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Filming Doctor Who can be more dangerous than you realise...
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00:00As much as we'd love it to be real, Doctor Who is unfortunately just a TV show.
00:05It's filmed on a set, features actors, and the monsters and villains are just people in rubber suits.
00:10Sorry to break it to you.
00:11But sometimes what goes into making a scene in real life is far more interesting than what ends up transmitted
00:17on screen.
00:18And so, with that in mind, I'm Ellie with Who Culture, here with 10 Doctor Who scenes even more impressive
00:24when you know the truth.
00:26Number 10. Dubai Disaster
00:27With New Who on sabbatical following its fourth series, the producers could afford to push the boat out with a
00:33handful of specials in 2009.
00:35And one such special was Planet of the Dead, broadcast over the Easter period.
00:40It involved the Doctor and a bus full of people being stranded on a desert planet.
00:44As if that wasn't bad enough, they were also stalked by a pack of flying, ravenous stingrays.
00:50Public transport. What a nightmare.
00:52To achieve a more realistic feel for the episode, it was shot in Dubai.
00:55But this meant transporting a double-decker London bus all the way out to the Middle East, which went about
01:01as well as could be expected.
01:02The bus was seriously damaged in transit when a container was accidentally dropped on it.
01:07After losing their minds for a while, the crew decided to simply incorporate the damage into the story, explaining that
01:13the bus was damaged when it travelled through the portal.
01:15It would have looked weird if the bus was pristine, so this accident actually improved the episode.
01:20Number 9. Manning's Mishaps
01:22Katie Manning's original stint as companion Jo Grant stretched from 1971 to 1973, and though she undoubtedly enjoyed her time
01:30on the show, it was incredibly difficult to film at times.
01:33Not because of the long hours, the techno babble, or the endless quarries, but because she could barely see where
01:38she was going.
01:39Manning suffered from extreme short-sightedness, and since she wasn't allowed to wear the thick glasses which aided her vision,
01:45she would often lose track of her surroundings.
01:47In fact, while filming her debut story, Terror of the Autons, she ran straight into a rock and twisted her
01:53ankle.
01:54In Manning's own words, this forced John Pertwee to start
01:57Leading me around like a mother hen, in order to avoid her injuring herself constantly.
02:02The master himself, Roger Delgado, also helped Manning in a similar way.
02:06So next time you're watching the third Doctor pull Jo around by hand, it's likely that what you're actually seeing
02:11is Pertwee taking care of his co-star.
02:14What a gent.
02:15Number 8. First Doctor Doppelganger
02:17Doctor's past, present, and future combining forces to save Gallifrey is an all-time great Doctor Who moment.
02:24Especially when you think about how tricky it must have been to pull off.
02:27Finding suitable archive clips for every single Doctor, piecing all their disparate lines together to make them fit the scene.
02:34It's enough to give you a headache just thinking about it.
02:36But as impressive as the scene is, there's one particular element that makes it even more impressive than you realise.
02:42Though most of the dialogue was indeed plucked from prior episodes, there's one notable exception.
02:48Because Gallifrey wasn't spoken on screen until the third Doctor's era, the first Doctor's line calling the War Council of
02:54Gallifrey,
02:55this is the Doctor, wasn't possible to create with William Hartnell's voice.
02:59And with Hartnell having passed away in the 70s, he wasn't around to record it afresh.
03:04So, the production recruited voice artist John Guiler, whose first Doctor impression is so uncanny that it fits seamlessly into
03:11the scene.
03:11And you never even notice that you're actually listening to an impersonator.
03:15Another fun quirk in this sequence revolves around the seventh Doctor.
03:18Due to his footage being pulled from both his original run and the 1996 TV movie,
03:23his age, costume, and TARDIS interior inexplicably change halfway through.
03:28Wibbly wobbly indeed.
03:29Number 7. Prop Master Bond
03:31There are countless Doctor Who props with interesting stories behind them, but arguably none more so than this.
03:38Fourth Doctor serial, Revenge of the Cybermen, features a secret radio transmitter used by Kelman,
03:43which is disguised as a clothes brush.
03:46It's an unassuming device and you wouldn't think there's anything special about it,
03:49but this little prop had quite the journey en route to its Doctor Who role.
03:53This exact same prop was used in the James Bond film Live and Let Die, which released two years prior,
03:59but even better, it was actually given to the BBC by Roger Moore himself.
04:04The prop master offered to pay two shillings and sixpence for the item, which is around 12p today.
04:10Still, Moore gleefully accepted, telling the Radio Times that,
04:13I popped into the bee for a cup of tea. I didn't expect to walk out with two and six.
04:17Wherever the prop is, it will undoubtedly be worth more today,
04:21especially considering that Tom Baker actually picked it up in Revenge of the Cybermen,
04:25which no doubt increased its value.
04:27Number 6. A Very Old Friend
04:29Towards the end of Jodie Whittaker's final outing, The Power of the Doctor,
04:33Yaz joins a support group of former companions who share stories of their adventures through time and space.
04:39Present at the meeting are Yaz's friends, Graham and Dan, alongside seasoned veterans like Ace,
04:44Tegan, Joe, Mel, Kate and Ian.
04:47Played by William Russell, Ian appeared in the very first episode of Doctor Who back in 1963,
04:52as one of the first humans to travel back in time in the TARDIS.
04:56He left the show in 1965, making it a whopping 57 years before he returned in The Power of the
05:02Doctor.
05:03Now, we covered that 57-year hiatus in our video about the longest gaps between Doctor Who character appearances,
05:08but one detail we didn't mention, which somehow makes the scene even more impressive,
05:12is that Russell also broke the Guinness World Record for the longest gap between TV appearances.
05:18His return was truly heartwarming, as most of the other cast members from that first episode are sadly no longer
05:24around.
