10 Times Doctor Who Reused Footage And Hoped You Wouldn't Notice
So THAT's why the TARDIS always landed in the same spot...
Transcript
00:00Making Doctor Who is very, very difficult.
00:03Just think of all the aliens, the planets, and the corridors that need to be designed every single week.
00:09So you can't really blame the crew for cutting the odd corner, can you?
00:13I'm Ellie with WhoCulture here with 10 times Doctor Who reused footage and hoped you wouldn't notice.
00:19Number 10. TARDIS in Sheffield
00:22Series 11 and 12 of Revived Who were both based in Sheffield, but the show actually only filmed there twice.
00:29The Woman Who Fell to Earth was Doctor Who's most extensive Sheffield shoot,
00:33with scenes captured at the city's iconic HTC Crane site and Norton Water Tower.
00:38More central locations included Sheffield Interchange and exteriors for Graham's House.
00:43For Arachnids in the UK, the team returned to Graham's House and also shot at Yaz's home at the Park Hill Estate.
00:50One of the story's defining images is of the TARDIS materialising outside this location,
00:55and in fact, it was so memorable that they reused it twice in Series 12,
01:00so stories could be set in Sheffield without having to return.
01:03The shot first appeared at the start of Can You Hear Me? with the TARDIS once again materialising.
01:08Then, at the end of Revolution of the Daleks, the shot turns up again.
01:12It's a slightly wider angle, there's added lens flare, and the TARDIS is static this time,
01:17but it's undoubtedly from the same shoot.
01:19Now, you can hardly blame the crew for not wanting to lug the TARDIS all the way up to the Steel City for a single shot,
01:25and as it stands, this is a nice little easter egg that ensures that these Sheffield-set stories feature at least some footage captured there.
01:33Number 9, Multiplied Maldivarium.
01:35Or Maldivarium? I've debated all day how to say this word, so whatever you want to call it.
01:41The rip-roaring opening to The Pandorica Opens contains callbacks to many of the Doctor's recent adventures,
01:47with cameos from Vincent Van Gogh, Winston Churchill, Professor Bracewell, Liz Ten, and of course, River Song.
01:53The best character!
01:55Now, we also meet a new character who will go on to become a fan favourite, the blue-skinned, black marketeer, Dorian Maldivar.
02:02Now, we first meet Dorian in his base of operations, the Maldivarium.
02:06Maldivarium. Potato, potato.
02:07Basically, it's Doctor Who's answer to the Star Wars Cantina.
02:11Now, despite appearing very briefly, this location makes a huge impact in no small part due to the swanky establishing shot that introduces it.
02:19So, when Dorian and the Maldivarium returned in the following series in A Good Man Goes to War,
02:25this time for a rendezvous with Madame Kovarian, it made perfect sense to press that shot back into service.
02:31And that's exactly what they did, reusing the asset, albeit in a modified form.
02:36The colour grading was tweaked and the passing spaceship and exterior lights were removed to indicate that the venue was shutting down.
02:42But it was the same shot.
02:43And then the Maldivarium would make one more on-screen appearance in Series 9's The Magician's Apprentice.
02:49Once again, the shot was recycled, this time with a much murkier colour grade.
02:53Not a bad innings for a shot and a location conceived for a one-off appearance.
02:58Number 8. Not-So-New-Earth
03:00In Gridlock, the Doctor takes Martha to New Earth, a planet he visited with Rose in the Series 2 story of the same name.
03:07Now, upon realising this, Martha is understandably a little narked.
03:11Viewers could also be mistaken for feeling a sense of deja vu, because although this story was set in the undercity of New New York, as opposed to the city itself,
03:19not everything we saw on New Earth was, uh, new.
03:22Upon arriving in the planet's slums, the Doctor and Martha find an info point showing the latest traffic report from Sally Calypso.
03:29The report proceeds to show footage from above ground, and if that footage seems familiar, well, that's because it was ripped directly from New Earth.
03:36These are some of the very first shots we saw in that episode, such as this establishing shot where you can clearly see the TARDIS perched on the cliff in the background.
03:44On this occasion, though, the footage is treated with a green tinge and some good old-fashioned grain.
03:49Perhaps the team were counting on fans noticing this one, as it's a nice bit of continuity in its own right.
03:56But anyone who hadn't already watched New Earth 5 billion times would be none the wiser.
