10 Doctor Who Scenes Actors Hated Shooting
For the actors involved, filming Doctor Who isn't always fun and games...
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00:00Whenever you watch behind-the-scenes stuff like Doctor Who Confidential,
00:03filming Doctor Who seems like an absolute joy. But from terrible weather conditions to highly
00:08uncomfortable monster costumes, the actors sometimes find it really difficult to get
00:13certain shots in the can. And so, with that in mind, I'm Ellie with WhoCulture,
00:17here with 10 Doctor Who Scenes Actors Hated Shooting.
00:2110. David Tennant Can't Master His Sadness
00:25It's tempting to assume that, in emotional scenes, actors are just acting. And of course,
00:30fundamentally they are, but sometimes these scenes can take just as much of a toll on the performer
00:36as their character. Following his defeat in the Series 3 finale Last of the Time Lords,
00:41the Master is shot dead by his wife Lucy, and out of spite, refuses to regenerate.
00:46We see the Doctor plead with him to change his mind before cradling his lifeless body in his arms.
00:52It's one of the best Doctor-Master moments ever, giving us a fascinating insight into their long
00:57and complex relationship. But according to David Tennant, it was a pretty taxing scene to shoot.
01:02It was tough, this scene, he remarked on the episode's DVD commentary, adding that he never
01:07felt he quite got it, and that the whole ordeal left him feeling quite depressed. Despite this
01:12initial disappointment, Tennant was, on the whole, pleased with how the scene came out.
01:17So, I guess the heartache was worth it in the end.
01:209. Louise Jameson's Contact Lenses
01:23Louise Jameson's time on Doctor Who got off to a rocky start. Tom Baker,
01:28then well-established as the Fourth Doctor, was somewhat unwelcoming to his new co-star,
01:32due in part to his objection to Leela as a character on the grounds that she was too
01:37violent. If that wasn't bad enough, the part required her to wear contact lenses,
01:41turning her naturally blue eyes brown. The lenses were a source of much discomfort for Jameson,
01:46limiting her vision and irritating her eyes. In one scene during her second story,
01:51The Robots of Death, one of the lenses became dislodged, leaving Leela with one brown eye
01:56and one blue. Fortunately, four stories into Leela's run, there was a change of producer,
02:01with Graham Williams taking the reins from Philip Hinchcliffe. Williams allowed her to
02:05finally stop wearing the lenses, though not without an in-universe explanation. Hence why,
02:10at the end of Season 15 opener Horror of Fang Rock, the Doctor acknowledges that Leela's eyes
02:15have changed colour, apparently an example of pigmentation dispersal.
02:198. Simon Pegg and the Jagra Fess gibberish
02:23It's just a matter of emphasis, the editor tells the Ninth Doctor and Rose in The Long Game. The
02:28right word in the right broadcast, repeated often enough, can destabilise an economy,
02:33invent an enemy, change a vote, or it can cause an actor to struggle with their lines.
02:37That was the case for actor Simon Pegg, who had real problems with a particular phrase,
02:42and you can probably guess what it was. Right, deep breath now.
02:46The mighty Jagra Fess of the holy Hadrajassic Maxarodon foe.
02:50Good lord, no wonder he had trouble. Pegg only had to speak the name of his character's boss
02:55once, but as shown on Doctor Who Confidential, even this required multiple takes.
02:59I was getting really tense, he recalled, I could feel everyone going, come on Simon,
03:04come on, you can do it, you can do it this time. In the end, of course, he did manage
03:07to spit it out in full, receiving a rapturous round of applause from the cast and crew.
03:12But only after lots of fumbled attempts.
03:14Number 7. Kevin Lindsay is the Suffering Sontaran
03:18Doctor Who monster actors have always suffered for their art, but none more so than Kevin Lindsay.
03:24Lindsay played the first-ever Sontaran, Links, in the Season 11 story The Time Warrior,
03:29and his slimy performance is a big part of what made the creatures such a success.
03:34But behind the scenes, things were far from straightforward. With its combination of
03:38prosthetics, helmet, and heavily padded fabric suit, the Sontaran costume was incredibly difficult
03:44to wear and severely restricted Lindsay's breathing. This culminated in him collapsing
03:49during the first studio block. As it happened, the Doctor Who team wasn't entirely culpable.
