10 Terrible CGI Moments In Modern Doctor Who

8. The Spinning Tree (The Christmas Invasion)

Doctor Who The Lazarus Experiment
BBC Studios

David Tennant is barely in his first full Doctor Who episode, The Christmas Invasion, spending half of it lying in a bed recovering from the effects of his recent regeneration.

At one point though, he does wake up to save Jackie, Mickey and Rose from a rather angry Christmas tree that's ploughing its way through their tiny suburban flat.

The tree - a remote-controlled Roboform device - starts rapidly spinning in circles and heads towards the trio, clearly hoping to slice them into small fleshy chunks.

While some of the dodgy CGI here is masked by the fact that the tree is constantly moving and twirling - and thus is fogged by thick layers of motion blur - it basically looks like an indistinguishable green swirl, and its weaknesses are only amplified by the fact that it's moving through an enclosed practical environment.

If we had to pick out the single worst shot, it's got to be the moment where Mickey uses a wooden chair to try and defeat the tree. Doctor Who always seems to struggle when combining real actors with CGI elements, and this is a perfect example of that.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.