10 Dark Doctor Who Secrets Every Fan Should Know

The history of Doctor Who is like a creepy old house

It's been around for bloody ages, is huge on the inside compared to what it looks like on the outside

and has secrets lurking in every corner. And some of those secrets are a lot more chilling than others

I'm Ellie for Who Culture here with 10 Dark Doctor Who Secrets Every Fan Should Know

10. Asbestos and Explosions 7th Doctor Serial, the greatest show in the galaxy

sees Ace and the Doc attempt to stop an evil circus from enslaving people for their own wicked form of entertainment

However, the Doctor almost never tangled with these gods of Ragnarok because the entire story was nearly shut down before filming finished

Scenes for The Greatest Show in the Galaxy were due to be shot at the BBC's Television Centre

until renovations inside one of the studios uncovered a load of asbestos lurking there

Asbestos is a material that was commonly used as an electrical insulator and flame retardant

before people found out it was really bad for your health. As in, if you inhale it, it will kill you slowly and painfully, kind of bad

Luckily, the nasty stuff was found before anyone came into contact with it

so nobody came to any harm. Studio filming was cancelled and alternative arrangements were made

This wasn't the only major brush with danger on the set of this serial either

During a scene where Sylvester McCoy had to walk away from an explosion, its radius was much bigger than he expected

due to a more aggressive type of explosive being used than what was originally planned

McCoy was caught on the edge of the blast, and some of his clothes even caught fire

but he still managed to play it incredibly cool. The name's Who. Doctor Who

9. The Flux Pandemic Despite being produced pre-COVID, Revolution of the Daleks featured some rather timely imagery

with the Doctor locked in prison and forced to self-isolate from her companions

Flux was the first series of Doctor Who to be produced in a post-COVID world

and also featured parallels to the pandemic. But on this occasion, they were completely intentional

Most notably, the flux itself was inspired by COVID, as former showrunner Chris Chibnall has confirmed in an interview

He said, quote, I mean, flux is a metaphor for COVID. There's a big thing coming for you

a massive thing that's going to disrupt all life as you know it. This was implied in the episodes themselves

with Belle's opening monologue in Once Upon Time being a clear giveaway

She said, quote, The biggest changes to our lives start small. Catastrophes creep in quietly

and by the time you realise the life you once had is already behind you

The Flux has much in common with Covid beyond this. It's relentless, deadly and takes many prisoners

with those that do survive finding themselves in a world that has changed forever

And Tek Tae-yoon refers to the Doctor as a virus. Anything too explicit would have been an unwelcome reality check

in a show that's supposed to be escapism. But it was all but inevitable that the circumstances affecting Flux's production

were going to creep into the scripts one way or another. 8. The TV Movie's Dunblane Edits

Production of the 1996 Doctor Who TV movie was notoriously drawn out and difficult

It was first mooted around June 1991, but wasn't actually broadcast until May 1996

going through countless different creatives and story iterations in that time. V. Steven Spielberg was involved at one point

while one draft of the script had the master able to control his form and turn his arms into lassoes In other words things changed constantly and things changed a lot But even when that broadcast date neared the movie difficulties weren yet over

Though the BBC had been hoping for it to receive a more universal 12 rating

the British Board of Film Classification decided that the version that would air in North America

was actually more deserving of a 15. Their reasoning was incredibly sad and dictated by real-world events

Two months prior, the Dunblane School Massacre had taken place in Scotland

where 43-year-old Thomas Hamilton had shot and killed 16 pupils and one teacher before taking his own life

This naturally led to the BBFC being more cautious with depictions of gun violence in the media

which was bad news for the TV movie's San Francisco alleyway gang shootout

As a result, this sequence was toned down in order to receive the desired 12 certificate

It's this more edited version of the TV movie that exists on iPlayer today

including other tweaks such as Chang Li's death not being shown on screen

Although the non-edited version has also been released in other mediums, while an uncensored version of the movie will be featured on the upcoming 4K release