03:54In fact, Lindsay had unwittingly been suffering from a heart condition all along,
03:59and the costume had exacerbated this. Remarkably, though, this bad experience
04:03didn't put Lindsay off the show. On the contrary, he returned to play Steyr in the following year's
04:08The Sontaran Experiment, though the decision for Steyr to go without his helmet for most
04:13of the serial made things somewhat easier. Tragically, Lindsay would die from a heart
04:17condition just a few months later. Looking back, it's incredible that he was able to
04:21bring Links and Steyr to life so convincingly while in so much discomfort. What a legend.
04:27Number 6. Freema Agyeman goes for a dip.
04:30Life as a Doctor Who companion is rarely glamorous, but when Freema Agyeman returned
04:34as Martha Jones in Series 4, she was quite literally thrown in at the deep end.
04:39First, there was the scene of Martha getting cloned in the Sontaran stratagem, for which
04:43Agyeman had to submerge herself into a vat of green gloop. As you'd imagine,
04:47it was far from a pleasant experience.
04:50It was tepid and it was very slimy, she recalled to Doctor Who Confidential.
04:54As I went under and came up, I breathed in and out at the wrong time and it was all going up
04:58my nose. And in that particular scene where I'm sitting up, I'm just swallowing profusely
05:02because I thought I was going to gag.
05:03Nevertheless, Agyeman was able to hold it together well enough for the sequence to be
05:07completed in one take.
05:08But this wasn't the end of her ordeal. The following story, The Doctor's Daughter,
05:13once again required her to get immersed, this time in a quagmire on the planet Messaline.
05:18In reality, a coal mine west of Cardiff.
05:21On this occasion, she was at least allowed to wear a wetsuit.
05:24No wonder Martha declined The Doctor's offer of more TARDIS trips.
05:28Number 5. Lanzarote is no holiday for Hermione Norris
05:32The volcanic rock formations of Lanzarote provided a striking backdrop to Series 8's
05:37Kill the Moon. But not everyone was over the moon to be there.
05:41Temperatures stuck at around 40 degrees for the duration of the shoot, and to make matters worse,
05:46the episode's lunar setting dictated that the actors wear some form of spacesuit.
05:50Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman, and Ellis George got off fairly lightly, wearing loose fabric
05:55suits of the type first seen in The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit.
05:59But the other characters were actual proper astronauts and needed bulkier costumes to match.
06:04This resulted in much discomfort and even panic attacks for Lundvik actor Hermione Norris.
06:10As she recalled to The Mirror,
06:11It was one of the hardest jobs I've ever done. It was incredibly heavy,
06:14you couldn't get the visor on or off by yourself, and I couldn't help but panic when it was down.
06:19The sun on your visor was like having your head stuffed in a greenhouse.
06:22Shooting on the real-life moon would have been much easier,
06:25but by the sound of it, Lanzarote came pretty close.
06:284. Tom Baker's Director Dispute
06:31Appropriately enough for a story with Nightmare in the title,
06:34Nightmare of Eden wasn't exactly an easy ride. Early Doctor Who was filmed in story order and
06:40rehearsed as such, but by the time of Nightmare of Eden, material was instead being shot out
06:45of sequence, with scenes grouped by set and location instead. So you can imagine how well
06:50it went down when Nightmare of Eden director Alan Bromley, who had previously helmed the
06:54Time Warrior, suggested that the serial be filmed in sequence.
06:58On that point, he was persuaded to change his mind, but in every other regard, he remained
07:02set in his ways, ignoring advice given to him by his crew and exerting excessive control over the
07:08cast. This led to backlash from multiple individuals, including none other than the
07:13Doctor himself, Tom Baker. As tensions increased, Bromley switched to a more hands-off approach,
07:18conducting rehearsals from the confines of the studio gallery rather than from the studio floor.
07:23This prompted Baker, a force to be reckoned with at the best of times, to remark,
07:27is that a director up in the gallery or just a commentator?
