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TOM BAKER Robot: (ep ?) At one point in the story, the Doctor hurriedly types out a letter to leave for the
Brigadier and Sarah-Jane, and pins it to the TARDIS. Later when Sarah-Jane reads the note, you can clearly see it's been handwritten!
(ep 1) Watch out for Lis Sladen's knickers... (They appear when Harry and the Doctor lift Sarah onto a couch to recover from her fit of suffocation, and as she is lifted her dress flaps down at the back, showing a brief glimpse of her knickers... Which are white, FYI.) Lis Sladen later said that she regularly used to receive requests by post for those particular undies... And at one time simply despatched a brand new unworn pair by return of post to the lonely deviants in question..!
(ep 2) Watch when the Doctor is fighting with Styre: in the long shots he's standing up straight, but in the close-ups, he's crouched over. (ep ?) Apparently you can see a car in the background of one scene... (ep ?) ..and apparently there's a farm cottage visible in the background at one point, too.
(ep 4) When Gharman is hit over the head by Nyder, just listen to the squeak he makes! (ep 4?) Watch closely when the Doctor grabs the stalagtite to help free Harry from the giant clam. The rock comes away suddenly and the Doctor hits a "boulder" which wobbles back and forth. (ep 6) In a few of the final scenes, watch as the Daleks talk to Davros. The voice-lights are sometimes totally out of sync with the speech. (ep 6) The Doctor enters the Dalek incubation chamber wearing a short red jacket, without his hat. He emerges wearing a long brown overcoat, and his hat (last seen in episode 1). He is wearing this costume at the end of the story when he, Sarah Jane and Harry use the time ring to proceed to Nerva Beacon. [More interestingly, at the start of Revenge of the Cybermen (immediately afterwards - i.e.
when they find themselves on Nerva Beacon again), the Doctor's long coat and hat have vanished....
and in their place is... you guessed it, his short red jacket...!]
(ep 3) Shortly after the Doctor makes his speech to the Cybermen about how pathetic they are, watch for a wobbling Cyberman head... (ep ?) Elisabeth Sladen pulls a "Katy Manning" twice. She had terrible trouble with those tight pants she was wearing. Watch when she escapes from the Vogons and is climbing up a rock. She gets to the top and in order to get down the other side she goes feet first and is spread-eagle. You can see a long, slim, hole at her crotch - either her fly's down or she ripped the pants wide open (looking at the scene however, it's much more likely to be the latter). You can clearly see white underpants underneath. The next is a few scenes later when Harry helps her down a rocky hill. The camera is behind them. She comes down a bit fast and the pants fall down a few inches before the camera cuts out and she presumably pulls them back up. But not before we see the white knickers again... (ep ?) Look at the lower windows in the outer hallway of the beacon. It looks like the stars are on a piece of paper that is taped to the outside of the window (because they are). (ep ?) Watch when the Cybership is approaching. Before it is in visual range, they say that it is coming "straight at them". But when the ship comes into visual range and they show it on the screen, it is at an angle and completely stationary. After a minute passes THEN the ship moves. (i.e. they said the ship was moving before it actually did... Silly buggers.) (ep ?) As Nerva Beacon is coming in to crash-land on Voga, the Doctor manipulates the controls just enough to send the Beacon flying over the surface of the planet, but missing it. They take great pride in showing the moving planet surface as this happens, but it's painfully obvious that the mountains and hills are actually on a rotating drum, spinning on its side... (Besides, what planet could rotate that fast??) (ep ?) When Sarah gets out of the boat, she nearly falls flat on her face.
(ep 2) When the Doctor and the Brigadier are examining the soldier who was crushed by the Skarasen, you can see one of his (the soldier's) fingers move very slightly. Very hard to do if you're dead... (ep 3) When Sarah is wandering around the Zygon spaceship, you can clearly see the outline of her undergarments through her clothes. (ep 3?) In the scene where the duplicate Harry steals the transmitter-thingy from Sarah, the wound
on his forehead is very light in colour (as if it had almost healed). When he runs out the door it is
suddenly very dark red...
(ep 1) When the Doctor and Sarah first leave the TARDIS, the light on top of the police box keeps flashing (this is only supposed to happen in flight). And when Sarah returns later in the episode, the light has stopped flashing... Odd, that. (ep 4) When the Doctor drags the antimatter-infected Sorenson into the TARDIS, he dematerialises without closing the doors. This should have rather unpleasant effects (as Salamander once found out)! (ep 4) As Tom Baker walks around the Anti-Matter pool, his foot crashes through the set!
