his own pair.
02:52 This is why they look so battered.
02:54 He'd been using them for years already.
02:56 Best of all, though, is the twelfth Doctor's ring.
02:58 Peter Capaldi didn't want to remove his wedding band
03:00 during filming, and so a special prop ring was created
03:03 to cover his band while in character.
03:06 Now, in-universe, the ring contains a stone of green
03:08 amber from the planet Raxacorocophalopatorius,
03:11 which I know full well has been put in my script because
03:13 they wanted to catch me out.
03:15 So, ha-ha, said it first time.
03:16 And it's said to remind the Doctor of all the wars that he
03:19 has won, but also all the lives that he has taken.
03:22 Number seven, the TV movie's A-list aspirations.
03:25 The 1996 TV movie is an odd thing.
03:27 It was an American co-production, which is
03:30 strange enough for Doctor Who.
03:31 It went through so many iterations during development,
03:33 including one where the Doctor and the Master were
03:35 half-brothers and Barusa was the Doctor's gramps.
03:38 Fair enough.
03:39 At points, it was also aiming to be much more of a
03:41 blockbuster event than it ended up being.
03:43 This is largely down to some of the insane A-list names
03:46 Philip Segal and Peter Wagg, the project's original
03:49 spearheads, had considered to star in and direct this new
03:52 era of Doctor Who.
03:53 Hollywood heavyweights like Ralph Fiennes, Hugh Grant,
03:56 Sean Bean, Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart and
03:58 Piers Brosnan - yep, James Bond himself - were all thrown
04:01 around as potential Doctor candidates in the early stages.
04:04 Some would, of course, go on to appear in Doctor Who further
04:07 down the line, like McKellen as the voice of the great
04:09 intelligence opposite Matt Smith.
04:11 Meanwhile, Wagg shortlisted some big-name directors for
04:14 the project, including Alien and Blade runners Ridley Scott,
04:17 Gremlins' Joe Dante and Star Trek 3 and 4 director
04:21 Leonard Nimoy.
04:22 So hang on, let me get this straight.
04:23 This means that there's a timeline where we got a Doctor
04:26 Who movie starring Picard and directed by Spock.
04:28 Just imagine it.
04:29 Number six, the sounds of time and space.
04:31 There are just as many legendary sound effects in
04:34 Doctor Who as there are heroes, villains and planets.
04:37 But how do they all get made?
04:38 That beautiful weesh woosh that has started so many great
04:41 adventures over the years, also known as the sound of the
04:44 TARDIS materialising, was created by scraping a key
04:47 along a piano wire.
04:48 This master stroke was the idea of Brian Hodgson, who came up
04:55 with many of the early sound effects for Doctor Who,
04:57 including the voice of the Daleks.
04:59 Hodgson had previously worked on a children's radio show
05:01 where he'd voiced a robot butler using a
05:04 ring modulation system.
05:05 When the time came for the Doctor's greatest enemies to
05:07 speak, he reused this technique and instructed voice artist
05:10 Peter Hawkins to give a monotone delivery.
05:13 And thus, TV history was made.
05:15 Hodgson used all sorts of unusual things to create the
05:17 Doctor Who soundscape.
05:19 One rumour goes that he got the roar of a Yeti from a
05:21 flushing toilet, which may be a myth, but it's also a
05:24 really funny myth.
05:24 Number five, actor reuse goes deeper than you realise.
05:28 We all know that Doctor Who likes to reuse actors.
05:30 Freema Ajuman in Army of Ghosts, David Bradley in
05:33 Dinosaurs on a Spaceship.
05:34 Hell, Fires of Pompeii has both a future doctor and
05:37 future companion in it.
05:38 Big names aside, though, this happens way more than you
05:41 think, and it's so sneaky that you probably didn't even
05:44 realise they were doing it.
05:45 Remember All Ears Alan from Fugitive of the Jadoon,
05:48 the nosy barista who fancies Ruth?
05:49 Well, Michael Bedgeley, or Begley, I apologise, I don't
05:52 know how to say his name.
05:53 But the actor who plays him had previously portrayed the
05:56 pirate Mulligan in The Curse of the Black Spot.
05:58 Mark Dexter, who played Cal's dad in The Library Two
06:01 Parter, turned up 12 years later in Spyfall Part Two as
06:04 Victorian inventor Charles Babbage.
06:06 Both Prem from Demons of the Punjab and the PE teacher from
06:09 the God Complex previously appeared in TARDIS So 12.
06:12 Yeah, remember those?
06:13 A prelude to Army of Ghosts.
06:15 And then there's the curious case of Lara Philippard.
06:17 The young Lara not only played a member of the extended
06:20 Connolly family in The Idiot's Lantern, but she also
06:23 appeared in a main role in the Torchwood episode Small
06:26 Worlds as a girl obsessed with fairies.
06:28 Serious brownie points if you spotted that one.
06:30 And I'm fairly certain there are plenty more.
06:32 So let us know if you spotted any more in the
06:34 comments down below.
06:34 Number four, fake cast members help maintain surprises.
06:38 When they aren't making their actors play 17 different
06:41 characters at once, the Doctor Who team are changing their
06:43 names to prevent spoilers.