05:24However, Ian's still here, alive and kicking.
05:27Are we sure he isn't a real time lord?
05:29Number 5. Eleven Grabs a Bite
05:31Whenever there's a scene in a TV show that involves inflicting pain on a character,
05:36you'd rightfully assume that the entire thing was faked.
05:39But in one particular case in Doctor Who's fifth series, you'd be wrong.
05:42Amy Pond does not have a nice day out in the time of angels and flesh and stone,
05:47with the dastardly angel Bob gleefully informing the eleventh doctor that there's something in her eye.
05:52That something being a weeping angel.
05:54Not great.
05:55This angel sends Amy on a massive trip, with dust pouring from her eye and an ominous countdown leading to
06:01her death.
06:02At one point, it also appears to turn her hand into stone, locking her in place.
06:06Proving that it's just a trick though, the doctor bites her hand, and the shock of this action allows her
06:11to move it.
06:12What you probably didn't know is that Matt Smith completely and utterly bit Karen Gillan's hand in this scene,
06:18as revealed by the actress on the episode's commentary track.
06:21Her yelp of pain was completely genuine, so perhaps Smith got a bit too method here.
06:26Number 4. Having a Blast
06:27Doctor Who has been around for 60 years, but it might not have lasted past six years if this moment
06:33from 1969's The War Games had gone differently.
06:36During a scene which required the three leads to stand near an explosion,
06:40second doctor Patrick Troughton was unhappy with their positioning.
06:43The fact that the explosives expert on set was missing some of his fingers certainly didn't help matters.
06:49To reassure himself, Troughton asked to see a practice run of the stunt.
06:52The crew obliged, setting off the explosion, and a huge rock landed directly at the spot where the actors were
06:59supposed to stand.
07:00If the actor hadn't raised his concerns, the second iteration of The Doctor might have been the final one.
07:06Thankfully though, Troughton was confident enough to speak up, and we were saved from finding out whether the actors who
07:11play The Doctor can regenerate themselves.
07:14Spoiler, probably not.
07:16Number 3. Master of Mime
07:18Catherine Tate wasn't known as a dramatic actress before Doctor Who, which caused a good amount of scepticism when she
07:24was announced in a recurring role.
07:26She soon proved the doubters wrong, of course, with several powerful, emotionally charged moments in her second episode, The Fires
07:32of Pompeii.
07:33But what wasn't a surprise was that she absolutely nailed the comedy.
07:36Her debut episode, Partners in Crime, features her funniest Doctor Who moment, with the 10th Doctor and Donna Noble communicating
07:42via mime.
07:43It seems like the sort of thing that would be meticulously planned beforehand, but that wasn't actually the case.
07:49Tate was given very little guidance on how to perform the mime, with the script simply reading, Donna does a
07:54little mime.
07:55Naturally, she asked director James Strong if he had any thoughts on the scene.
07:59He didn't.
08:00Before turning to showrunner Russell T. Davis, who wasn't much help either, responding,
08:04See what Catherine comes up with.
08:06And so, Tate invented the whole thing on the day.
08:09The scene could very easily have been awkward rather than funny, so it's a testament to her comedic abilities that
08:15it turned out so well.
08:16Number 2.
08:17Wartime Wilf
08:18One of the most impactful scenes in Doctor Who has nothing to do with aliens or explosions.
08:24It's two men having a conversation, and it's brilliant.
08:28After escaping Earth following the Master's conquest of the planet, the Doctor and Wilfred Mott sit down, watching the big
08:33blue ball spin.
08:34After a heartbreaking exchange, Wilf begs the Doctor to take his old service revolver and kill the Master with it,
08:40before he gets the chance to kill him.
08:42As always, the Doctor says no to the gun.
08:45During this chat, Wilf recounts his time in the military, telling the Doctor about when he was stationed in Palestine
08:50after World War II.
08:52Bernard Cribbin's delivery of these lines sounds convincing, and that's because he was actually there, serving as part of a
08:58parachute regiment.
08:59Furthermore, the blizzard of bullets Wilf describes actually happened to Cribbins, who used his time in the army to inform
09:05his performance.
09:07From soldier to singer to one of the greatest companions of all time.
09:11Just another chapter in the extraordinary life of the late, great Bernard Cribbins.
09:17Number 1.
09:18A bizarre interruption
09:19Like Planet of the Dead, 1984's Fifth Doctor serial, Planet of Fire, was shot in an exotic location.
09:26In this case, Lanzarote, one of the Canary Islands.
09:30With less control over this location than there would be in a studio, one particular moment was interrupted in the
09:35most bizarre of circumstances.
09:37In one scene, Perry Brown, played by Nicola Bryant, nearly drowns.
09:41Bryant must have given a stellar performance, because a passerby thought she was actually in trouble, and tried to save
09:47her while the scene was being filmed.
09:49The man, who just so happened to be a German nudist, was kindly told that he'd ruined the shot for
09:54a very popular BBC show.
09:56Said man then decided to get some revenge by purposefully ruining more shots, and so he ran through the back
10:02of a scene set on the beach.
10:03Watching Perry almost drown is a very different experience when you know that a man with his tackle out very
10:08nearly ruined the whole thing.
10:10And that concludes our list.
10:12If you think we missed anything, then do let us know in the comments below, and while you're there, don't
10:16forget to like and subscribe, and tap that notification bell so you never miss a Who Culture video again.
10:21Also, head over to Twitter and follow us there, and Instagram as well, and I can be found across various
10:26social medias just by searching Ellie Littlechild.
10:28Don't forget to also look out for Sean Ferrick too, and Dan the Meigs as well.
10:32I've been Ellie with Who Culture, and in the words of Riversong herself, goodbye, sweeties.
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