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Those Doctor Who facts that even fully-trained Time Lords might not be aware of.
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00:00When you've got a show running as long as Doctor Who has, it is absolutely certain that there are
00:04going to be so many little in-jokes, tidbits, and bits of information that it's just impossible
00:10to stay up to date with. I mean, six decades! That's a lot of Doctor Who! And even in reviewing
00:15these articles, I must confess that even I myself am finding out things I never knew. For example,
00:21did you know that they recast him? With that in mind, I'm Sean Ferrick for Who Culture,
00:26and here are 10 Doctor Who facts most fans don't know. Number 10, Ridley Scott's involvement with
00:32Doctor Who. The iconic design of the Daleks has been key to their longevity in the popular imagination
00:37and has led to the villains appearing in some truly unexpected places over the years. Designed by
00:41Raymond Cusick and built by Bill Roberts along with the team at Shawcraft, Terry Nation's classic
00:46creations rolled plunger first onto screens in December of 1963 and of course changed the course
00:50of Doctor Who's future. Cusick wasn't the original BBC set designer assigned to the first Dalek serial
00:55however. Also working as a set designer at the time was future sci-fi director Ridley Scott,
01:00and the job of designing the Dalek city and the Doctor's iconic foes was originally assigned to
01:05him. It's an enticing what if scenario, but Scott left the beat before work commenced on the Dalek
01:09serial. Unfortunately for sci-fi fans, this means there's no hidden treasure chest of Dalek designs
01:14drawn by the director of Blade Runner and Alien. Number 9, 2001 A Space Odyssey was inspired by the
01:21Dalek's master plan. Ridley Scott isn't the only legendary Hollywood director to have had a brush
01:25with Doctor Who and the Daleks. In 1965 while the BBC was airing Doctor Who's epic serial,
01:30The Daleks Master Plan, one Stanley Kubrick was mounting his iconic sci-fi movie 2001 A Space Odyssey.
01:36The production design of Kubrick's film was hugely influential on release and still influences the
01:40design of sci-fi blockbusters today. So it's surprising that Kubrick's production team reached out
01:45to a cheap tea-time TV show for help in achieving the film's groundbreaking sci-fi aesthetic. Following the
01:50broadcast of episode 5 of the 12-part serial, a member of Kubrick's team contacted the episode's director,
01:55Douglas Camfield, to discuss how he'd achieved certain effects. That episode follows on from
01:59when Katerina became the first Doctor Who companion to be killed off after ejecting herself and her
02:03captor out of an airlock. This sequence drew the attention of Kubrick's team who wanted to know how
02:07the bodies of Katerina and her captor floating in space were filmed. They were also interested in how
02:12he achieved the molecular dissemination effect similar to Star Trek's transporter technology.
02:16Given Doctor Who's reputation for having wobbly sets and cheap effects, it's heartening to know that
02:20Stanley Kubrick's team recognized the inventiveness of this show. Number eight, not even John Pertwee
02:26knows where the third Doctor's tattoo came from. The third Doctor's cobra tattoo has been the subject
02:31of fan myth and speculation for decades. Is it a Time Lord prison tattoo? Some form of division branding?
02:36The real story of how John Pertwee got his cobra tattoo is equally mysterious with the actor confirming
02:41that even he is entirely sure where it came from. In his memoir Moon Boots and Dinner Suits, Pertwee recounts
02:46many stories of his impressive career in the Navy. Most people already know that he worked alongside
02:50James Bond creator Ian Fleming in that department, adding an additional layer of the meaning of the
02:54oft-repeated comparison between the third Doctor and Mr Bond. In one passage from the book Pertwee
02:59writes about waking up with a horrendous hangover from a night out while serving in the Navy.
03:03I'd been tattooed, a green and scarlet cobra was squirming itself into a question mark on my forearm.