7. Troughton's Terror Doctor Who has been around for 60 years, but it might not have lasted past six years

if this moment from 1969's The War Games had gone differently. In his final regular serial

the second Doctor and companions Jamie and Zoe must stop a tyrannical alien known as the Warlord

from conquering the galaxy by using soldiers from across history to fight in his army

During a stunt that called for our three heroes to stand near an explosion

Troughton became uneasy about where his mark was. He asked to see a run-through of the blast

which the stunt coordinator obliged to, setting off the explosion, and a huge rock landed directly at the spot where the actors were supposed to stand

Perhaps playing a Time Lord gave Troughton some sort of precognition, and thank goodness it did

If the actor hadn't raised his concerns, the second iteration of The Doctor might have been the final one

But thankfully, we were saved from finding out whether the actors who play The Doctor can regenerate as well as their character

It is interesting to compare and contrast the strict safety procedures and filming standards from the 21st century and decades gone by

And this is a perfect example of how things were perhaps a bit more lax back in the day

You'd also imagine that today's big explosive stunts would use a stunt double

or even CGI rather than the main actor themselves. 6. The Secret Submarine

You know those stories of TV shows like The Simpsons accidentally predicting our future

Doctor Who has done something similar on many occasions, including 1971's The Demons predicting the existence

of the soon-to-become-real BBC Three. Another odd example of Doctor Who foreknowledge

revolves around the 1972 serial The Sea Devils. Shortly after the broadcast of Episode 3

the Doctor Who team was visited by officials from the Ministry of Defence, who were concerned

that a submarine design featured in the episode had been stolen from a top-secret prototype that

they were actually working on. The submarine featured in the show was actually a model kit

from Woolworths. Do you remember Woolworths? Which had been adapted and tweaked to make it look more

advanced, including upgrades such as altering the propellers. And it turns out that these

alterations made the prop resemble a submarine that the Ministry of Defence was working on behind

closed doors In the end nothing came of this and the Doctor Who team was presumably let off when they showed the officials their Woolworths receipt Either way it spooky to know that the show came that close to getting in trouble with naval intelligence

Not to mention replicating a classified design they had no idea existed

Number 5. The Sheriff's Axed Death Sequence For Doctor Who's Robin Hood episode in Series 8

writer Mark Gatiss paid homage to the 1980s drama Robin of Sherwood

and chose the title Robot of Sherwood. This was a reference to Robin's nemesis, the Sheriff of Nottingham, who, in a shock twist during the final battle, was originally supposed to be decapitated and exposed as a cyborg

However, this vital moment was cut from the finished episode at the last minute in truly tragic circumstances

In the months leading up to broadcast, headlines were dominated by the terrorist group ISIS, who had been releasing horrific beheading videos online

Just days before Robot of Sherwood was due to go out, the group claimed their latest victim, US journalist Stephen Sotloff

Less than 48 hours later, the BBC announced that an edit had been made to the episode

and because early cuts of the first five Series 8 episodes had leaked earlier that summer, fans were able to quickly put two and two together

Sure enough, when Robot of Sherwood aired, the decapitation scene present in the early cut, which can still be viewed online, was absent

It was completely out of the team's control, but nevertheless cast a saddening shadow over the episode

It must have been difficult for them to edit the episode with so little time and in such a way that would be as neat as possible

but they did a decent job all things considered, and it was obviously the right decision

4. The Yeti Who Took a Tumble The Yeti were one of 60s Who's most memorable monsters, and together with the Cybermen and the Ice Warriors spooked a whole generation of children

And as it turns out, life playing a yeti was equally as terrifying

One scene of their mostly missing debut story, The Abominable Snowmen, involved a particularly precarious moment

as Professor Travers actor Jack Watling, father of Deborah Watling, who played second Doctor companion Victoria

recalled in an interview, quote, There was a low angle shot with us looking up at the yeti on the horizon

Suddenly one of these yeti fell off. He bounced hundreds of feet down. We thought he's killed himself

Fortunately, the actor in question was perfectly fine. Amazingly, his seemingly fatal fall had been cushioned by the foam rubber of his yeti costume

so he got incredibly lucky. As for why he'd taken a tumble, well, the cast reportedly enjoyed a drink or two between takes

