top stories about weird shit that happened behind the scenes of doctor who
those anecdotes frazer hines loves to tell about patrick troughton secretly taking off his pants while in the tardis during rehearsals and then coming out and doing the whole scene in his underwear
paul mcgann runs into the cast of the x-files in an elevator while filming the tv movie and is too intimidated to say anything to them because they are more famous than him
“we accidentally left colin baker tied to a pole alone in the middle of the woods for half an hour, oops”
there are probably a lot more that i’m just forgetting right now. how did they ever even get anything made
adding some of my personal favorites:
the first day patrick troughton came to set to play the doctor, anneke wills (polly) and michael craze (ben) wore t-shirts that had “come back bill hartnell” in huge letters on them that they’d had specially made and ordered just to fuck with pat
the crew so strongly believed that jon pertwee could just naturally drive any vehicle that at one point they were just like “lol drive this hovercraft, you can do that right” and didn’t give him time to practice driving it and he nearly wiped out the entire camera crew with it
tom baker thought the drowning scene in the deadly assassin was too scary, so at the day and time that the episode with it in it aired he literally knocked on a random door, asked “do you watch doctor who here?” and then sat with the family as they watched it
“And I turned around and they were all wearing mustaches”
Jean Marsh forgetting she’d put her lunch in her pocket, reaching to draw Sara Kingdom’s gun, and corpsing when she tried to draw a cold squishy tomato sandwich
Jon Pertwee waking in a WWII morgue and scaring someone like Eight in the movie; the Master sitting on the Doctor between takes to give him back/neck massages bc he still hurt 25 years later
Katy auditioned with contacts before they were common, and the producers made her take them out, so that’s why Three’s always taking Jo’s hand and leading her about like a seeing eye dog
Lis Sladen getting stuck for real in the fucking air duct in Arc in Space
The various improbable explanations of how Tom Baker got a dog bite on his mouth right before the filming of The Pirate Planet
The horse demolishing both the cart it was pulling and the archway it tried to pass through, trying to follow Peter Davison fresh off his stint as Tristan
The real story of Kamelion which was basically JNT swallowing BS marketing and believing the machine could do what its inventor claimed even though it hadn’t been demonstrated, so it really WAS an impostor
The gossip scene in the production of Fiddler on the Roof where Sophie was working the evening she got the call was actually a bunch of actors whispering “Sophie got the job!” “Sophie’s going to be in Doctor Who!”
Sylvester saving Sophie from drowning, being cut to ribbons by glass and/or electrocuted when the water tank she was in started to crack
Sylvester not breaking character when his coat started smoldering due to a miscalculation by the pyrotechnics crew:
One evening Terry was driving Bill Hartnell home to Mayfield from a pub in Blackboys, rather worse for wear, when he spied a roadblock, and began to slow down.
Bill asked ‘Why are you slowing up?’
‘The Police,’ said Terry.
‘**** the Police,’ said Bill. They were duly flagged down, Bill insisting, ‘Leave this to me.’ Dressed in well-tailored trousers and shirt, he swept out of the car as if he was wearing his Doctor Who cloak and wig, shouting ‘Don’t you know who I am? I’m Doctor Who, Doctor BLOODY WHO! Now get all of this rubbish out of the way my friend. I need to get home and we are very busy people!’
From Who’s There? The Life and Career of William Hartnell.