(ep 1) When Scarman breaks into the tomb, he says it's first dynasty, but you clearly see King Tutankamun's throne as one of the collection of treasures. (ep 1) The Doctor and Sarah get jostled by a time disturbance while they're in the TARDIS. Sarah stumbles, and when she reappears, the fancy hair-clips she had on before have disappeared. (ep 2) As Sarah climbs out of window after removing the ring from Ibraham Namin, she kicks the backdrop outside and you can see it moving. (ep 3) When the Doctor leaves the old house to find the dynamite, you can see his hat resting on a chair as he walks out the door. Immediately afterwards you see him walking through the woods with Sarah, and the hat has magically relocated itself to being on his head again. And when he eventually gets back to the cottage, the hat is there, sitting in the chair as if nothing had happened... (ep 4) Look out for the hand holding the cushion down in the scene where Sutekh stands up. (A very famous blooper, this one.) (ep 4) Pity the special-effects designer who had to portray the TARDIS key floating through the air into the hands of Scarman. Three thin threads are used to quite obvious effect. Poor Scarman finally has to grab the dangling thing out of the air when it does not land perfectly in his hands. (ep ?) Watch the knot in Scarman's tie during the course of the story - it alternates between the
stripe going from top-left-to-bottom-right to bottom-left-to-top-right... (Don't ask how I noticed - it's
not as if I spend an inordinate amount of time gazing at the knots in people's ties. Honest.)
(ep 1) There's a scene where the mechanics are shooting at the Doctor and Sarah, and they dive for cover behind a "meteorite". In the shot when they later run for it, you can see a tarpaulin spread behind the meteorite - which wasn't there before. My guess is they laid it there so that the cast wouldn't get their costumes dirty when they dived for cover. (ep 1) While the Doctor and Sarah are walking through the forest (right after they leave the clearing which the TARDIS is in), the Doctor pulls a branch out of his way. Lis Sladen isn't paying close attention and is in the middle of her line when the branch flies back and hits her in the face. You can tell she was stung a little (or a lot) because she give a little squeak but manages to finish her line... (ep 1) The Doctor's scarf gets caught in the bushes and branches while walking along with Sarah, and Lis Sladen clearly laughs out of character. (ep 1) When Tom Baker arrives at the Space Defence Centre, he asks a stony-faced android guard where the commanding officer can be located. The guard obviously has his pause button pressed, and is unresponsive - except for an uncontrollable blink as Tom moves away. The actor looks duly abashed. (ep 2) Tom Baker throws the android Sarah to the ground at the episode's climax, and her face plate falls off to expose her electronic innards. The fake hair adorning its head is appallingly obvious, being a completely different texture and shade to Elisabeth Sladen's own hair. (ep 4) When the Doctor comes through the automatic doors of the real Space Defence Centre for the first time, they slide open, but not quite closed. The poor souls in charge of making them slide don't notice. The resulting gap could have devastating effects on their air-conditioning bill.. (ep 4) In the fight scene between Tom Baker and his stunt double android, the wig choice for his double leaves a great deal to be desired. It looks more like an Anita Bryant bouffant.. (ep 4) When Tom Baker's android double is finally destroyed at the end, its skin disappears
to reveal the metal skeleton beneath. What's problematic is that the skeleton is actually larger than
Tom's face; watch his left cheek.
(ep 1-4) Wouldn't it have been a lot easier if Solon had just transferred Morbius's brain into the Doctor's body instead of chopping off the Doctor's head, attaching it to the creature and THEN transplanting the brain? (ep 4) The Morbius creature hits the camera as he falls to his death. (ep 4) Condo's death scene ranks high in terms of its stiltedness. He gives a fine "Heil, Hitler"
salute with both his right arm and leg, then slams both to the floor at the moment of death as if he were
being crushed by a 16-ton weight.
(ep 1) The fake snow looks relatively credible ... until the scene where Tom Baker digs up the second Krynoid pod. It's so obviously huge Styrofoam chunks that Tom looks like he's unwrapping a mail-order package. (ep 2) When Keeler and Scorby are in the Antarctic base alone and a call comes in on the radio, Scorby answers it and talks to the people on the other end for a while. The problem is - when he stops talking, he's supposed to flip the switch on the radio from 'send' to 'receive' so that he can receive the transmissions from the other end (since that's how 2-way radios normally function). However, on at least two occasions, the voice of the other people comes in before he flips the switch.. (ep 4) Sarah's scream at the advancing Krynoid at the episode's climax is a study in inability to suspend disbelief. She's looking at this big green plastic thing, and it shows on her face. What's more, her actual scream couldn't have been very convincing -- it was dubbed in afterwards. (ep 5) In several shots of the Krynoid after daybreak, it is pictured with trees and sky behind it -- a bluescreen, naturally. Yet the trees in many of those bluescreen shots have no leaves on them. No real tree lacking foliage is shown in episode 5 (though Autumn does inexplicably start to arrive in episode 6). (ep 6) As the Doctor and Sarah flee the house through the undergrowth, which is supposedly
moving wildly in order to ensnare them, their hair is blown about just as well by the wind machines that
move the plants. When they look up to see the house burning, in fact, Sarah looks like she's just been
standing next to a jet engine.
(ep 3) Hieronymous speaks spookily and intimidatingly until his grammatical flub about eight minutes into the episode: "The great god's dwelling place must not be defiled by unbelievers in this last hours." Er, quite. (ep ?) When the Doctor and Sarah are discussing about astrology being nonsense, at one
point in the conversation, Tom Baker distinctly refers to Sarah as Lis (i.e. Lis Sladen). The line is
something like: "It's not nonsense, Lis!"
