10 Doctor Who Bloopers You Need To See
The very best bloopers and outtakes in all of time and space.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00There is no production that has made it to the finish line without a series of fluffs
00:05and blunders along the way. Now, Doctor Who has been on our screens for 60 years,
00:10so it definitely has its fair share of mistakes and bloopers, arguably more than most shows.
00:16So we thought, considering some of them are absolutely fantastic, that we'd share some with
00:22you. So with that in mind, I'm Ellie with WhoCulture, here with 10 Doctor Who bloopers
00:27you need to see. Before we get into the main countdown, there are just two moments
00:33that I feel like need to be mentioned, that don't technically count as bloopers,
00:38but they do prove just how much fun the cast and crew seem to have while making Doctor Who.
00:44Firstly, the Sycorax. Remember those skeletal masks and those glowing red eyes? Well,
00:49maybe they won't seem quite so menacing once you've seen four of them performing a beautiful
00:54rendition of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. Modern art. And the same goes for the Cybermen. They're
01:04quite terrifying, but not so much once you've seen a montage of them playing gleefully in a park
01:09and running around shouting, I'm free! Free as a bird! A cyberbird! Free as a bird! A cyberbird!
01:17I mean, I guess the conversion process doesn't always go quite as planned.
01:22Number 10. Shakespeare gets a phone call. Filming any kind of period drama must be a really
01:28odd situation. You've got people dressed head to toe in historical costumes, sat around on
01:33their mobile phones and surrounded by crew members wearing jeans and trainers. But once
01:37the cameras start rolling, it's like you've been transported through time. Unless one of
01:42those modern inventions interrupts the illusion. And that is exactly what happened during the
01:47filming of Series 3's The Shakespeare Code. Now, the episode did a really good job of recreating
01:53this period in British history. You had Shakespeare sat around with his pals, drinking beer and
01:58flirting with the barmaid in a 16th century British pub. And then, Shakespeare suddenly
02:04gets a phone call. I'll do more than that later tonight. A call? Now, there's something really
02:11unsettling about seeing William Shakespeare pull out a 2007 mobile phone, which to be honest
02:17seems like it should be from the 16th century by modern standards, and claims that it's a phone
02:22call from his agent. Now, of course, in reality, it was actor Dean Lennox Kelly who was in fact
02:28receiving a phone call from his agent. But you can be sure that if they existed during Shakespeare's
02:33time, Shakespeare most certainly would have had an agent as well. Although I don't think they
02:37would have contacted him via a Nokia. Number nine. The Angel is full of what now?
02:43Matt Smith had some very large shoes to fill when he took over from David Tennant in 2010.
02:49Although his first episode to air was The Eleventh Hour, this wasn't the first episode that he
02:55filmed. It was actually the time of Angels and Flesh and Stone that started his and Karen Gillan's
03:00Doctor Who journey. During a scene in Flesh and Stone, the Doctor is trying to direct Amy, who
03:05can't open her eyes to his location. And he warns her that the forest is full of angels.
03:11But during one take, Matt Smith got a little bit muddled with his lines and he actually said,
03:16the angel is full of forests. This is important. The angel is full of forests.
03:23Now, what actually makes this even more funny is the fact that he doesn't seem to notice his
03:27mistake. It's only when a crew member points it out to him that he realizes what he's done.
03:32Blooper aside, this actually speaks volumes to how committed and focused he was to the role
03:38right from the very beginning. Number eight. Yahoo!
03:42The most common types of bloopers that we see are usually actors fluffing or forgetting
03:47their lines. But sometimes the fault lies with a misbehaving prop or set piece.
03:51Now, even modern Who, with its bigger budgets and more advanced technologies,
03:56is not immune to these issues. You've got padlocks not opening on cue,
04:00you've got Silurian weapons not firing, you know, the usual.
04:03But the best example of this comes from the fourth Doctor Serial, The Sunmakers.
04:08Now, as Kordo rushes into the scene whooping and cheering, he's supposed to fire his gun
04:13into the air in celebration. But at least three takes saw the actor,
04:18Roy McCready, run into the scene and struggle to fire his weapon.
04:22Faulty props aside, it's actually a small miracle that his co-stars managed to keep a straight face,
04:28considering how hilarious his repeated shouts of Yahoo! are.
04:32YAHOO!
04:34But it's scenes like this that really highlight that point that actors have to react to situations
04:40as if they are spontaneous and unexpected, and they've probably done them countless times already.
04:45YAHOO!
04:48Building friendships with our colleagues can really make the difference between
04:52a great day at work and a not-so-great day at work.
04:56But these friendships can also come with their limitations. Namely,
04:59not actually doing any work and spending the rest of the day joking and laughing with your mates.
05:04And actors are no different, except quite often they're required to remain totally serious
05:08or react with really deep emotion, when in reality they're standing in front of the camera
05:14or with a load of CGI markers on their face. And sometimes the giggles get the better of them.
05:25Now it's no secret that David Tennant and Billy Piper got on really well when they were filming
05:30Series 2, and so the giggles did often strike. And one really good example of this is during
05:35the filming of The Idiot's Lantern, when a faceless Rose is revealed to the Doctor
05:40and Detective Inspector Bishop. Now in reality, Billy Piper just had a load of dots on her face
05:45that were going to be edited later in post-production, and poor David Tennant really,
05:50really struggled to keep a straight face. At one point you can even hear Tennant say
05:54that it's gonna be tough, and kudos to both of them for eventually getting it.
