10 Things You Never Knew About The Doctor Who Specials

2. The Doctor Met Shakespeare (Again)

https://youtu.be/CDCWPZGmqCY How can fans forget the obnoxious portrayal of Shakespeare elucidated in The Shakespeare Code? The Doctor was intent on showing off to his newly-found companion, Miss Martha Jones, and what better way to do so than traveling to 1599, where Shakespeare was still formulating his timeless masterpieces, and where latrines did not exist? Although the integrity of the plot was questionable, it was fun-filled adventure zapped with Harry Potter magic and cackling witches flying on broomsticks. Shakespeare was not the reserved and sour-faced gentleman that portraits in English textbooks have hammered into our brains, but a rather eccentric and debonair figure, a flirt, and a cheat who nicked his most famous quotations from the Doctor himself. The Doctor also visited this old friend before regeneration, well at least in a figurative way, by assuming the role of Hamlet for a consecutive six months in the 2009 production, performed by members of the Royal Shakespeare Company. If you have not already viewed it, you€™re missing out on a superb performance and an innovative, modern adaptation of a prince€™s grief-driven descent into madness, as he is torn apart by conspiracy and vengeance. David Tennant managed to squeeze his Hamlet performance between filming for The Next Doctor and Planet of the Dead. Maybe you can catch a hint of his more refined, Elizabethan accent if you dare watch Planet of the Dead again. When Hamlet feigns his madness in front of Polonius, as shown in the clip above, a Whovian can€™t help but notice some Tenth Doctor quirks, especially in the way he says €œWell,€ and shrugs at 1:51. Perhaps Tennant subconsciously includes these idiosyncrasies in each of his roles, to the point that they have become €œTennant tendencies€ rather than €œDoctor dispositions". Not that any of us are complaining, of course.