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

6. Budget Constraints Held Back Davies' Vision For The Gridlock Undercity

Doctor Who Gridlock New Earth undercity Martha Jones
BBC/Twitter: @russelldavies63

As the name implies, Gridlock's Undercity is entirely underground, sealed off from the rest of New New York above the surface. But if it's underground, why is there rain?

Well, we don't really know (although "because Doctor Who" is a pretty solid explanation), but in a tweet, Davies hinted that it's because of the Undercity's great height: its roof is so high that it ended up developing its own little atmosphere.

Furthermore, if Davies' full vision had been put on the screen, we'd have actually seen this roof for ourselves. The writer wanted to show a "metal sky" high above, "so high it's got clouds and rain". Unfortunately though, budget limitations - Doctor Who's most potent adversary - prevented this from happening.

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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!