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Unlike the main character, Doctor Who's producers sadly don't have access to a time machine.
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00:00Everybody makes mistakes, even the Doctor, who at least has a time machine and infinite regenerations with which to make amends.
00:07In the high-pressure world of television production, however, there's never enough time and never enough money,
00:13as the constant grind to get something up on screen supersedes any concerns over how that thing will look or how poor the script is.
00:21So, with that in mind, I'm Ellie with Who Culture, here with 10 times Doctor Who made obvious mistakes.
00:27Number 10. The Twelfth Doctor's Time Slot
00:30The Capaldi era would have likely done far better in the Sunday evening slot occupied by Jodie Whittaker's 13th Doctor.
00:38The issue with the 8pm, sometimes 8.30pm Saturday evening time slot for Peter Capaldi's episodes was that it was too late,
00:46designed to sit between Strictly Come Dancing and a subsequent results show.
00:49However, younger kids were being put to bed by the time the theme tune kicked in,
00:53while the older kids, who grew up with Matt Smith's Doctor, were out drinking cider on park benches.
00:58Worse still, the constant shuffling of start times only served to confuse those who stayed at home.
01:03If the Capaldi era had aired on a Sunday evening after Countryfile, however, it would have had a far more captive audience.
01:10In an era where pop culture juggernaut shows no longer air on Saturday tea time,
01:15instead preferring slots like Sunday, like House of the Dragon or The Last of Us,
01:20or Friday, like Star Trek Part, maybe Doctor Who doesn't sit comfortably on a Saturday night anymore.
01:26It's not a hospital soap-like casualty, nor is it a glitzy light entertainment show.
01:31It's a prestige family sci-fi drama that might be better placed elsewhere in the week.
01:379. The Dalek Voices in Day of the Daleks
01:41When Day of the Daleks aired in January 1972, it had been five years since the last Dalek story,
01:48The Evil of the Daleks.
01:49In an age where repeat screenings were rare and VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, and streaming services were non-existent,
01:56it's no surprise that voice actors Oliver Gilbert and Peter Messaline
02:00struggled to convincingly replicate the voices for this classic Third Doctor serial.
02:05However, it's not really Gilbert or Messaline's fault, as the original Dalek voice actors were all still working
02:11when Day of the Daleks went into production.
02:13It's unclear why producer Barry Letts or director Paul Bernard didn't hire old pros like Roy Skelton,
02:19David Graham, or Peter Hawkins to reprise their roles, but on reflection, that's precisely what they should have done.
02:25This mistake led to the Daleks sounding quite shrill and unthreatening,
02:29made worse by the small number of Daleks revealed on screen.
02:32You have obtained the space-time coordinates.
02:37But on the plus side, Day of the Daleks is a classic, in spite of this casting mistake and paltry Dalek count.
02:44It's essentially Terminator with Daleks, and both Terrence Dick's novelisation
02:48and the 2011 CGI update of the story shows off its full glory.
02:54And of course, Nicholas Briggs steps in to record the new Dalek voices for that 2011 update.
03:00Number 8. Shooting The Battle of Ransgor Av Kolos' First Draft
03:05In a 2022 interview with Doctor Who magazine, Chris Chibnall revealed that Jodie Whittaker's first series finale,
03:12The Battle of Ransgor Av Kolos, was a first draft script that didn't feel enough like a finale.
03:18He's not wrong either.
03:19The whole plot of Tim Shaw attempting to use his Planet Smasher against Earth
03:23should have felt much more epic than it ultimately did.
03:26Having spent time introducing Yaz's family in previous episodes,
03:30it would have made sense to cut back to them watching in horror as Tim Shaw's plan was carried out.
03:35Instead, there was an overhead shot of a CGI Earth looking mildly scuffed from some sci-fi energy rays.
03:41Chibnall stated that he had to work on rewriting the scripts of other Series 11 writers,
03:46which led to delays in redrafting the finale.
03:49It's a shame, because there's genuinely a decent story at the heart of The Battle of Ransgor Av Kolos.
03:55No, honestly, there is.
03:56It's a story about how travelling with the Doctor has helped Graham to move on from his grief,
04:00as he chooses to let Tim Shaw live, rather than executing the toothy villain for causing Grace's death.
04:06Another rewrite could have developed that further,
04:08and excised the more extraneous sci-fi archetypes that clutter up the episode.
04:13Also, they could have chosen a title that was easier to pronounce.
04:17Just saying.
04:18Number 7. The Trial of a Time Lord
04:21There's an admirable degree of showmanship in John Nathan Turner's decision to respond to the BBC's declining opinion of Doctor Who
04:28by putting the Doctor on trial.
