Doctor Who: 10 Clever Moments Of Foreshadowing You Probably Missed

9. The Daleks Behind The Curtain

Doctor Who Bad Wolf Ninth Doctor Lynda Moss
BBC Studios

The Doctor's greatest foes made their long-awaited return in the first series of the 2005 revival, with a lone Dalek squaring off against Christopher Eccleston's Ninth Doctor in the sixth episode - aptly titled Dalek.

Then, in the two-part finale, a plot twist revealed that an entire legion of Skaro's finest had somehow survived the destruction of the Time War, with the Doctor and his allies forced to partake in a series of deadly game shows as part of a Dalek scheme.

There aren't many clues throughout Series 1 that hint at this "behind-the-curtain" Dalek presence, but a subtle, rather brilliant one was hidden right at the start of Bad Wolf, the first episode in that two-part finale.

After the "100 Years Later" title card, the Doctor bursts out into the main room of the Big Brother house. Here, look at the wall on the right-hand side of the shot to see some paintings hanging on the wall - paintings that just-so-happen to bear those iconic "Dalek bumps", worn on the outside of each Dalek's metal casing.

While this sort of thing might seem obvious when someone points it out, it really isn't obvious at all while watching the episode normally! Our attention, naturally, focuses on the Doctor - making any other details in the scene easy to miss.

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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!