03:08God knows where or by whom this work of art was done, but whoever it was had executed quite a
03:13fair job
03:14and it doesn't seem to have upset too many people over the years. Apart from those perplexed Doctor
03:18Who fans who are still trying to write the cobra into canon that is. Number seven, the Met Police
03:23sued the BBC for the rights to the TARDIS. In the run-up to the 1996 TV movie, the Patent
03:28Office
03:28approved the familiar blue box of the Doctor's TARDIS as a BBC trademark. The police objected to this,
03:33stating that they should own the copyright given that the TARDIS was disguised as a police public
03:37call box. However, police boxes had begun to disappear from UK streets in 1958, five years prior to
03:43the broadcast of Doctor Who's very first episode in 1963. This led the hearing officer to state,
03:48I bear in mind that for most of the period since the police call box was taken out of service,
03:52the only sight the public at large would have had of this item of street furniture has been
03:57in the TV program Doctor Who provided by the BBC where it is a TARDIS, a fictional time-travelling
04:02machine with the external appearance of a police box. It was a bizarre move by the Met to try and
04:06profit from the merchandise from a sci-fi show and nowadays their craven commercialism would surely
04:10attract the attention of the anti-corruption officers from Line of Duty's AC-12. You can just
04:15picture Ted Hastings staring at a Met copyright lawyer across the table of TARDIS t-shirts,
04:19piggy banks and bubble bath bottles, firmly shaking his head and uttering,
04:23you've got a bloody nerve. Number six, Captain Jack was almost beheaded to become the face of Beau.
04:28Despite what John Barrowman may have said in later years, Stephen Moffat did want to bring Captain Jack
04:33back to Doctor Who during his tenure as showrunner. When the Doctor and Rory set out to rescue Amy from
04:38Madame Kovarian in A Good Man Goes to War, the Doctor assembles a formidable team to assist them
04:42and originally Captain Jack was supposed to be in that team alongside Madame Vastra, Strax, Jenny and
04:48a fashionably late River Song. The only issue is that John Barrowman was busy making Torchwood Miracle
04:53Day and was unable to appear in season six's mid-season finale. To fill the gap left by Jack,
04:58Moffat brought back Dorium Maldivar. Dorium has a pretty brutal end, decapitated by the Headless Monks
05:03and forced to live the rest of his life in a box. The fate was originally to befall Captain Jack,
05:07which would have set up his transformation into the face of Beau further down the line. Jack's
05:11eventual fate was first teased at the end of Doctor Who series three by a characteristically
05:16mischievous Russell T Davies. For now, the nature of the transformation will remain ambiguous.
05:21Number five, the Doctor was originally a villain. Yes, the Doctor is a bit shady in both the original
05:26unaired pilot and the as broadcast version of an unearthly child, but the original version of the
05:30character was envisioned as a much more villainous creation. Co-writing an outline for Doctor Who with
05:34Sidney Newman and Donald Wilson, writer C.E. Webber put forward an alternate origin for the Doctor that,
05:39weirdly, has something in common with Chris Chibnall's Tec Teun. In the original outline,
05:44the Doctor was on the run from his own people who were concerned about his meddling with time.
05:48And why were they so concerned? Well, the Doctor was travelling through time to find his perfect past
05:52and when he found it, he intended to stay there forever by destroying the future. In a pop cultured
05:56landscape dominated by fan nostalgia and people living in the past, this is a strong concept for a
06:01Time Lord villain in modern Doctor Who. It would have been the kiss of death for the original show
06:04however, and thankfully the idea was nixed by Sidney Newman with a rather blunt script note, nuts.
06:10Number four, the Fourth Doctor and the Valyard were offered a threesome. Tom Baker's drinking days in
06:14the Colony Club in Soho during the 1970s are the stuff of legend. There are references to those days in
06:20Matt Berry's sitcom Toast of London, where a man dressed as the Fourth Doctor can regularly be seen having
06:24a drink in the background of Toast's Club. John Hurt, later the War Doctor, was another of the colony's
06:29regulars. Tom Baker also knew the future of Valyard Michael Jayston and somehow the two actors were
06:34once propositioned by the acclaimed British artist Francis Bacon for a threesome in exchange for one
06:39of Bacon's paintings. Baker and Bacon were drinking buddies at the colony, but it's unclear if Jayston
06:44was a member. Perhaps Tom signed him in. The story was told by Jayston at a Doctor Who signing a
06:48few
06:48years ago, recounted by Darren Floyd in his hilarious blog about getting the Doctor Who cast to sign an NWA
06:54album. The two men politely turned Bacon down, possibly just as well. Number three, the Doctor
06:58almost met Jesus. In the early stages of Doctor Who various big ideas were thrown around regarding
07:04potential Christmas episodes and the Hartnell era did actually get one. 1965's Bonkers The Feast of
07:09Stephen in which the Doctor and his companions take a break from the Daleks master plan to get arrested,
07:14crash a silent movie set and wish everyone at home a very Merry Christmas. However the original ideas
07:18were much more outlandish than anything in The Feast of Stephen. One of the ideas saw a drunk Doctor
07:23as Marley's ghost in A Christmas Carol, something that Stephen Moffat would finally realize in 2010.