(eps 1&2) When the hand is seen crawling about the floor (CSOed onto the background) the shadow it casts is often going in the wrong direction! (ep 4) When the Doctor and Sarah are setting the trap with his scarf for Eldrad, the Doctor bumps into one of the large polystyrene rocks... which wobbles quite amusingly. ;-) (ep 4) Eldrad jumps his cue and interrupts Sarah while she and the Doctor are having an
aside. This happens just after they discover that Rokon (king of Castria) has in fact been dead for a
long time.
(ep 1) As the guards enter the TARDIS to arrest the Doctor, one of them has some difficulty getting through the door... (ep 1) When the Doctor has constructed his decoy with his pipe and hat, one of the Council guards turns and looks right at Tom Baker as he's sneaking out of the TARDIS (his decoy having worked). It's blatantly obvious that anyone with eyes in their head would have seen him had they been looking at him like that! Quite amusing. (ep 1) When one of the guards is shot by the Master right next to the Doctor, the guard cringes slightly before the sound of the gun and the light go off... What a wimp! ;-) (ep 3) Sorris (the guard sent to kill the Doctor) is shot in the shoulder, but dies clutching his stomach! (ep 4) In one of the final scenes, the Master's grandfather clock TARDIS is seen at an angle. You
can see that it is just a board with a door held up with some planks of wood... So much for that
wonderful Time Lord technology!
(ep 2) Just before the Doctor is put to the test at the end of the episode, he is taken to the pit and says, "So that's a Horda". The poor little Horda he's talking about is quite obviously being pulled along on a just-visible thin wire. (ep 3) The Doctor is trying to enter Xoanon's Sacred Temple, but there is a Tesh standing guard with a blaster... The Doctor and Leela lure him away from the door, where Leela knocks the guard out, sending the blaster spinning off down the corridor behind her... The Doctor looks at the unconscious Tesh, and heads off towards Xoanon. Leela follows, but not before bending straight down and picking up the blaster from right next to the Tesh... (ep 4) Though the gun beams rarely come straight out of the nozzle, in one scene this fact is very apparent. At the beginning of the episode, Leela enters the "Sacred Chamber" to rescue the Doctor from Xoanon and shoots at the walls. Her arm moves the gun around quite a bit, but this has no effect on the beam it emits. It continues to flow outwards from the same point, very far from the gun barrel. (ep 4) A few scenes later, Leela's mind is taken over by Xoanon and she attempts to shoot
the Doctor with one of the Tesh's guns. In avoiding the beam, he jumps up, turns and comes toward
the camera while Leela is shooting. Though the beam is supposed to be behind him (Leela is standing
farther from the camera than he is), it appears in front of him, because the special effects technicians
didn't bother to fix the scene up. The result is silliness.
(ep 1) When the Doctor & Leela are escorted by V9 to Uvanov's cabin to await questioning, after they were rescued from the miner's scoop. V9 leaves them and then listens at the door. As he does so you can clearly see the actor's neck between the mask and his rollneck sweater! (ep 1) When the Doctor leaves the TARDIS, he is wearing his scarf. As he is escorted to Uvanov's cabin, it has vanished. It re-appears when he leaves the cabin. (ep 2) Uvanov flubs his line just after Leela is caught: "If we could have got her to tell HER what those corpse markers were, we'd be halfway to a confession!" I think the man means "us". (ep 3) When Taren Capel is modifying a Voc robot, there is a shot of the robot's agitated hands as he reassures it. On the silver gloves the "Marigold" logo is obvious. It must have been on washing-up duty that day.. (ep 3) After the newly reprogrammed SV.7 leaves Toos' quarters, the next shot shows Leela hammering on the locked door to the crew room, yelling for help. Now, keep an eye on the gold statue visible near the centre of the room. As the scene comes up, a studio light comes on a little late - a bright light suddenly illuminates the gold statue about a second after the cameras start rolling... (ep 3) Watch the scene where Uvanov sticks a Laserson probe into the head of one of the Vocs as it is strangling the Doctor. After he shoves the probe in, you can quite clearly see the suit's helmet come away from the rest of the suit... (ep 3) Watch really closely when Leela throws the knife at one of the robots... You can see the knife fall to the floor about a second after she throws it. Then, of course, the next shot shows the knife sticking out of the robot's chest. Well, I guess Leela isn't quite as good a shot as we thought... ;-) (ep 4) Immediately after the Doctor stabs SV.7 in the back of the head and the robot crashes to the floor, the next scene shows the fallen figure of SV.7 (Miles Fothergill) breathing heavily, his chest moving up and down, in the background... (ep 4) At the story's climax, Leela is hiding in a cupboard with a canister of helium which alters the voices of everyone in the room except the Doctor (supposedly because of his biology). Taren Capel and Leela had their voices filtered in post- production while the Doctor's was left unchanged. The technicians made an error, however: when Leela finally squeaks, "Will somebody let me out?", the Doctor quickly rejoinders with "Ha!" His short exclamation is on a much higher octave than the rest of his following line. They included it in the filtration process by mistake. (ep ?) While the Doctor is patching the communicator into the android's head, he takes off the communicators top, yet magically it is back on a few seconds later. (ep ?) When Toos is being hunted by a robot, she shuts the door on its hand. When you see it
from the inside of the room the hand is trapped at a different place to the next shot, from outside.
