10 Doctor Who Scenes You Weren’t Allowed To See

8. I Don’t Believe It!

Doctor Who Alex Kingston as River Song
BBC Studios

During the first series of NuWho, Russell T Davies and the gang were still figuring out how to pitch the show to its new audience.

It had to embody the elements of Doctor Who that everybody loved, but it also needed to bring the series up-to-date for the mid-2000s.

Unfortunately, they went a little too far and almost traumatised the nation's children in the process.

In The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, the Doctor discovers that a strange virus is mutating people into gas mask-wearing zombies. He chats to Richard Wilson's Dr. Constantine, who is looking after the afflicted before he too gets converted.

The original plan for the character's transformation had to be toned down after being deemed "too graphic" by the BBC, including the removal of some visceral sound effects, like the noise of Constantine's skull cracking.

The powers-that-be decided this would be too frightening for young children, and ordered that the scene be changed.

To give the BBC some credit, there would've been a fair few complaints from parents if little Timmy had been allowed to listen to a man's head cracking while tucking into his Saturday night fish fingers!

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Jacob Simmons has a great many passions, including rock music, giving acclaimed films three-and-a-half stars, watching random clips from The Simpsons on YouTube at 3am, and writing about himself in the third person.