Tardis Trivia Top Ten!
Peter Capaldi's first year of TARDIS travel is out on Blu-ray and DVD on 24 November. Here's 10 (sporadically) fascinating facts that we gleaned from the set's special features...
Doctor Elsewhere
Director Ben Wheatley (who helmed both Deep Breath and Into The Dalek) hid a snowglobe on the TARDIS set, in homage to St. Elsewhere. That show is famous for ending with a scene which revealed that everything that had happened in the preceding 137 episodes had taken place inside the globe. Start freeze-framing those TARDIS scenes now...
Into The Shot
Keep a close eye on the final scenes of Into The Dalek. You can see a member of the Doctor Who crew wander briefly into shot. In fairness, he's blurred out, so it could just be another soldier. Another mistake in the episode albeit one not featured onscreen was a misspelling of the word hangar on one of the sets. Maybe it's a futuristic space spelling.
Who's The Doctor?
Peter Capaldi's audition at Steven Moffat's house involved reading scenes originally intended for Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant and Matt Smith's Doctors albeit slightly rewritten. Capaldi thought he'd flunked it until he received a phone call while filming The Musketeers.
Breaking The Mould
The round lights on the TARDIS set were cast from the same moulds used to make the neck rings on the New Paradigm Daleks. Designer Michael Pickwoad (above) justifies this similarity by saying that Dalek and Time Lord technology are too far removed from one another now. Makes sense to us.
The Hole Truth
That controversial holey jumper, occasionally worn throughout the season, is actually Peter Capaldi's own. Which makes sense when you see the cow-themed shirt he wears in the World Tour special feature. He clearly digs monochrome.
A Bigger Bang
"Into The Dalek" was originally intended to open with a larger space battle, which would have shown that the Daleks had wiped out whole planets. This sequence ended up much shorter in the actual episode. Another excised scene from the script delved into Gretchen's upbringing on a farm.
Easy Rider
Think that this new punk-chic Doctor would be making demands for fags, booze and bowls of blue Smarties? Think again. Peter Capaldi's rider for the World Tour included taramasalata and carrots. Very healthy. Doctor Who-themed cupcakes were also on the menu.
A Floor Flaw
The floor of the TARDIS set creaks noisily when the crew move their cameras around, which must be pretty distracting for the actors. Then again, she always was a bit of a ramshackle old timeship.
How Did They Missy That?
The Missy sequences dotted throughout the early episodes were written by Steven Moffat. Neither director Ben Wheatley or writer Phil Ford had any idea what was going on in them when they saw the final cuts of their episodes.
School Daze
Coal Hill School, as seen in The Caretaker, isn't filmed in one building. In fact, it's made up of rooms from several schools dotted around different areas of Cardiff.
