10 Doctor Who Moments That Were Improvised

5. Are You My Mummy? (The Poison Sky)

Doctor Who The Poison Sky Tenth Doctor
BBC

Utter the phrase "are you my mummy?" in front of any Doctor Who fan, and the image of a creepy gas mask zombie kid will instantly flash before their eyes.

Then, once that moment of horror has passed, Whovians might also recall the scene in The Poison Sky where the Tenth Doctor - while wearing a gas mask in order to shield himself from a Sontaran gas attack - repeats that phrase for comedic effect.

One of the best things about watching Doctor Who is noticing all the little callbacks that are peppered throughout each episode, and this is one of the most memorable examples that NuWho has ever had. But how did it come about? Well, supposedly, David Tennant ad-libbed the line while caught up in the moment, resulting in a hilarious bit of fan-service that makes us chuckle every time we watch it.

We should note that there's some dispute as to whether Tennant actually improvised this or not, but it certainly feels like he did. Since we can't see his mouth, he could've said literally anything while wearing that gas mask, and his dialogue could've been cleaned up (or changed) in post-production.

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Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!