07:30Bromley eventually quit the production, and when shooting was done,
07:34the crew was presented with custom-made t-shirts reading,
07:37I'm relieved the nightmare is over. Bromley presumably did not receive one.
07:42Matt Smith feels the wrath of River Song
07:45In The Impossible Astronaut, we see an astronaut, eventually revealed to be River Song,
07:50kill the Doctor. But this fate was nothing compared to the pain that River inflicted
07:54on the Doctor just a few scenes later. Having just watched the Doctor die,
07:58only for him to appear seemingly alive, all Amy and Rory can do is watch on in shock.
08:03River, on the other hand, takes a more no-nonsense approach, greeting her husband with a slap in the
08:09mug. The way the slap was shot, with the Doctor's reaction captured front-on in close-up,
08:14made it impossible to fake, and because multiple takes were required, it had to be staged
08:18multiple times. A far from enjoyable experience for Mr. Matt Smith.
08:23We had to do it so many times that he was starting to get really red-cheeked,
08:27Alex Kingston told Doctor Who Confidential, and I could see him starting to get cross
08:31with me as well. I felt so bad. But at the same time, I just thought,
08:35well, I've gotta do it again, I'm sorry. It wasn't the first time the Doctor has been slapped,
08:39there are some really good YouTube compilations for anyone wondering.
08:42And it certainly wouldn't be the last, but thankfully for the recipients,
08:46this unexpected trend seems to have died off a bit in recent years.
08:502. A Cheater Person Goes AWOL Survival, the final serial of Classic Who,
08:56has a title with many meanings. It evokes the idea of survival of the fittest,
09:00a key theme throughout the story. It also, rather neatly, alludes to the show's own
09:05struggle to keep going, though by accident rather than by design. And given that the
09:09serial was shot at the height of summer in temperatures of up to 43 degrees Celsius,
09:14which officially makes it hotter than Lanzarote or the moon, Survival also serves as an apt
09:19description of the serial's production. The story was filmed entirely on location,
09:24with Warmwell Quarry, since described by Sylvester McCoy as the deserts of Dorset,
09:28standing in for the cheetah world. It was just like doing a spaghetti western, McCoy recalled.
09:33It was incredibly hot, and all these girls playing cheetah people had to be dressed up
09:37in catsuits and all this fur stuff. It was just too hot for them.
09:41Most of the cast and crew persevered, but for one Cheater Person actor, it was all too much.
09:46According to McCoy, she suddenly freaked out and ripped all her clothes off,
09:50and was last seen running for the train. And to be honest, who can really blame her?
09:531. The Beast From The East Derails The Witch Finders
09:57The Series 11 cast and crew had to contend with some of the wildest weather in Doctor
10:02Who history. The first two episodes to go before the cameras, The Woman Who Fell to Earth and It
10:07Takes You Away, were shot over November and December 2017, one of the coldest times of the
10:12year. At the other end of the scale, The Ghost Monument and Rosa featured extensive location
10:17filming in South Africa in the middle of a drought. We'd all agreed that, because we were
10:21so cold filming the first episode, we wouldn't moan when we got to South Africa, Mandip Gill
10:26recalled in the Series 11 premiere. But the most challenging shoot of the series was by far The
10:30Witch Finders. By sheer coincidence, the episode's filming dates, late February, early March 2018,
10:36coincided almost exactly with the dreaded Beast From The East, one of the worst storms to hit
10:41the UK in recent years. Speaking to Doctor Who magazine, Tosin Cole described the episode as
10:47the hardest thing I've ever filmed in my life. Meanwhile, Jodie Whittaker, who had been thankful
10:52for her relatively light doctor costume in South Africa, found herself shooting the dunking
10:56sequences jacketless and at sub-zero temperatures. On the plus side, this windy, rainy aesthetic
11:02neatly complemented The Witch Finders' bleak subject matter. Not that the actors would care.
11:07And that concludes our list. If you can think of any other examples, then please do let us know
11:11in the comments below. And while you're there, don't forget to like and subscribe and tap that
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11:19Instagram to follow us there. And I can be found across various social medias just by searching
11:23Ellie Littlechild. I've been Ellie with WhoCulture, and in the words of River Song herself, goodbye,
11:28sweeties.