Watling added, quote, So the moral to that story is if you want to get drunk and fall off a mountain

wear a yeti costume because it's all foam rubber. A robot yeti roaming the Himalayas is terrifying enough

but a drunk robot yeti roaming the Himalayas scarcely bears thinking about

No wonder they left this moment out of the animated reconstruction. Number 3. Doctor Who and the Haunted House

Doctor Who has had its fair share of haunted houses over the years

and some of them are just as creepy in real life. Fields House in Newport, which became the weeping angel-infested Wester Drumlins in Blink

and later the landlord's premise in Knock Knock, really was in a sorry state when the crew filmed there

and thus required little work from the art department. Similarly, the disused custom house on Cardiff's Butte Street, which appeared as the Scovox

Blitzer lair in The Caretaker is not somewhere you want to find yourself alone on a dark night But none of these beats the haunted house that really is haunted In 2013 Hyde the Doctor and Clara find themselves at Caliburn House where a professor and his assistant are trying to solve the mystery of the Witch of the Well

One of the locations used for Caliburn was the 19th century gothic mansion Margam Castle

which has reportedly received visitations of its own, from a murdered gamekeeper

a burly blacksmith, and giggling Victorian children. Said gamekeeper, Robert Scott, was shot dead by a poacher while patrolling the castle grounds in 1898

Locals claim he can still be heard stomping about the place doing his job

And that's not all. The deceased daughter of the mansion's first owner, Christopher Rice Mansell Talbot

is said to haunt the building and can be seen dressed in all white floating around

In the Doctor Who universe, the witch of Calaburn House was actually trapped space traveller Hila Takorian trying to escape from a pocket universe

But Margam's real-life hauntings remain unexplained to this day. Number 2. David Suchet's Creepy Crawly Encounter

With its creepy crawlies, wooden lady and omniscient landlord, Knock Knock is one of the most unsettling Doctor Who stories in recent years

But like the best haunted house stories, it's the tragedy rather than the scariness that unnerves you the most

In a shock twist, we learn that the spooky happenings at 11 Cardinal Road

are the result of the landlord trying to protect his mother, with the house absorbing its tenants to extend her lifespan

The only way this twisted tale can end is with a mercy killing, with Eliza sacrificing herself and her son to the lice

This scene required little acting from David Suchet, who had found himself in a similar predicament 50 years earlier

As he recalled to Doctor Who The Fan Show, he once rented a room in Liverpool with nothing more than a horsehair mattress

and an old woolly coat in the way of bedding. On one occasion, the young Suchet went to bed

only to wake up covered in wood lice. Being able to pull on a memory that traumatic

clearly aided Suchet's performance, and it makes it even tougher to watch

when you know that something similar happened to him in real life. And number one, a Dalek terror attack

Anyone who's seen Remembrance of the Daleks will know that it's a pretty explosive episode

with battles and set pieces galore, and production-wise, this had some rather unexpected ramifications

The story was filmed in various London locations, including a road called Windmill Walk

This was the site of the climactic battle between the Imperial and Renegade Daleks

during which multiple Daleks are blown to smithereens. Following an early victory for the Renegade Daleks

the Imperials deploy their secret weapon, the tank-like special weapons Dalek. But this wasn't the only specialist called to the scene

Indeed, the explosions quickly attracted the attention of the emergency services, who feared that they were part of a terrorist attack

At the time the serial was shot in April 1988, tensions were still high in Northern Ireland

and the UK had already been subject to multiple IRA bombings. There was a very real possibility of further action

and the police were on standby to respond. Of course, in this particular case

there was nothing to worry about, but the fact that the police were called in the first place just goes to show how realistic these explosions were

and makes the sequence all the more hair-raising to watch. And that concludes our list

but if you're still in the mood for the dark moments, why not check out our giant compilation video

of the 62 darkest moments in Doctor Who history. In the meantime, I've been Ellie for WhoCulture

And in the words of Riversong herself, goodbye, sweeties