10 Terrible CGI Moments In Modern Doctor Who

8. The Spinning Tree (The Christmas Invasion)

Doctor Who The Christmas Invasion Christmas Tree
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 over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!