04:00Number 7, the 8,000 pound model shot.
04:03Now, it's not just the new series that's guilty of shot reuse.
04:06In 1985, Doctor Who was put on an 18-month hiatus, and when the show eventually returned to our screens, producer John Nathan-Turner was keen that it should do so with a bang.
04:16To that end, he decided to open season-long epic The Trial of a Time Lord with Doctor Who's most expensive sequence to date,
04:23an establishing shot of the space station on which the trial takes place.
04:27It lasts for 40 seconds and cost a colossal £8,000 to create, making it the most expensive shot in classic Who, but also one of the most impressive.
04:37John Nathan-Turner made sure he got his money's worth by reusing the shot multiple times in subsequent episodes.
04:43So, if you thought you'd seen those exact same space station angles more than once, your eyes weren't deceiving you.
04:49Notable examples include the start of Mind Warp, the climax of Mind Warp, and the start of The Ultimate Foe.
04:55It is rather fitting, though, that a story all about manipulated events should itself attempt to hoodwink the viewer.
05:01Number 6, TARDIS in flight.
05:03We've seen the TARDIS in space countless times over the years, but with CGI budgets as tight as they are,
05:09it's not always possible to commission a new shot, and the team sometimes opt to reuse an old one.
05:14One lesser known example can be found in the first RTD era.
05:18Early on in The Stolen Earth, when the Doctor takes Donna to the Shadow Proclamation, we see a shot of the TARDIS in flight.
05:24A shot which originally appeared in The Parting of the Ways, when the TARDIS was attacked by Dalek missiles.
05:30Much more notorious are the sequences of the TARDIS entering and exiting House's bubble universe in The Doctor's Wife,
05:36which reappeared countless times in Moffat-era trailers.
05:39It even turned up again in Series X's The Pilot.
05:42In both cases, though, the shots are generic enough to be repurposed without anyone really batting an eyelid.
05:47And as mentioned, CGI renders are expensive, so we'll forgive the team for reusing the odd one here and there.
05:53Number 5, K-9 cost-cutting.
05:56So the other entries on this list cover reused shots within Doctor Who only,
06:00but this entry concerns a shot that was originally created for a spin-off.
06:05The climax of Journey's End saw all of the Tenth Doctor's companions band together to help tow the Earth back home,
06:11including K-9.
06:14K-9 had made a triumphant return to Doctor Who alongside Sarah Jane Smith in School Reunion,
06:18and both also appeared in spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures.
06:22Though rights complications limited K-9's involvement, hence why he spent a bunch of time consigned to a black hole.
06:27Now, K-9 would eventually escape his spacey purgatory in The Madwoman in the Attic,
06:32but as of Journey's End, he was still at the black hole,
06:35with the script requiring a shot of him materialising in Sarah Jane's attic for a brief cameo.
06:40Fortunately, one such shot already existed from The Sarah Jane Adventures story The Lost Boy,
06:44where K-9 had made a rare in-person appearance.
06:47Now, as we've established, CGI shots are expensive,
06:50so why make a new one when existing footage will do just as well?
06:54Now, to be fair, this is a particularly clever bit of shot reuse,
06:57not least because only a small portion of the audience who had watched both shows would have actually seen it before.
07:03Number 4, Duplicated Daleks
07:06At first, the Daleks were conspicuously absent from Flux.
07:09After all, if there's a universe-ending catastrophe to capitalise upon, you'd have thought that they'd be first in line.
07:15Instead, the Sontarans were the focus of Flux's first two chapters.
07:19Hardly surprising when you consider that the Chibnall era largely reserved the Daleks for specials,
07:23a refreshing change in its own right.
07:25Still, those bumpy boys did eventually find their way into Flux,
07:29with brief appearances in Once Upon Time and The Vanquishers.
07:32However, neither of these cameos necessitated new footage.
07:35The Daleks in Once Upon Time were entirely computer-generated,
07:39and in The Vanquishers, they were represented via reused footage,
07:43an alternate take of the Death Squad as seen in that year's New Year's Day special, Revolution of the Daleks.
07:49It is a slightly puzzling one, though, as the 2022 specials, two of which feature the Daleks,
07:53had gone before cameras by the time The Vanquishers was broadcast.
07:57So it's not like the crew was averse to shooting new Dalek material.
