We noticed, Doctor Who. We noticed!
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00:00Hello everybody, Ellie here for WhoCulture and today we have a mystery to solve.
00:06Now does anybody remember this all important looking shot of the 15th Doctor? Because it
00:13just vanished. It just disappeared, never to be seen. So we thought we'd do a little
00:18bit of investigating. So let's split up and look for clues. Scoob, you're with me!
00:24So first of all, let's journey back all the way to the 23rd of September 2023, which feels
00:31like a really long time ago even though it really actually wasn't in the grand scheme
00:34of things. And we got a 60th anniversary trailer just before Strictly Come Dancing and the
00:40last shot in this trailer was the aforementioned shot that we're talking about here of the
00:4515th Doctor. Everyone assumed that this was a shot from one of those 60th anniversary
00:49specials. I mean, first and foremost, this was a trailer for the 60th anniversary. Because
00:53of the nature of it, because it was the 15th Doctor in the shot, most people assumed that
00:58it would be in the final of the three specials. I think a lot of people assumed that it was
01:02something to do with the regeneration. The regeneration sound was playing over this section
01:07of the trailer. In hindsight, would they have done that because, you know, is it massively
01:16spoilery? But at the same time, we knew that a new Doctor was coming, so we knew a regeneration
01:22was imminent. And at the time, we didn't know that there was anything special or different
01:26about this particular regeneration, so I don't necessarily think that it was suspicious for
01:31there to be some sort of regeneration shot in the trailer. But I think a lot of people,
01:35that's the assumption they had when they saw this was, well, that's going to be the ending
01:40of special number three. So then we jump ahead to the 25th of November,
01:44which was a very exciting day to the Starbeast. Nope, didn't appear in that episode. Okay,
01:49we wait to the following week, to the 2nd of December, to watch Wild Blue Yonder? Nope,
01:53not there either. Okay, well then we'll jump to the 9th of December, the giggle, we know
01:58the regeneration must be happening in this episode, so it probably will appear here.
02:02And lo and behold, we get to the end of that episode, we've been introduced to Shu Te
02:07Gatwa as the 15th Doctor, we've been introduced to this whole notion of the bi-generation,
02:13and we still have not seen this particular shot that we were teased all the way back
02:19in September. So then we kind of forgot about it, you know, there was a lot of things going
02:22on in the trailers, and I think then we just assumed, well actually, we have got the Christmas
02:26special coming, so maybe it was a shot from the Christmas special. So we'll wait, we'll
02:30wait until Christmas Day, we'll watch the church on Ruby Road, it's probably in that
02:34episode. And guess what folks, it wasn't there either.
02:37So at this point I think the most logical conclusion or assumption about this shot is
02:41that it was intended literally just for the trailers, perhaps as a red herring to dissuade
02:48people from making conclusions about the regeneration. If you put a shot in the trailer
02:53that suggests it's just gonna be a normal regeneration like we've known for however
02:57many years gone by, then no one's gonna suspect that there's anything untoward or different
03:03about what we will be seeing, obviously the bi-generation. And we know that there is precedent
03:09for them to have done this because we know there was another shot of Shu Te Gatwa in
03:13that trailer, the shot where he says, well someone tell me what the hell is going on
03:16here. We know that there was a false background edited onto that scene because we now know
03:22that that scene was on top of Stark Towers and he was surrounded by all the unit people
03:28and David Tennant was stood right next to him, so we know that that scene was edited
03:31in the trailer to just have this sort of cloudy background. So we know there is precedent
03:35for them to throw in false shots or for them to tweak shots or throw in red herrings to
03:41throw us off of the scent. So this very well could have been just put in there to suggest
03:46that everything was normal and we had nothing to suspect. And as I said we learned in the
03:51commentary for The Giggle from Russell T Davis that things had been leaked and so it does
03:55suggest as I've just mentioned that by including this shot they were trying to mislead people
