Doctor Who: 10 Things You Never Knew About Series 4 Of NuWho

4. Cybermen Invade The TARDIS (Again)

It's become a staple of New Who series finales that the story never ends on a dull note. The death of the Ninth Doctor was immediately (and predictably) offset with the introduction of a manic Tenth Doctor. The loss of Rose was diverted by the sudden appearance of Donna Noble in a wedding dress (which sounds like a punchline, somehow). Time to mourn the Master and the departure of Martha was obliterated along with the TARDIS wall when the Titanic crashes through it. Believe it or not, but Series 4 was meant to end the same way. Having returned the amnesiac Donna to her family, the Tenth Doctor was meant to set off in the TARDIS and wander around forlorn until the console starts beeping. Peering at the scanner, and rattling off his trademark "What? What?! WHAT!?!", two Cybermen loom up behind him. Smash cut to the credits. The script for The Next Doctor originally opened with the Cybermen fading away, as the collapse of the void triggered by the events of Journey's End have left the trapped Cybermen bleeding back into reality but yet unable to materialise. The Doctor tracks them back to Victorian London and the episode proceeds as broadcast. As it happens, it was DWM journalist Ben Cook - during their correspondence for The Writer's Tale - that would inspire a hasty reshoot in which David Tennant had to be drenched once again for the wordless middle-distance stare that gave so many of us the feels. Since the Tenth Doctor standing in the rain has become a meme synonymous with depression and misery, it's fair to say that the story was better for it.