10 Doctor Who Background Events You Might Have Missed

3. Miss Foster Clocks Donna (Partners In Crime)

Doctor Who The Pandorica Opens Eleventh Doctor Romans
BBC Studios

Partners In Crime contains one of the funniest moments in Doctor Who history, with the Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble silently mouthing a conversation through the windows of an office.

Donna's part of this scene was actually improvised by Catherine Tate, but an element that likely wasn't improvised is this clever background event that - unlike the other examples on our list - you have to listen for, not see.

The Doctor-Donna's hilarious mime comes to an end when space nanny Miss Foster interrupts them with a sarcastic quip, but she actually notices what the Doctor and Donna are doing way earlier in the scene. In fact, if you listen very closely, you can actually hear the moment when Foster abruptly stops talking to her hostage Penny Carter, indicating that she's clocked the Doctor and Donna's bizarre interaction.

This moment occurs about 15 seconds into the scene (when the Doctor mouths "what the hell are you doing there"), meaning that, for the rest of it, Foster is just stood there, bemused, watching this silent pantomime unfold.

It's extremely difficult to notice unless you crank up the volume and really sharpen those ears, but once you do, it somehow makes the scene even better.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.