(ep 1) When the Doctor and Leela leave the TARDIS, the door is open and is not moving. They walk away from the TARDIS for a few seconds. When they hear the attack and run past the TARDIS again, the door is magically closed... (ep 6) While the Doctor is unconscious as a result of the Dragon Ray, he says to Litefoot and Jago: "There's a one eyed yellow idol to the North of Khatmandu. There's a little marble cross below the town." "Kipling?", Litefoot asks. "Harry Champion, 1920", replies the Doctor. However.... I have it on good authority that it was actually J.Milton Hayes who wrote that. (Robert Holmes screwed up... gasp!) (ep ?) Magnus Greel puts Leela in the distillation chamber and switches it on. Cue red lights, bad
effects, and Leela writhing about. Then the Doctor arrives and throws a battleaxe into the works.
Sparks fly, and the machine stops, presumably broken. Later, however, Greel is pushed into the
chamber, whereupon it turns on and does its thing just as if nothing had happened to it. Oh, and the axe
disappears too.
(ep 2) A poopie occurs when Lord Palmerdale wakes Harker up to ask him if he can send a
message to London for him.
(ep 3) After the Rutan has changed itself to resemble old Reuben, he walks upstairs. Palmerdale, Adelaide and Skinsale hear him from the crew room and Skinsale goes to investigate. When he opens the door, you can clearly see that it is Reuben walking upstairs -- any myopic idiot can. Yet Skinsale deliberately looks downstairs to deliver his lines,"Doctor? Harker?", ignoring all evidence provided by his eyes and ears. That part was obviously written for a much larger set. To top it off, Palmerdale asks, "What was that cry? Did he say?" Obviously not! Skinsale stuck his head out of the door for five seconds and didn't talk to anybody.. (ep 3) A major continuity flaw is embedded at the heart of this story. OK, so the Rutan changes itself into Reuben at the beginning of the episode, and goes to stand around in his room before the killing spree. The actual Reuben's dead body is discovered at the episode's climax; rigor mortis has set in, so the guy's been dead for hours. It must be the alien standing around in Reuben's room. How, then, can the alien have scaled the lighthouse exterior to electrocute Lord Palmerdale in the middle of episode three? There's only one alien (otherwise the Doctor would have had to worry about blowing up the scout ship, not just the mother ship), but apparently it can be in two places at the same time! (What was up with the writers?!) (ep 4) Reuben, coming downstairs from killing Vince, stops in his own room to see if
someone is hiding there. The Doctor is, hanging from the window ledge outside. When Reuben throws
back the curtains, no one is there and the shutters are open. Yet when we see the exterior shot of the
Doctor hanging, the shutters on that window are closed.
(ep 1) When the shuttle first lands on Titan, the Captain moves all the switches towards him to the OFF position - but he misses one, which only goes halfway down. (ep 1) When Lowe is rescued by Leela from the Cryogenics Section, he has frost all over his forehead and almost none on his cheeks. Yet in his next scene, it has gone from his forehead, and fresh frost entirely covers his right cheek! (ep 1) When Lowe crouches down behind the small bush to ambush the infected Doctor, the surface of the table right next to him is clear. Yet when we see it again seconds later, some object has been placed there for him to knock onto the floor, alerting the Doctor. Handy, that. (ep 1) The affected space pilot enters the mess room in response to this clatter, and Leela gets him with her knife. Watch the knife in his back when he falls -- it wobbles hilariously, and is obviously not stuck in anything very solid. (ep 2) Spot the member of the crew walking past in the background in the very first scene. (ep 2) At the episode's beginning, the Doctor is forced to try shooting Leela; he resists, and the shots go wide. Watch where his second shot supposedly lands -- it has nothing to do with the trajectory on which he is holding the gun! (ep 2) After a rogue shuttle crashes into the foundation with enough force to violently rattle the whole place and destroy an entire level, we are supposed to believe that Prof. Marius finds -- intact and undamaged -- the body of one of the shuttle occupants, who is infected. I think not. (ep 2) Professor Marius collects DNA from the Doctor and Leela in order to clone them. Are we to assume, he also extracted DNA from their clothing? Perhaps this would explain why their clones are fully dressed in identical clothes when they appear. (Of course, the most likely explanation is that Mary Whitehouse would have had a fit if two unclad Doctor and Leela clones had appeared instead.) (ep 2) Apart from the microscopic copies of the Doctor and Leela, Dr. Marius also chooses to inject a syringe full of air into the Doctor's bloodstream at the end of the episode. Rather irresponsible of him, since doing that sort of thing usually causes an embolism. (But no, Time Lord biology saves the day yet again..) (ep 3) We are meant to take at face value the fact that K9, a machine, can also be taken over by an organic virus. Right. (ep 3) K9 shoots the assailant, who infects him before expiring. The overlay of K9's beam is very badly done. It emanates from his eyes before the camera moves around, making it then come from his snout. (ep 3) When K9 shoots Leela, she drops cold even before his beam appears. (ep 3) OK.. so the Doctor was cloned, and his clone was no longer affected by the virus; i.e., the virus was not copied into his clone. Then Lowe gets cloned and injected. He's still affected; i.e., the virus was copied into his clone. Why the discrepancy? ... and the argument, "Well, he's a Time Lord" won't fly. If the real Doctor can be taken over, then a 10-minute copy of him can be, too. (ep 4) There's one scene where K9 has to shoot part of a wall away to block a path, and even before he shoots the wall, you can see the cracks where it's supposed to break away... (ep ?) When they match up the two sets of blood cells using the viewer, isn't it odd that the
organisms are oriented the same way, and are swimming in the same direction? The two slides are
identical. What are the odds?