05:58I mean, how many jobs actually require you to imagine that your friend is missing their face?
06:04Number 6. Canine on the lash.
06:07Though not technically a blooper in the same vein as all the other entries on this list,
06:12this is just too glorious not to share with you.
06:15Included as an extra on the DVD release of The Armageddon Factor this moment,
06:19reportedly a part of the BBC's 1978 Christmas tape White Powder Christmas,
06:25features the Force Doctor and Romana sat on the floor of the TARDIS getting rather close
06:30and drinking gin before offering some to K-9. Now witnessing the robot dog chugging gin through
06:36his straw and then singing a squiffy rendition of We Wish You a Merry Christmas has certainly
06:42never been on any Whovian's bingo card. And yet, it's a sight to behold.
06:52Now whatever this actually is, it's clear that everyone was having a lot of fun,
06:56including the crew who can be heard laughing just out of shot.
07:01Number 5. Contagious corpsing.
07:03Although the last few years of Doctor Who have been disappointingly light on deleted scenes
07:08and bloopers, there have been a few released, which includes this one during the filming of
07:14Series 12's Praxeus. The problem was one of those sounds that even the most experienced
07:20thespians would struggle not to laugh at. A fart noise. The costume of one of the actors in the
07:26scene would make the farting noise every time they breathed, and so the giggles started to ensue.
07:32The problem was, the more the actor laughed, the louder the noise got,
07:36which caused even more laughter amongst Mandip Gill, Bradley Walsh,
07:40Jodie Whittaker and pretty much everybody involved in the scene.
07:47Jodie Whittaker also noted that Bradley Walsh was a notorious corpser,
07:51which meant that it was even harder to regain any sort of composure once the chaos began.
07:57See their faces.
08:01Number 4. Potty Mouse Dalek.
08:04As a family show, Doctor Who is very careful with its use of language. In fact, the modern era
08:09especially, the Doctor is very vocal about bad language and has been known to call out their
08:14companions on occasion. But of course, the show is made by adults, who frequently drop swear bombs
08:20behind the camera. While you're watching behind the scenes reels of Doctor Who for the last 60
08:25years, it can be really odd to see the show's stars out of character and hear them using that
08:31bad language. But what's even more unexpected is hearing the monsters swear. A good example of this
08:37is this blooper where we see a Dalek who takes a wrong turn and realises that they've lost their
08:42would-be victims, and then they let out a little, bugger, I've lost them. Now kudos to voice actor
08:51Roy Skelton here, who took a little on-set mishap and turned it into comedy gold.
08:58Number 3. Clara forgets to die.
09:01Now as previously mentioned, the last few years of Doctor Who have been very light on bloopers,
09:06but a few have been released which also includes this one from Series 9's Face the Raven,
09:11which involves a living, breathing raven and Jenna Coleman forgetting what to do.
09:16As explained by Coleman, Doctor Who actors quite often have to react to
09:21events and monsters that aren't actually there during filming. But in this case,
09:26there was a real bird to perform the stunt where Clara is killed and falls to the floor.
09:31But Coleman was so focused on hitting her mark for the bird to fly towards,
09:35that she completely forgot to react. In her own words, she forgot to die.
09:39Now one can imagine that it must be quite difficult to focus on your performance when
09:43there's a real-life bird flying straight towards you. But on the plus side, this did give us a
09:48glorious clip of Peter Capaldi flapping like a bird behind his co-star. I mean,
09:53it's pretty impressive. Maybe they should have cast him as the raven.
09:57Number 2. Need in the knackers.
09:59One of the reasons that the aforementioned Time of Angels and Flesh and Stone were the first
10:04episodes that Matt Smith and Karen Gillan filmed was so that Alex Kingston could be there as a
10:09supportive figure for the pair, as someone who already had experience of working on the show.
10:14One of the first scenes that Matt Smith and Alex Kingston filmed together was the opening scene
10:20where River flies through space and lands on top of the Doctor in the TARDIS. But according to an
10:25interview on Doctor Who Confidential, the landing on top of him wasn't actually scripted, it was in
10:30fact Matt Smith's idea. An idea that he probably came to regret once filming actually began.
10:36That's because the stunt wasn't as easy to pull off as they originally thought,
10:40and resulted in multiple takes where Alex Kingston's knee would land in some pretty
10:45uncomfortable places for poor Matt Smith. And this resulted in the pair of them bursting
10:50into fits of giggles. Now let it just be remembered that at this point in time,
11:00these two actors barely knew each other. But it's probably safe to assume that after all the fun
11:05and pain of filming this scene, they developed a much closer bond.
11:111. WILL YOU EFFING STAY STILL It must be very frustrating for the
11:16Doctor to so often be ignored when giving out serious life-saving instructions. Just ask
11:23Sylvester McCoy. During a scene in his final serial Survival, the Seventh Doctor tells Ace
11:30and everyone with them to stay still so as not to provoke an attack by the cheetah people.
11:35Of course, nobody listens and they all start to run away. During one take of this sequence,
11:40Sylvester McCoy can be seen rather humorously losing his temper at the fact that nobody is
11:45listening to him, and then he starts to ad-lib his lines, adding some rather fruitful language,
11:51and then throws his jacket and himself onto the floor.
11:54Now this goes on for a good 20 seconds or so. And his commitment to the bit
12:03is admirable. He even earns himself some applause from the cast and crew by the end of it,
12:08it out.