Doctor Who: 14 Cool Details Revealed In Steven Moffat's Wedding Of River Song Commentary

11. Dorium Returned Because Of A Recommendation From A Previous Director

Doctor Who The Wedding Of River Song Dorium Maldovar
BBC

Dorium Maldovar first appeared in Series 5's The Pandorica Opens, with the character selling a vortex manipulator to River Song in a very short scene.

He then popped up again in Series 6's A Good Man Goes To War, as one of the Doctor's allies during the raid on Demon's Run. During this episode, he gets beheaded by the aptly-named Headless Monks, which led to his third and final televised Who appearance in The Wedding Of River Song - where his severed head is in a box.

From the sounds of it though, Moffat originally didn't have plans to bring him back for a second time, let alone a third.

During the commentary, the writer states that actor Simon Fisher-Becker was so good while filming The Pandorica Opens (apparently, he "just got it"), that director Toby Haynes said that Dorium must return in a future episode, and Moffat, clearly, took this recommendation seriously.

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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.