06:45 In the days of classic Who, publications like the
06:47 Radio Times were the primary source of information about
06:50 upcoming episodes.
06:51 So not wanting to reveal that Davros was back in 1988's
06:55 Remembrance of the Daleks, the BBC provided a cast list for
06:58 the magazine which contained Roy Tromeli, an anagram of
07:01 Davros actor Terry Malloy.
07:03 The character most affected by this practice is the Master,
07:06 which makes sense as they've made more random appearances
07:09 over the years than Stan Lee in the MCU.
07:11 Fifth Doctor serial The King's Demons reportedly starred
07:14 someone called James Stoker, an anagram of Master's Joke.
07:18 A cheeky way to obscure the fact that the Master was
07:20 set to appear.
07:21 This also happened with Castrovalva, where the Master's
07:24 disguise, Portreeve, was credited as being played by
07:27 Neil Toine, a codename for Master actor Tony Ainley.
07:31 More recently, the series 12 finale cast list contained a
07:34 character called Fackout, played by Barak Stemmis,
07:37 which when rearranged spells Master is back.
07:39 That one wasn't quite as sneaky as the rest.
07:42 Number three, most Weeping Angels aren't props.
07:45 Weeping Angels aren't just a genius monster design.
07:47 They're also an absolute godsend for the Doctor Who
07:49 casting department.
07:50 Monsters that are rarely shown moving and take the form of a
07:53 bunch of generic statues.
07:54 Perfect.
07:55 Who needs extras when you can just replace them with props?
07:57 Sure, the unions might have a thing or two to say about that,
08:00 but sorry, what's that?
08:01 The angels are barely ever props.
08:03 What the hell?
08:04 In the commentary for his episode Blink, writer Steven
08:07 Moffat revealed that just two of the angels seen in the
08:09 episode were fake.
08:10 The rest of them were played by actual actors who had to
08:12 master the art of standing still and looking menacing.
08:15 After this first go, it made sense for even more actors to
08:18 be hired for the angels next appearance in series five as
08:21 there were more of them on screen and they actually got to
08:24 move on camera this time.
08:25 According to some of the extras in the time of angels and
08:28 flesh and stone, the rubber angel suits were actually
08:30 quite comfortable, although they may have just been saying
08:32 that so they didn't hurt anyone's feelings.
08:34 Let's be honest.
08:35 Number two, doctors aren't paid as much as you think.
08:38 When you take on the role of Doctor Who, you don't do it
08:40 for the money.
08:41 You do it to be part of an institution, to etch your name
08:44 into the history books and to be an inspiration to millions
08:47 everywhere as a beacon of hope and morality in a cruel and
08:50 depressive world, but also the money.
08:52 When William Hartnell took on the role of the first doctor,
08:54 TV stars weren't the same glamorous celebrities
08:57 they are today.
08:57 And as a result, he was earning a salary of three hundred and
09:00 fifteen pounds per episode by 1966, around seven grand today.
09:05 That's barely enough to keep him in his fancy neckties.
09:07 Meanwhile, many years into the future, Peter Capaldi's
09:10 earnings were between two hundred thousand pounds and
09:12 two hundred and fifty thousand pounds towards the end
09:15 of his run.
09:15 Now, that may sound like a lot.
09:17 But when you consider that Danny Dyer got a similar amount
09:19 for being in EastEnders, it doesn't look quite as flashy.
09:22 And when Jodie Whittaker was revealed as Capaldi's
09:24 replacement, it was announced that she would be earning the
09:26 same amount as her predecessor.
09:28 And while this was great news for gender equality, you can't
09:31 help but wonder if Jodie was kicking herself for not trying
09:34 her luck in Albert Square.
09:35 Number one, the first regeneration was an accident.
09:38 Regeneration might have looked a lot different, were it not
09:41 for a bit of luck in the BBC tech department.
09:43 You all know the story by now.
09:45 William Hartnell's health was declining, so the showrunners
09:47 came up with a genius way of replacing him without killing
09:50 off the main character.
09:51 In a now legendary scene, Hartnell collapsed to the floor
09:54 and his face slowly faded away to be replaced
09:56 by Patrick Troughton's.
09:57 This effect was the result of a faulty mixing desk, which
10:00 caused whichever images were passing through it to
10:02 become overexposed.
10:04 Vision mixer Shirley Coward thought that creating a white
10:06 out would be a great way to hide the transition between
10:09 the actors, and that's precisely what happened.
10:11 Thank God she said something, because the initial plan
10:14 for this scene was, well, let's be kind and just say it
10:17 was not as good.
10:18 Originally, Hartnell was supposed to fall down with his
10:20 cloak covering his face, which would have been then the end
10:23 of his doctor.
10:24 And next time, the cloak would be removed to
10:26 reveal Troughton.
10:26 I wonder how bi-generation would have looked if hoods and
10:29 cloaks were the chosen transition device.
10:32 Hmm.
10:32 Interesting.
10:33 And there you have it.
10:34 But if you want some more secrets, then why not check
10:36 out Secrets of the Sonic Screwdriver?
10:38 In the meantime, I've been Ellie for Who Culture, and in
10:40 the words of River Song herself, goodbye, sweeties.
10:43 [BLANK_AUDIO]