- 7 weeks ago
So THAT's why the TARDIS always landed in the same spot...
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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 Who Culture here with 10 times Doctor Who reused footage and hoped you wouldn't notice.
00:20Number 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.
00:49One 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?
01:37I've debated all day how to say this word, so whatever you want to call it.
01:40The 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 10, and of course, River Song, the best character!
01:55Now, we also meet a new character who will go on to become a fan favourite,
01:58the 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 Kavarian, 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.
02:35The 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 narc'd.
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,
03:17as opposed to the city itself, not everything we saw on New-Earth was, uh, new.
03:23Upon 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,
03:40such as this establishing shot where you can clearly see the TARDIS perched on the cliff in the background.
03:45On this occasion, though, the footage is treated with a green tinge and some good old-fashioned grain.
03:50Perhaps the team were counting on fans noticing this one, as it's a nice bit of continuity in its own right.
03:55But anyone who hadn't already watched New-Earth five billion times would be none the wiser.
04:00Number 7, the £8,000 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,
04:13producer 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,
04:20with 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,
04:32making 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,
04:47your eyes weren't deceiving you.
04:48Notable examples include the start of Mind Warp, the climax of Mind Warp,
04:53and 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,
05:06but 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,
05:22we see a shot of the TARDIS in flight.
05:24A shot which originally appeared in The Parting of the Ways,
05:27when the TARDIS was attacked by Dalek missiles.
05:30Much more notorious are the sequences of the TARDIS entering and exiting House's bubble universe
05:35in The Doctor's Wife, which reappeared countless times in Moffat-era trailers.
05:39It even turned up again in Series 10'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,
05:50so we'll forgive the team for reusing the odd one here and there.
05:54Number 5, K-9 cost-cutting.
05:56So the other entries on this list cover reused shots within Doctor Who only,
06:01but 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
06:09to help tow the Earth back home, including K-9.
06:13Now, K-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.
06:21Though Wright's complications limited K-9's involvement,
06:24hence 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,
06:42from 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
07:01would 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,
07:13you'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.
07:36The Daleks in Once Upon Time were entirely computer-generated,
07:40and 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,
07:48Revolution of the Daleks.
07:49It is a slightly puzzling one, though, as the 2022 specials,
07:53two of which feature the Daleks, had 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.
08:06And for the sake of a couple of shots,
08:07recycling footage made more sense than rebuilding an entire set.
08:11The 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.
08:30Ever resourceful, the BBC decided to shoot in one of its own buildings,
08:34with the lift in question being an actual BBC lift.
08:36The shot was captured on the 11th of September 2004.
08:40At the time, nobody could have predicted how prolific it would become.
08:44Whenever Doctor Who needed a shot of a lift in Future,
08:46they 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,
09:00this time posing as a lift in Downing Street.
09:02I don't know why I find it weird to think that 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 Thames House.
09:22I mean, it's quite an achievement for such an ordinary shot
09:24to be elevated to such legendary status.
09:28You see what I did there?
09:29You see what I did there?
09:30Number 2. Recurring Rose.
09:32Prior to her grand return in Turn Left,
09:35Rose 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,
09:44the 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,
09:53mouthing,
09:54Doctor!
09:55A similar shot of Rose then showed up on a Crusader 50 shuttle monitor in Midnight,
09:59similar because 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,
10:09but 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.
10:19That was April 2008,
10:20mere weeks before the Sontaran two-parter was due to go out.
10:23So although the broadcast order would have you believe otherwise,
10:27this is a Midnight Shot reused in the Poison Sky,
10:31not the other way round.
10:32Number 1.
10:33I Spy
10:34The power of the Doctor introduced us to the Guardians of the Edge,
10:38in a thrilling sequence featuring cameos from five previous Doctors.
10:42This 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.
10:55Memorably, the sequence begins with a shot of the 13th Doctor's eye
10:59studying her new environment.
11:01War of the Sontarans opened in a very similar way,
11:04with an abstract, dream-like sequence,
11:06followed by a close-up of the Doctor's eye as she regains consciousness.
11:10In the case of The Power of the Doctor,
11:12well, it 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,
11:32much wavier than usual due 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 Riversong herself,
11:53goodbye, sweeties.
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