04:02into thinking that the leaks they'd seen weren't actually true. I guess that's kind of sneaky,
04:06kind of clever but if the leaks are already out there then you're not going to stop people
04:10from listening to them, reading them, jumping on them and ripping them apart. But from a
04:15creative point of view I mean it's not a difficult shot to create so if these leaks
04:19were made then it's not difficult for them to go oh shooty would you just stand here
04:24we're just going to get a close up of your face and we're going to edit it in a way that
04:27we can kind of throw people off the scent of these leaks and suggest to them that everything
04:32is fine and normal and that they shouldn't be listening to these leaks because we want
04:36it to be a surprise. So it could have very easily been a last minute addition just to
04:41throw people off the scent as I said. And it is something that is common practice within
04:44marketing campaigns, we've seen it probably most famously in the trailer for Avengers
04:49Infinity War where we had the Hulk running in Wakanda but we later learned by watching
04:55Infinity War, spoiler alert if you haven't seen it, but the Hulk is never the Hulk. Bruce
04:59Banner never hulks out in that entire film but the trailer suggested that he was there
05:03with all of those heroes and while he was there it would have been a spoiler to show
05:06him in a big Iron Man suit so they just edited the trailer to mislead the audience to kind
05:12of lie to us basically but for the better. So that's one suggestion, yeah? It was a fake
05:18shot for the trailer. Case closed. Good looking for clues. We've unmasked the bad guy. But
05:26there could be more to it than that. At the end of the church on Ruby Road we then got
05:29a trailer for season 1 and we also got confirmation that season 1 will be coming in May 2024.
05:35And then interestingly the official Disney Plus Twitter page posted a little promo, I
05:41think it said New Home, New Who. Guess what the only shot in that teaser was? You guessed
05:47it right folks, it's that same shot that's just been floating around but mysteriously
05:51disappearing. So is this a shot from season 1? And the thing is we need to remember as
05:55well is they started filming season 1 all the way back in December 2022 so they would
06:02have had shots of that season ready and waiting to go. The other thing that makes that a potential
06:08possibility is if you look very closely at the collar in that teaser it looks very similar
06:14to what we saw Shooty Gatwill wearing at the end of the church on Ruby Road. Again that
06:18just lends itself to the suggestion that this is a shot that we may be seeing within season
06:231. So I think there are 3 possibilities here. Of 4 possibilities it was a fake shot intended
06:30for the trailers only to mislead people, it was an actual shot that was intended to be
06:35in the 60th anniversary but was cut, it's a shot from season 1 that we are yet to see
06:41or it's a shot that was created for the only purpose of marketing. Now that does happen,
06:47they do plenty of promo shoots, they stand and pose as their character in different positions.
06:52We've seen plenty of those promotional images of the characters all posing together, you
06:57know the famous one with David Tennant doing his little pointing. Because now we are moving
07:02on to the age of social media and streaming then the promo stuff advances with that so
07:10rather than having the promotional images then it is very very possible that this was
07:15a shot that was created just for the marketing, just for promotional content. It's not a difficult
07:22shot to achieve so it's very simple and look it's got us all talking. But it did seem like
07:27a very important shot to be seeing and it did just seem slightly odd that we ended up
07:33not actually seeing it. I guess the only other thing is if it is a shot from season 1, why
07:37was it in the 60th trailer? Other than the fact that most footage of the 15th Doctor
07:43that could be used from the Giggle would have been massively spoilery. But then we've seen
07:49them edit footage from it to suit the trailers. So there's just a lot of mystery surrounding
07:54this random shot. It's much more fascinating than it probably should be for all of about
07:59three seconds worth of footage. But we like to get those discussions rolling so let me
08:05know in the comments down below, let me know your theories. I know a lot of you are probably
08:09going to go, it's just a shot, get over it. And that's fine! But I like the conspiracy
08:14theorists out there so join me in speculating what happened to this mysterious shot of the
08:2015th Doctor.