10 Doctor Who Scenes You Didn't Know Were Unscripted

If no actor has embodied the role of the Doctor more than Tom Baker, then the companion equivalent must surely be Nardole.

With his trademark quirkiness and impeccable comic timing, Matt Lucas was a perfect fit for the role. Watching him in interviews, it’s hard to see where he ends and Nardole begins.

Like Baker, Lucas had no qualms about playing around with the script and adding his own contributions here and there, as he recalled to Doctor Who: The Fan Show in 2017 (16:30 in the video below).

In the episode Oxygen, this gave us such gems as “some of my best friends are blue-ish”, Nardole joining the group hug at the end (originally it was meant to be the Doctor and Bill), and his unusual attempt to polish his helmet near the start.

“You have to trust the process,” Lucas summarised. "They’ll get into the edit and do lots of different cuts, and they’ll figure out what works”.

We might never know which Nardole-isms didn’t make it in, but the ones that did were a crucial part of what made the character so endearing.