10 Doctor Who Scenes You Didn't Know Were Unscripted

Tom Baker had a funny relationship with scripts, and he rarely stuck to them word-for-word. This often caused headaches for the production team, but one ad-lib that did meet their approval came in The Robots of Death.

In part four of this acclaimed murder mystery, the Doctor makes reference to Robophobia – which, as it says on the tin, is the fear of robots.

As scripted, this condition was also known as “Grimwol’s Syndrome”. But by the time the episode went before cameras, it had been changed to “Grimwade’s Syndrome”, in tribute to real-life production assistant Peter Grimwade.

Grimwade had, reportedly, complained that the serials he was attached to always featured robots, so this ad-lib is smarter than it first appears. The story goes that Baker couldn't recall the scripted name, and so cheekily called it Grimwade Syndrome during rehearsals.

With Grimwade going on to direct Baker's final serial Logopolis (among others), the joke actually becomes quite heartwarming in retrospect.