10 Doctor Who Behind The Scenes Secrets You Need To Know
4. Fake Cast Members Help Maintain Surprises
When they aren't making their actors play 17 different characters at once, the Doctor Who team are changing their names to prevent spoilers.
In the days of classic Who, publications like the Radio Times were the primary source of information about upcoming episodes. So, not wanting to reveal that Davros was back in 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, the BBC provided a cast list for the magazine which contained "Roy Tromelly" – an anagram of Davros actor Terry Molloy.
The character most affected by this practice is the Master, which makes sense, as they've made more random appearances over the years than Stan Lee in the MCU.
Fifth Doctor serial The King's Demons reportedly starred someone called James Stoker, an anagram of "Master's joke" – a cheeky way to obscure the fact the Master was set to appear. This also happened with Castrovalva, where the Master's disguise Portreeve was credited as being played by "Neil Toynay", a codename for Master actor Tony Ainley.
More recently, the Series 12 finale cast list contained a character called "Fakout" played by "Barack Stemis" – which, when rearranged, spells "Master is back". That one wasn't quite as sneaky as the rest.