Doctor Who: 13 Cool Details Revealed In Steven Moffat's Time Of Angels Commentary

8. This Shot Of The Byzantium Wasn't In The Plan

Doctor Who The Time Of Angels Weeping Angel
BBC

After the opening title sequence, the very first shot shows the TARDIS chasing after the doomed Byzantium spaceship.

Normally, cool-looking effects shots like these are pre-planned and factored into each episode's tight budget, but in this case, that wasn't what happened.

According to Moffat, this particular shot "wasn't in the script" and it "wasn't in the plan". Rather, it was offered up by The Mill - the visual effects company that worked on the episode - and of course, the Doctor Who team accepted it gladly.

From Moffat's words, it's not clear whether they got this shot for free, or whether they still had to pay for it. He simply says that The Mill "gave us a shot".

If we had to guess, we'd probably say that it wasn't free - purely taking into consideration the amount of man-hours required to produce something like this - but either way, it was a nice gesture, and a damn fine shot.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.