10 MORE Times Doctor Who Lied To Your Face
What do you mean two years of Ncuti Gatwa's Doctor Who wasn't "always the plan?"
As the BBC assure us that Doctor Who's future is confirmed with or without Disney, it's hard not to think of that scene from The Eleventh Hour. You know the one – the Doctor tells little Amelia Pond that everything's going to be alright, right after he's observed that "grown-ups tell you everything's going to be fine and you think they're probably lying to make you feel better".
When we previously talked about Doctor Who lying to you, the selections were often about preserving big surprises, enhancing the viewer experience, or convincing you that Nicola Bryant was American.
For this second list, we've got a few more lies designed to keep a big secret or pull off a massive surprise. However, the Disney deal and the panic over the future of Doctor Who adds a new dimension. Included here are blatant lies that deny the reality of the current situation in the interests of preserving good relations with the House of Mouse.
Maybe in years to come, we'll get a bit of honesty about just what's gone on behind the scenes of Doctor Who over the past three years. For now however, we're all expected to believe that "it was always the plan" to end up in this exact situation.
10. No Daleks In Series 11
The Thirteenth Doctor's first series boldly resisted bringing back elements from the past, with showrunner Chris Chibnall promising Radio Times that "We’ve got a new Doctor, all-new characters, all-new monsters, and all-new stories."
When pressed on what this meant for the Daleks back in 2018, Chibnall rather cheekily replied that they wouldn't appear "this year." He was right of course – they appeared in 2019's New Year's Day special, Resolution. But because Resolution was filmed as part of the Series 11 production, this is a very obvious bending of the truth.
There wasn't even that much of a gap between the Series 11 finale and Resolution. The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos aired on 9 December 2018, just over three weeks before the broadcast of the New Year's Day special! So yes, technically, Chris Chibnall wasn't lying, but also technically, the Daleks do appear as part of Series 11.
Oddly enough though, Resolution was then included on some editions of the Series 12 box-set, despite being a very clear continuation of Series 11 with the whole Ryan's dad subplot. Still, it's a showrunner's rite of passage to lie to the press about returning monsters, so we'll let Chris Chibnall off the hook with this one.