(ep 1) When the TARDIS console room tips up, in the background you can see that the Doctor's hat-stand stays upright... But in the next TARDIS scene, we see the same hat-stand being picked up from the ground by the Doctor and Leela! (ep 1) When the Doctor and Leela emerge from the TARDIS into the field, if you look carefully, you'll see that the light on top of the TARDIS is missing! (ep 2) Note the scene when Ted Moss visits Max Stael, just after Max says: "I will deal with them. Now go, quickly." As they walk toward the door, the cameraman moves with them, bumps into the table with an awful clunk and shakes the camera very noticeably. (ep 2) At the end of the episode, the Doctor offers the Fendahl skull a jelly baby, but it's clearly a liquorice allsort.. (ep 4) The cameraman has another bumpy time in the cellar when the Doctor is bringing Max Stael a pistol with which to commit suicide. As Tom Baker stomps across the platform, the camera shakes around terribly, particularly at just the moment Tom vanishes behind the Fendahl Thea. (ep ?) For wobbling sets, check the walls of the corridors in this story...
(ep 1) In the scene where the Doctor offers Cordo a jelly baby and eats one himself - it looks remarkably like a liquorice allsort to me... (ep 2) The cameraman stumbles and shakes the shot as Leela is confronting "the Others" with their cowardice, just as Mandrel says "They've got things called guns, and what have we got?" (ep 3) Mugshots of the Doctor and Leela are flashed separately on viewscreens throughout the city, seeking the capture of one and announcing the impending execution of the other. Perhaps the picture of the Doctor could have been obtained by the city's scanners when they were set up to track him. But where did the picture of Leela come from -- without the wound on her forehead? She wasn't known to the authorities until after being shot.. (And if you think the photo might have been taken in the hallway before her capture, think again. There were no scanners there, even though they're supposedly placed "everywhere" in the city..) (ep 3) Leela asks K9 to "get" two guards that arrive in a transport vehicle. After shooting the second guard a close up of K9 shows his nose blaster fully retracted. Then the camera cuts to a shot of Leela, K9 and two others, whence you can see K9's nose blaster fully retract again. (ep ?) Later he offers a humbug to the Gatherer - this is clearly a jelly baby as the Gatherer bites the head off. (Humbug is, perhaps, a pun: i.e. the Doctor knows he's been lied to.) (ep ?) In the rehab centre, the backdrops behind the tables (also seen in the collector's
chamber) are actually metallization photos of AMD (Advanced Micro Devices, Sunnyvale, California)
memory chips. In one shot the word "AMD" can even be seen. Apparently those in the chip business
find this utterly incredible..
(ep 4) When the Doctor finds out that the race banks given to Jackson are really fission grenades, he runs out of the ship to get rid of them. Leela follows, carrying a shield gun on her right arm. When she gets into the tunnel, the gun is gone (and feeling rather unprotected she draws her knife) - but when we next see her see her saving the Doctor, she's got the gun back again... Handy, that. (ep ?) There's a scene where the Doctor lifts a small girl (one of the cave-dwellers) in his arms - and her little bare behind can be seen for a brief moment. It's hardly "indecent", just slightly noteworthy as being one of the few incidences of mooning in the series. (For the others, see The Romans and The Greatest Show in the Galaxy.) (ep ?) The CSO in this story isn't good at the best of times, but the worst can be seen about
halfway through. Leela tells one of the guys to stage a "REVOLUTION!!!" and he is so afraid of this
that he runs right through a rock. Leela was so impressed, she went right ahead and ran straight though
the rock too..
