Over fifty-one years, Doctor Who has developed a long, complex, and beautiful history. Five decades is a long time in anybodys estimation (except maybe a Time Lord's) and obviously such a long period of time with so many turbulent moments has given rise to countless little facts. Both the mundane and the surprising. Almost every episode has some kind of story behind it. In fact, some are practically bursting at the seams with them. And while some of these stories are very well known like the circumstances that gave birth to Regeneration, and Michael Grade doing everything he could to drive the programme into the ground, a lot more are tucked away somewhere. A huge cache of Doctor Who information is waiting to be unearthed by people willing to go looking for it. Which is what weve done. Culled from memos, books, websites, and DVD commentaries are some of the lesser known aspects of Doctor Whos history. If weve done our job properly then once the Doctor Who trivia war starts, youll be well armed with these little gems. So from Matt Smiths burgeoning fandom to a very unfortunate costume plan from Patrick Troughton, these are 25 Fact You May Not Know About Doctor Who
25. Matt Smith Becomes One Of Us
When he was first cast; Matt Smith wasnt a Doctor Who fan having grown up in the Wilderness Years between the Classic and Revived series. But to prepare for the role, he gradually became a Whovian. He watched the Second Doctor story Tomb Of The Cybermen and phoned Steven Moffat in the middle of the night to rave about it, and also wrote fanfiction where the Doctor meets Albert Einstein. A character coincidentally featured in an Eleventh Doctor mini-sode written by a group of schoolchildren a few years later. While he may not have been a fanboy at the start, playing the Doctor certainly seems to have turned him into one. All together now: One of us. One of us. One of us.
24. Disappearing Characters
In the 1960s, Doctor Who had an incredibly hectic shooting schedule as each season contained around forty episodes and each episode was shot in a week. Every episode would have four days of rehearsal, a day of studio shooting (which was effectively done live and had very few chances for retakes), and a day of location shooting if necessary. Because of this; whenever an actor wanted to take a holiday, their characters had to be written out for an episode. So because of this, a number of 1960s stories have entire episodes focussing on different characters after the Doctor and his Companions get split up by various circumstances so that an actor could take a week off. At times, this also had to be done on the fly such as when Frazer Hines (Jamie) caught chickenpox during the filming of The Mind Robber and was replaced for Episode 2 by another an actor, with an explanation for the temporary change in actors being written into the already very surreal storyline.
JG Moore is a writer and filmmaker from the south of England. He also works as an editor and VFX artist, and has a BA in Media Production from the University Of Winchester.
