9. The Peter Cushing Films Are Acknowledged The Day Of The Doctor
Steven Moffat seems to have made it his mission to bring together as many different aspects of the Doctor Who universe as possible together as one whole. The 50th Anniversary mini-sode The Night Of The Doctor both bridged the gap between past and newer Doctors, and partially canonised the Big Finish audio plays. And, until the budget stopped this plan in its tracks; its immediate sequel The Day Of The Doctor was supposed to do the same to the 1960s Doctor Who films that starred Peter Cushing. Sort of. The Cushing films are one of the numerous aspects of Doctor Who that split fan opinion. They massively deviate from the source material by making the Doctor a human named Dr Who along with a number of other changes and (in the case of the second film) a shedload of product placement for Sugar Puffs. Though the production values are excellent for the time and the Robomen in the sequel do look pretty snazzy. But after over forty years of basically being the ginger stepson of Doctor Who, these films were finally going to be given some consideration. The Day Of The Doctors scenes in the UNIT Black Archive were supposed to both make canon and (depending on how you interpret it) take a good-natured pot-shot at the Peter Cushing films. When the Zygon disguised as Kate Stewart shows Clara the Vortex Manipulator, she casually notes Americans with the ability to rewrite history? Youve seen their movies. At this point she was supposed to walk past the posters for Dr Who And The Daleks and Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 AD, finally confirming their place in the Whoniverse: fictionalised accounts of the Doctors adventures. Thus neatly explaining the films deviations from the stories they were based on. However, as the films were produced by Amicus Productions and the BBC own no part of them, the Doctor Who production team would have had to pay for the rights to use the posters. Something that the episode's budget wouldn't stretch to.