10 Hilarious Doctor Who Mistakes You Definitely Didn't Notice
The Doctor has many powerful abilities, but keying out green screen clearly isn't one of them.
Over the decades, Doctor Who has become famous - or rather, infamous - for its low-budget visual effects. The show has had its fair share of wobbly sets in its time, no doubt, but for fans, that cobbled-together vibe is simply part of the charm.
That said, there's a difference between someone's creature mask peeling off or a spot of dodgy CGI, and a straight-up, unintentional mistake. Like most movies and TV shows, Doctor Who is no stranger to production goofs, and the last 17 years of time-travelling has been littered with them, from continuity blunders to anachronisms, or major factual errors to visual effects nightmares.
On the plus side though, most mistakes blend into the background when you're watching an episode normally, so unless you're some sort of advanced Cyberman who can analyse footage frame-by-frame in real-time, there's a good chance you haven't even noticed the vast majority of them.
That's true of the following ten mistakes, which aren't glaringly obvious at first, but are undeniably hilarious when you have them pointed out. Sorry in advance for ruining your rewatches of these scenes...
10. Big Ben's Gone Wibbly (Aliens Of London)
In the early years of the 2005 revival, Doctor Who was knocking out 14 episodes per year, quite a feat considering how much work went into each one.
With a single episode potentially taking two weeks to shoot, that's half a year of pure filming, not even factoring in the writing, special effects work, scoring, and promotion. It was an absolutely hectic schedule, so it's no surprise that there were miscommunications from time to time.
One such miscommunication led to this odd mistake in Series 1's Aliens of London, with a shot of Big Ben's clock face - which is then shattered by the wing of a spaceship - having been flipped so that the numbers are on the wrong side.
In behind-the-scenes footage (below), Mike Tucker - who oversaw the model work for the episode - explains that his team was initially told that the left wing of the ship would smash through the clock, so that's how they filmed it. But during post-production, this was changed to the right wing, so the shot had to be flipped.
On the plus side, this moment is so fast that it's not a blindingly obvious gaffe. Even Tucker himself admits he didn't notice it until one of his repeat viewings!