(ep 1-6) The TARDIS exterior light remains on throughout the whole of the story! (ep 1) The Doctor is wearing his scarf on the Vardan ship. But it's on the hat-stand when he returns to the TARDIS.... (ep 4) Watch for the scene where the Doctor puts the crown on K9's head. He had to place it over the tin hound's ears, as it wouldn't fit over the back of his head. However, in the next scene, the crown has mysteriously shifted to the back of K9's head... (ep 5?) Watch the scene when the Sontarans are trying to break into one of the rooms in the Citadel. They don't have much success until they try pulling on he door instead of pushing it... But then the camera cuts to the inside of he room, and we see the door swinging inward! (ep 6) Watch the scene where the Doctor and Leela are walking through the corridors of the TARDIS. They stop to talk, and Leela ends up standing on the Doctor's scarf... Tom Baker, in character, stops what he is saying to say: " and stop standing on my scarf!", then jerks the scarf out from under her foot... At a convention Louise J. said this was unplanned, but left in because it worked very naturally... (Which is why I included it here - it wasn't meant to happen, so it's a blooper...) (ep 6) Louise Jameson takes her turn to show us what colour underwear she's wearing when she jumps over a table, revealing the back of her white knickers... (ep 6) This happens again, when Leela jumps off the wall to attack the Time Lord... (This is near the end - excuse the pun.) (ep 6) One of the Sontarans chasing the Doctor and co. by the TARDIS swimming pool nearly goes flying as he jumps over a chair. The actor claimed this was intentional, but of course he'd say that... ;-) (ep 6) Watch the same Sontaran try valiantly to fall into the TARDIS swimming pool - and fail!
After he trips over the chair you can see him scoot over twice towards the pool, but it's still too far
away for him to fall in...
(ep 1) Watch Garron's wrist-communicator when he is undoing the clamps on that man-hole thingy.
It keeps half-falling off and flapping about the place...
(eps 1-4) Tom Baker's upper lip is shown in varying degrees of healing throughout, depending on the shooting schedule. Just before this story began shooting, Baker was bitten there by an overenthusiastic dog. An attempt to explain it off was made by having the Doctor bang his face against the console during their near-collision with Zanak en route to Calufrax. (ep 1?) The Doctor spills his bag of "jelly babies" on the floor, and we see a large number of liquorice allsorts among them. (ep 2?) When the Doctor enters the Infinity Corridor, he's wearing his white Ascot. Inside the Corridor, the Ascot disappears, but mysteriously reappears once he and Romana arrive at the other side.. (eps 3&4) The strings holding up the crushed planets on display in the Bridge are painfully obvious in some shots. (ep ?) Watch for the scene where K9 gives the Doctor a readout of something-or-other... The
number which Tom Baker repeats back to K9 is not the same, yet the metal mutt agrees... (Is this a
blooper, or more of Douglas Adams's humour at work? We may never know for sure..)
(ep 1) Watch out for the boom microphone which makes an appearance in the first scene set in the stone circle. (ep 1) And watch out for the stepladder which is plainly visible behind the roundels of the TARDIS control room walls... (ep 2) Just after the Doctor and Professor Rumford are in the secret room of DeVries' house and
find the pictures of Vivian Fay, an Ogri discovers them and chases them out of the cellar. The scene
ends with a dramatic shot of the Ogri lumbering straight towards the camera and blocking out the
screen. However, as it does so, before it gets to the camera, if you look to the right-hand side of the
Ogri, you can see a bearded production crew member standing there reading a clipboard.
You can also see two other stagehands in shot during this scene, one of whom is pushing the the Ogri
into place.
(ep ?) There's a lovely scene in this story where Tom Baker starts to cross himself before a duel (he tries to cover it up by running a hand through his hair, but I know a good Catholic when I see one ;-) (ep ?) When the Doctor first enters the Pavilion of the Summer Winds for the Romana exchange, he pushes the door shut behind him. On the ground outside the door, you can see shadows move violently, and just as the door shuts, a hand reaches out, grabs the door handle, and closes it ("for" the Doctor)... (ep ?) Watch for when Tom Baker crosses in front of the set (a la Frank Drebin during the Crime
Lab scene in the movie 'The Naked Gun'!)
(ep 1) At the beginning, Thawn and someone else go to look for Roam Dutt. There are only four people manning the plant, and two of them stay behind - so how is it there are clearly three people on the hovercraft?? (ep ?) When the Doctor saves Romana from the Swampy dressed as Kroll, he removes the fake
head and throws the Swampy to the floor still wearing the rest of the monster costume. When he
recovers, however, he isn't wearing any of the costume at all, but is back in the regular Swampy
outfit...
(ep 6) When the Shadow is about to go into the TARDIS, one of the mutes kicks up the carpet on the studio floor. The carpet sits on his foot for a while, then flips up again when he walks off. (ep 6) Look carefully at the final TARDIS scene. Just after the Doctor arranges to have the
Marshal's missiles deflected onto the Shadow's planet, he explains what he did to Drax, K9, and
Romana. Look behind the Doctor at the TARDIS wall as he does so. The door to the interior of the
TARDIS is open, and through it we can see wooden panelling which is probably part of another set or
the back to the TARDIS set, and also something which looks like some black sheets of foil...
