10 Doctor Who Moments That Were Improvised

3. The Window Mime (Partners In Crime)

Doctor Who Donna Noble Partners In Crime
BBC Studios

When Catherine Tate joined Doctor Who as a full-time companion in Series 4, there were a lot of concerns that the show would become far too goofy and light-hearted, since the majority of viewers associated Tate with her comedy work.

In the end, those concerns turned out to be needless, because Tate's dramatic chops were revealed to be just as strong as her comedy chops. Still, the actress did have some jokey moments to work with, and while she nailed all of them, the best one has to be the window mime scene from the first episode of the series, Partners In Crime.

After having several close encounters during the opening ten minutes of the story, the Doctor and Donna finally notice each other through an office window, but since they can't hear each other, all they can do is mime their conversation.

It's genuinely hilarious stuff, and while David Tennant rises to the challenge, it's Tate who steals the show with a series of exaggerated expressions and funny gestures.

While watching this scene, you might assume that the whole thing was heavily scripted, but in reality, Tate was given very little guidance on how to actually perform her mimes. Showrunner Russell T Davies simply said "see what Catherine comes up with", and as a result, she had to improvise this entire sequence on the spot.

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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!