07:28Another idea would see Cinderella's fairy godmother revealed to be the Doctor's wife,
07:31who was chasing him across time and space, again an idea that Stephen Moffat would finally realize,
07:35sort of, between 2008 and 2015. Hello sweetie. The most eye-catching idea was a Doctor Who historical
07:42set in Bethlehem during the birth of Jesus Christ, which wasn't too far away from some of the educational
07:47historical adventures that would define Sidney Newman's original vision. Perhaps the Doctor,
07:51Ian and Barbara would pose as the three wise men or perhaps use science to create some sort of beacon
07:56to act as the Nativity star. Number 2. Boris Karloff was originally offered the role of the Doctor.
08:02Horror icon Peter Cushing famously played the Doctor in the two 1960s Dalek movies and a year after the
08:07release of the Dalek Invasion of Earth 2150 AD, another horror icon was being considered for the
08:13role of the Doctor. Boris Karloff, best known for playing Frankenstein in the Universal Monster movies,
08:17was considered for a proposed radio spin-off for audiences in Australia and other overseas
08:21territories. Given his legendary status and the fact he won a Grammy for narrating the 1966 animation
08:27How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Karloff would have been a voice actor of note for an international
08:31audience. He turned the role down however as he was too busy to take on the proposed 52 episode radio
08:36serial. The project was ultimately rejected by the BBC but a pilot is believed to have been recorded based
08:41on a script by Malcolm Hulk entitled Journey Into Time. It would have seen the Doctor and his
08:45granddaughter arrive during the American Revolution and accompanying promotional materials suggested
08:49that if successful the radio show would have adapted existing Doctor Who stories while also
08:54telling new ones. Number 1. TARDIS wasn't supposed to be an acronym. How exactly to write the name of
08:59the Doctor's ship has been the source of contention for quite some time. Is TARDIS a universally accepted
09:04acronym or is TARDIS merely a name like one you would give to a sailboat? According to David J Howe
09:09and
09:09Stephen James Walker's unofficial guide to Doctor Who the sailboat concept was the original intention
09:14by the creators of the show something that is backed up by a lot of the dialogue in its early
09:18days.
09:18For example the first Doctor and his companions rarely refer to the TARDIS but rather the ship.
09:23Stephen Moffat even made a nostalgic joke about this when the first and twelfth Doctors met in
09:27Twice Upon a Time. The Doctor Who annuals also appeared to follow this pattern of the ship being
09:31dubbed TARDIS rather than the word being an acronym. Sometimes the stories in those pages would refer to
09:36Doctor and his companions returning to TARDIS rather than to the TARDIS as is the norm now.
09:41For years fans were hung up on the line about Susan inventing the TARDIS acronym which perhaps
09:46suggested something larger. Maybe she was just a trendsetter who dubbed the Doctor's rickety
09:49old Type 40 TARDIS and the Doctor's legend caught on and influenced the branding of future time capsules.
09:55That's everything for our list today folks. What did you think and do you think we missed anything?
09:58Let us know in the comments below. Please don't forget to like share and subscribe. Remember you can catch us
10:02over on
10:03Twitter at WhoCulture. You can catch myself at SeanFerrick on Twitter and at Sean.Ferrick88 on Instagram.
10:09Everyone you look after yourselves until I see you again. Our friends in Ukraine stay strong.
10:13Remember to our friends in Iran as well your bravery is incredible. Everyone have a good week. Keep it wibbly
10:18wobbly.