(ep 1-4) The Daleks are repeatedly referred to as "robots" even though they're not. (They're cyborgs.) (ep 1-4) Isn't it strange that the Skaro city seems to be populated entirely by studio spot-lamps and luggage trolleys from Kings Cross Station? (ep 2-4) I personally find it hilarious that whenever Davros moves, you can see the upper half of his body shaking back and forth very quickly, making it so obvious that David Gooderson is waddling along frantically underneath! ;-) (ep 2) While being interrogated by the Daleks, Romana says that she doesn't know anything about the Daleks, a fact that the Daleks confirm with their lie-detector. In one of the next scenes, she says to the underground slave workers that "the Daleks used to be organic themselves once". So how did she know?? Is she just a good liar? (ep 3) Just after the Doctor has escaped and blown up his bomb, Davros goes wheeling around shouting his usual domination plans to anybody who can be bothered to listen. Now watch the Dalek sitting waiting for all the others to go past. Before it moves off after its fellows you can clearly see the entire top section of the Dalek jump up for a second before slamming down again as the unit moves off... (ep 3) Watch for the scene where Davros zooms off down a corridor and bounces off a wall! (ep 3) Commander Sharrel says that Davros is a "mutant humanoid", but the computer screen says "humanoid mutant"! (There is a difference, y'know. ;-) (ep 3) While the Doctor is outside the old Kaled city (Davros is inside with the explosive strapped to his chair), the Doctor pulls out his sonic screwdriver and, for no accountable reason, the sound effect of the TARDIS interior is heard in addition to the standard sonic screwdriver noise! Dick Mills goofed up, eh? (ep 3) Look closely when three Daleks are seen moving across the wasteland just behind a small sandbank obscuring their bases - they seem to be bobbing up and down just as if they were.. walking? Look more closely and you'll see the actual cotumes are very poor - more like cardboard & polystyrene 'dresses'! (ep 4) Just after Davros has dispatched the six 'real' Daleks wearing explosives, to the right of the picture can be seen another 'cardboard' Dalek with wobbly neck rings, no mesh round the middle, and no ball & socket joint for the visible arm. It also appears to be shaking badly... (ep 4) When all the explosive-carrying Daleks are detonated, the same shot of two Daleks is used repeatedly, just filmed from different angles (it's pretty clear if you watch the background). (ep 4) In the shot where five Daleks in a line appear to explode, play it in slow-motion, and notice that in the very last frame prior to detonation, three of the 'real' Daleks just disappear, and the blasts come out of the ground... (ep 4?) In one scene a Dalek says something like, "Self-sacrifice is illogical, therefore impossible." to
the Doctor, as if it suddenly thought that it was a Cyberman... Then about ten minutes, all the Daleks
are strapping bombs to themselves to go on a suicide run. What kind of consistency is that??
(ep 1) When the Doctor and Romana are looking at the Mona Lisa, and a time slip occurs, the events before and after the slip do not exactly match. In particular, when the tour guide addressed the Doctor and asked him to move along, the first time she went around him and tried to talk to him, while the second time she didn't. (ep 1&2) Watch the scene where the Count's henchmen come into the cafe to get the Doctor, Romana and Duggan and usher them all out at gunpoint. When you see them on location in Paris, Duggan's not there! But back at the Count's place, he's reappeared. Interesting, that. (ep 2) When Scaroth locks the Doctor, Romana and Duggan in the basement and Duggan lights the lamp, notice that Tom Baker is standing between that lamp and the actual stage light used to brighten the scene. So, as the lamp is lit in front of him, his back glows bright under the increased illumination... Quite a weird effect. (ep 3) There are no crowds outside the Louvre when the Doctor runs up to it (just two gendarmes)... Rather quiet for the world's most famous art gallery, wouldn't you say? (ep 3&4) Scaroth says his people died "400 million years ago", and that this is when life on Earth started. However, contemporary theories estimate the beginnings of life on this planet as occurring between 4,000 and 5,000 million years ago... (ep 4) The Doctor warns the Count not to mess around in time, and the Count replies with "What else do you ever do?" The problem is that it is made clear that the Count hasn't heard of Time Lords, the Doctor, TARDISes, etc. before this adventure. (ep 4) Watch what Romana does to Professor Kerensky's time machine in order to make it work, and the fatal flaw she makes, considering she is in Paris at the time: she wires up a British (i.e. 3-pin) electric plug... (ep 4) During John Cleese's cameo, Tom Baker throws his scarf behind him and hits Lalla
Ward in the face with it.
(ep 1) Just as the Doctor asks where the TARDIS has materialised, watch the control console wobble! (ep 4) Before the TARDIS console explodes (as Erato is weaving his shell around the neutron star), Tom Baker casts a sharp look over his right shoulder - no doubt looking to see if the ground was clear where he was due to fall... (ep 4) Isn't it strange that the hat-stand in the TARDIS console room could remain upright after all
that??