08:01Perhaps they wanted footage of the villains in their, admittedly rather nifty, new spaceship.
08:05And for the sake of a couple of shots, recycling footage made more sense than rebuilding an entire set.
08:113. The Lifted Lift
08:13The lift shot is one of Doctor Who's most infamous reused shots.
08:17Once you've seen it, you'll never unsee it.
08:19Appropriately enough, it all started with the first episode of the revived series.
08:23For the sequence where Rose takes that fateful trip down to Henrik's basement,
08:27the team needed a shot of a descending lift.
08:29Ever resourceful, the BBC decided to shoot in one of its own buildings,
08:33with the lift in question being an actual BBC lift.
08:35The shot was captured on the 11th of September 2004.
08:39At the time, nobody could have predicted how prolific it would become.
08:43Whenever Doctor Who needed a shot of a lift in future, they simply reused the footage they'd captured for Rose.
08:49Sometimes the original version, going down. Sometimes reverse, going up.
08:53If a story has a lift in it, chances are this shot is in there too.
08:57It first reappeared a few stories later in World War 3, this time posing as a lift in Downing Street.
09:03I don't know why I find it weird to think there's a lift in Downing Street.
09:06I think because from the outside, it's just a house.
09:08And houses don't have lifts, but it probably does have a lift.
09:11Has anyone been inside Downing Street? Are there lifts inside?
09:13Anyway, it would go on to feature in New Earth and Doomsday,
09:17and it even cropped up in Torchwood Children of Earth as a lift in Tem's house.
09:22I mean, it's quite an achievement for such an ordinary shot to be elevated to such legendary status.
09:28Do you see what I did there? Do you see what I did there?
09:33Prior to her grand return in Turn Left, Rose Tyler made three cameo appearances across Series 4.
09:39Well, technically two, since one ended up being used twice.
09:42And in true Timey Wimey fashion, the episode it came from was yet to air when it first appeared.
09:47Following her most substantial cameo in Partners in Crime,
09:50Rose briefly flashed up on the TARDIS scanner in the Poison Sky, mouthing,
09:54Doctor!
09:55A similar shot of Rose then showed up on a Crusader 50 shuttle monitor in Midnight.
09:59Similar because, um, it was exactly the same.
10:01The footage was filmed in December 2007 during the production of Turn Left,
10:06and was always intended to appear in Midnight, but its inclusion in the Poison Sky came much later in the day.
10:12That decision was only made after the broadcast of Partners in Crime,
10:15when the response to her first cameo had been extremely positive.
10:18That was April 2008, mere weeks before the Sontaran two-parter was due to go out.
10:23So, although the broadcast order would have you believe otherwise,
10:26this is a Midnight shot reused in the Poison Sky, not the other way round.
10:32Number 1. I Spy.
10:34The power of the Doctor introduced us to the Guardians of the Edge,
10:37in a thrilling sequence featuring cameos from five previous Doctors.
10:41This material was no mean feat to put together.
10:45It was shot across multiple days due to actor availability,
10:48and required significant VFX work to morph the Guardians' faces into each other,
10:53and to create the vistas of the Edge itself.
10:56Memorably, the sequence begins with a shot of the 13th Doctor's eye studying her new environment.
11:01War of the Sontarans opened in a very similar way,
11:04with an abstract dream-like sequence, followed by a close-up of the Doctor's eye as she regains consciousness.
11:10In the case of the power of the Doctor,
11:12it seemed that this shot was only deemed necessary in the edit,
11:15as the one used is, in fact, an alternate take from War of the Sontarans.
11:20This was noticed by fans and confirmed on Twitter by Jamie Magnus Stone,
11:24who directed both episodes.
11:26The reuse was well-disguised, with the shot flipped and coloured differently,
11:29but for eagle-eyed fans, Jodie Whittaker's hair, much wavier than usual
11:33due to the rain that plagued War of the Sontarans' location work,
11:36is a dead giveaway.
11:37An example of footage reuse that is, quite literally, staring you in the face.
11:41And that's everything for this list,
11:43but for more cool production details,
11:45check out 10 Unnecessary Doctor Who Details You Need To Know.
11:49In the meantime, I've been Ellie with WhoCulture,
11:51and in the words of River Song herself,
11:53goodbye, sweeties.