More behind the scenes secrets from Doctor Who’s latest episode, Wild Blue Yonder, have now been revealed…
Last weekend’s episode of Doctor Who, Wild Blue Yonder appears to have (rightly) gone down rather well. Our own spoiler-y review of it is here, with Russell T Davies penning a tale that called for plenty from his two lead actors, David Tennant and Catherine Tate.
The man who directed the episode was Tom Kingsley meanwhile, and over on his Twitter/X/Whatever We Call It These Days feed, he’s been detailing some behind the scenes information from the shoot.
It’s a fascinating thread of details he’s dropped too, not least the revelation that in Wild Blue Yonder, you actually see the Doctor played by six different people throughout the episode.
David Tennant we all knew about, of course. But as Kingsley revealed via a shot of the cast sheet, we also got a Doctor double (for the Tennant against Tennant sequences, Daniel Tuite stepping in), a Beast double, a Contortionist Double, a further double, and then a stunt double. We don’t have the names of all six, but that’s a lot of Doctors.
In this episode, the Doctor was played by six different people. #WildBlueYonder #DoctorWho 7/18 pic.twitter.com/TRBuTduBVW
— Tom Kingsley (@kingsley_tom) December 3, 2023
What I loved too is that much has been made of the new money from Disney+ that’s flooded into Doctor Who, and allowed the visual scale of stories such as Wild Blue Yonder to be dramatically opened up. Yet one of the most effective sequences in the episode saw the antagonists suddenly seemingly to get taller. As Kingsley revealed, that was beautifully low tech, with the required effects expense basically being a box.
As he wrote, “no one believed it’d work until we did this test”.
The cheapest special effect in the episode was a moment where the baddies appear to be getting taller. The technique just involved… standing on a box. No one believed it’d work until we did this test #DoctorWho 10/18 pic.twitter.com/8kXl3F6aIb
— Tom Kingsley (@kingsley_tom) December 3, 2023
We’re not going to steal any more of Kingsley’s thunder, as it’s an extensive thread of behind the scenes mischief he’s detailed. If all goes to plan, you should see it below these words…
If you watched last night’s #DoctorWho episode, #WildBlueYonder, A) thank you and B) here’s some facts about how we made it. >>Spoilers!<< 1/18 pic.twitter.com/qjnZxrCulZ
— Tom Kingsley (@kingsley_tom) December 3, 2023
Doctor Who returns to our screens this coming Saturday for The Giggle, when David Tennant leaves the show (again) and Ncuti Gatwa steps aboard the TARDIS for the first time…
