Doctor Who: 12 Cool Details Russell T Davies Just Revealed About New Earth & Gridlock

3. The Car Windows Were Smeared Because The Team Couldn't Afford Any CGI Work

Doctor Who Gridlock undercity motorway car window
BBC/Twitter: @russelldavies63

Yet another story about Doctor Who and budget limitations. Shocking, we know.

Since a good chunk of Gridlock takes place inside a couple of futuristic cars, Davies and his team had many conversations about how to implement the car windows. In order to do them properly (as in, showing the other cars and the rest of the Undercity outside each window), every single shot that featured a window would've had to be put through the VFX machine, but financially, this simply wasn't viable.

And so, a sneaky, quite inventive solution was devised: the windows were smeared with dirt and grime instead.

Brilliantly, this doesn't just work as a cost-saving measure - it also works within the context of the episode. These cars are all travelling through the Undercity where the air is dirty, and it's not like there are car washes for people to use. It just makes sense that everybody's windows would be covered in a thick layer of filth.

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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!