04:31However, there's also a fundamental flaw in that plan,
04:33which is that it required viewers to sign on for a 14-week serial
04:37that had a fairly nonsensical plot due to the numerous behind-the-scenes issues that plagued the writing process.
04:44BBC One controller Michael Grade definitely set John Nathan Turner up to fail by claiming that the show was cheap,
04:51but refusing to increase its budget.
04:53Still, ever the excellent producer, John Nathan Turner managed to do some incredible things to make the show look a little bit better.
05:00The flyby of the Gallifreyan space station is a fantastic opening sequence,
05:04but it rapidly falls back into the cheap nastiness that Grade had previously singled out.
05:09Colin Baker has softened slightly, but then a grotesquely miserable story like Mind Warp appears,
05:16which shows the Doctor being appalling to Perry.
05:18Yes, we know that the footage has been manipulated by the Valiard,
05:22but the issue remains that those who had been turned off Doctor Who by the grisliness of the Doctor throttling Perry in the Twin Dilemma,
05:29more on that one later,
05:30wouldn't be keen to carry on watching when they see him chain her to a rock.
05:34Number 6. The New Paradigm Daleks
05:37You have to admire Stephen Moffat and Mark Gatiss for trying something new with Victory of the Daleks.
05:43Introducing a whole new class of colour-coded pepper pots with foreboding-sounding rolls
05:48feels like the perfect way to reinvigorate a decades-old scary monster for a new generation.
05:53But then, these multicoloured, Duplo-style Daleks come rolling out of the dry ice
05:58to face off against Matt Smith's 11th Doctor.
06:01Exterminate, oh my god, what is that?
06:03The BBC admirably stuck by its big plasticky Daleks,
06:07giving them a Radio Times cover and promoting them as a new generation.
06:11However, it was very quickly agreed that a mistake had been made.
06:15In a commentary with Dalek aficionados Nicholas Briggs and Barnaby Edwards,
06:19Mark Gatiss noted that he didn't like the new shape of the Daleks,
06:22particularly the strange hump on their backs.
06:25Moffat clearly agreed as he quickly reverted to the Bronze RTD-era Daleks,
06:30stating that the Paradigm Daleks were the officer class.
06:33Which sounds like a wibbly-wobbly writerly white lie to cover the fact that they'd spent a lot of money
06:38on a Dalek design that broke with the iconic silhouette.
06:42Next time, maybe don't design your Daleks with the sole purpose of making them look lickable.
06:46Seriously, that was Moffat's note to the design department.
06:48He wanted kids to want to lick them.
06:51Madness!
06:52Madness, I tell you!
06:53Number 5. Shooting almost an entire Doctor Who story on green screen.
06:59Now that Doctor Who is about to be a global smash on Disney+,
07:02it has access to the virtual screens used by productions such as The Mandalorian.
07:07It's speculated that this technology will be used to realise Shooty Gatwa's impossible new TARDIS set,
07:13but that remains to be seen.
07:15Whatever the truth and whatever the result,
07:17it can't be any worse than what fans got with the 1978 serial Underworld.
07:22Underworld has the dubious honour of being the Tom Baker serial that is the worst regarded.
07:27One of the reasons for this, aside from the naff sci-fi retelling of Greek mythology,
07:31is that many of the locations are realised using colour separation overlay.
07:36Essentially, Tom Baker, Louise Jameson and the guest cast performed their scenes in front of a big green sheet.
07:42This wasn't some bold attempt at pushing Doctor Who into the future of virtual sets, however.
07:47The construction of the Minyan ship set, one of the few physical locations in the story,
07:52was so expensive that they had to cut costs.
07:55So, 1970s Doctor Who was forced to push its love of green screen to the very limit.
08:01Number 4. Putting Dalek's sec on the Radio Times.
08:05Russell T. Davis is unquestionably modern Doctor Who's greatest showman,
08:10and he knows how to put the show into the spotlight.
08:13However, RTD is just as capable of making mistakes as those before and after him,
08:19and one of his biggest errors was revealing the Dalek-sec-human hybrid
08:23before it was introduced in the cliffhanger of Daleks in Manhattan.
08:27Worse than the massive spoiler,
08:28the artfully shot cover photo on the Radio Times looked amazing.
08:32Sec was a glistening and horrific fusion of Khaled mutant and human face,
08:37cast in half-light and looking utterly terrifying.
08:41The on-screen representation in Daleks in Manhattan
08:43really didn't have any of the menace of that Radio Times picture.
08:47The moving tentacles looked ridiculous,
08:49while the rasping American accent didn't contain any of the wickedness of the iconic Davros.
08:55The Radio Times cover was a huge mistake because it raised expectations
08:59and promised something the show didn't deliver.
09:01It's hardly surprising that after this unloved attempt at a new Dalek mouthpiece,
09:06RTD brought back Davros for the next series.
09:09Number 3. The Sixth Doctor Throttling Perry
09:12After the beige coat and cricket whites of the Fifth Doctor,
09:16it was a sharp contrast to have the bombastic, technicolour Sixth Doctor replace him.
09:22As actor Colin Baker had come from cruel, villainous roles in BBC shows like The Roads to Freedom and Brothers,
09:27it was a smart casting coup to subvert expectations of who could play one of the best hero roles on TV.
09:34However, his first serial, The Twin Dilemma,
09:37skewed far too much toward the villainy and arrogance that Baker had played in other roles.
09:42Now, being snarky to Perry was nothing new.
09:45The Fifth Doctor used to treat Adric and Tegan similarly,
09:48but was clearly too scared to have a pop at Turlough after he once tried to brain him with a rock.
09:53However, it's when the Sixth Doctor turns on Perry and chokes her on the floor of the TARDIS,
09:57that it becomes clear that this abrasive Doctor has already gone too far.
10:01The Doctor is almost immediately repentant for his actions,
10:05deciding to exile himself to a barren planet, but the damage is already done.
10:09The Sixth Doctor struggled to escape the shadow cast by the mistakes made in The Twin Dilemma,
10:14making it hard for his era to communicate that he was a reassuring presence
10:18in an increasingly dark and violent Doctor Who universe.
10:22Number 2. The Thirteenth Doctor Having Three Companions
10:25For something as historic as Doctor Who's first female Doctor,
10:29it felt counterintuitive to lumber her with three companions.
10:33No disrespect to Bradley Walsh, Tosin Cole, or Mandip Gill, who were all excellent,
10:38but one of them would have sufficed.
10:40It was clear from the developing relationship between The Thirteenth Doctor and Yaz,
10:44the touching way that she stands up for Ryan's dad,
10:46or in the comedy partnership between her and Graham,
10:49that the perfect pairing was in there somewhere.
10:51The three companion lineup worked for the first Doctor, Ian, Barbara, and Susan,
10:55because the Doctor was an older man, so Ian could do the fighting,
10:59Barbara was the brains, and Susan was the audience surrogate.
11:02Plus, classic Who serials were way longer than modern Who episodes,
11:05allowing more time for each companion to get their due.
11:08That said, the Peter Davison era had already proved that a young Doctor
11:12with a large group of companions didn't work,
11:15which is why they're still scraping Adric off the surface of prehistoric Earth.
11:19Having so many companions in Jodie Whittaker's first series,
11:23interacting in a cramped and unwieldy TARDIS set,
11:26meant that she struggled to shine.
11:28Again, no fault of Whittaker,
11:29but when writers are trying to give four characters substantial material in an hour of television,
11:34it's inevitable that some will get shortchanged.
11:37Shortchanging the title character, however, is a major mistake.
11:41Number 1.
11:42The Nightmare in Silver Cybermen
11:44While running zombies have become slightly more acceptable in the years following 28 days later,
11:49the sprinting Cybermen of Neil Gaiman's difficult second Doctor Who episode haven't.
11:55The design is sleek and therefore feels slightly more like there are cybernetically augmented human remains housed within.
12:01However, the decision to make the Nightmare in Silver Cybermen infinitely adaptable was a step too far.
12:07They felt like machines learning how to respond to threats rather than the cold, logical cyborgs that were first created in 1966.
12:15The horror of the Cybermen is that there's a person inside each one,
12:19whose personality and emotions have been stripped away from them.
12:22They're augmented by all manner of horrifying cyber attachments,
12:26and there's a reason for that teardrop design on their eyes.
12:28It's telling that after introducing these comic book robot warriors,
12:32Steven Moffat went on to write two of the most horrific Cybermen stories ever told.
12:37Dark Water and Death in Heaven has the Cybermen offer a cure for death itself,
12:41while World Enough in Time and the Doctor Falls mutilated the Doctor's companion into cyber form,
12:47and had her remain conscious of her fate after the procedure.
12:50After all the body horror, Gaiman's cyber sprinters now feel like a distant, unwanted memory.
12:56And that concludes our list. If you can think of any other examples, then do let us know in the comments below.
13:01And while you're there, don't forget to like and subscribe, and tap that notification bell so you never miss a Who Culture video ever again.
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13:10I've been Ellie with Who Culture, and in the words of Riversong herself, goodbye, sweeties.
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