(ep 1) The Doctor says he represents "Galactic Insurance and Salvage", but the read-out screen says "Galactic Salvage and Insurance"..! (ep 1) Listen out for Tryst's amazing accent change... from a weird Spanish/German hybrid to Italian in the same scene! (ep 1&2) When the Doctor finds the vraxoin vial, he puts it in his right coat pocket, from where it is then removed by Stott. But at the end of episode 2, Costa's scanner finds vraxoin traces... in the left pocket! (ep 3) Fisk, the policeman, calls Tryst 'Fisk' when he is interrogating him...! (ep 4) Della is shot in the shoulder, but collapses clutching her stomach... (ep ?) When the Doctor first tries to separate the ships he says: "Ready for another try?"...
(ep 2) Watch the scene where the co-pilot is shooting, and his pants rip straight down the seam at the back - which just happens to be the part of him facing the camera at the time! He then wanders around for most of the rest of the episode with the tear plainly visible, letting all and sundry have a good view of his underwear... (ep 4?) The Doctor tells Seth (or was it Teka?) to set free the others, and receives the reply "But they're dead!", which the Doctor refutes by saying that they're only paralysed. Watch the background right at this moment, and notice that one of them wasn't going to let the fact that he was paralysed stop him from moving his leg to get more comfortable..! [Nice timing on this one. ;-) ] (ep 4) About 5 minutes from the end of the story, Soldeed is shot after he pulls the lever that sets the complex on overload, and crumples to the ground dead beneath the lever. Then, after the Doctor and everyone else get out of the complex, some screen shots of inside the structure are flashed by - one of which is the room with the lever that Soldeed pulled, except he's not there! Hmm... (ep ?) When the Doctor is pushed into the maze, you can still see Tom Baker standing in the doorway; the FX don't cover him up completely (look for his shoes!). (ep ?) There's a scene when the co-pilot is standing on the Doctor's scarf. The Doctor leaves
the room and the end of the scarf flies across the room with a TWANG!
(ep 2) When K-9 checks Chronotis's vital signs and proclaims him to be dead, you can clearly see Denis Carey's chest rising and falling as he breathes. Guess K-9 wasn't as smart as we thought.. (ep 2) Notice that when Professor Chronotis is being attacked by the sphere, he keeps alternating between wearing and not wearing his eyeglasses - depending on the camera angle... (ep 2) Romana calls Chris Parsons by his first name despite not having been told what it is yet. (Time Lord telepathy, I suppose.) (ep 3) Skagra takes Romana into the TARDIS, but he forgets the TARDIS key in the door,
which remains there as it dematerialises.
(ep 4) When the Doctor ages/de-ages isn't it odd that DEAD hair folicles also age and de-age
accordingly? It's also strange that his clothes (which are also "dead") don't age either..
(ep 4) The Doctor gives his coat to one of the mercenaries, and then leaves in the TARDIS before everything blows up. How come he's still got his coat then? Has he got multiple coats? Does he keep a spare, foldaway one in his trouser pocket? (ep ?) Keep an eye out for the thick, black, sexy piano wire holding one of the planets up in place as General Grugger and Meglos travel in one of those funky Gaztak spaceships... (ep ?) When Meglos shows the dodecahedron to the Gaztaks on their ship and says, "This ought to
replace the odd torn jacket", there's a cough which sounds like it's from someone in the studio, but
definitely out of the normal microphone range...
(ep ?) In one scene, the Doctor tells Adric to cross his fingers - so of course the Boy Wonder
crosses the forefingers of each hand instead of the first two on one hand, but that was in the script. The
blooper is that, in the first shot, he's got the right finger on top, while in the next shot, the left is on top...
[Or maybe it's the other way around.]
(ep ?) There's a scene between Tom Baker and Lalla Ward in this story where she rattles off a long list of something or other and Tom Baker turns to her at the end of it and says "Very good!". Apparently, she had trouble getting that line right and they just decided to go ahead and use that take... (ep 4) During the storming of the Tower, isn't it amazing how many of the so-called dead/stunned
guards can move or reposition themselves long after they've been shot by K-9 to enable doors to open
or K-9 to pass??
(ep 2) When the two Gundans try to sandwich the Doctor, one drops its axe on the Doctor's back but it bounces off... (ep 3) At the end of the episode, a Tharil at the feast table hits the serving girl in the shoulder. The Doctor gets up, stands beside her, and then moves slightly towards the left of the screen. The camera follows - but goes too far, and has to quickly correct itself. (ep 3&4?) Keep an eye on K9's ears in this story... Adric removes one of them so that K9 can triangulate better whilst out in the "zero point" white area. K9 later arrives (without seeing Adric since) in the Tharils' castle and meets the Doctor, together with both ears, yet when he returns outside, one of them has gone again.... (ep ?) [People with less understanding of physics than Einstein can skip this one...] Note that if K9 was confirming that basic laws (i.e. Newton's laws) were still being obeyed then the whole thing about dimensional contraction and mass instability was rubbish... Newton's laws can only be properly applied in an inertial frame, and seeing as how K9 and co. were not at the centre of mass of the spaceship, they were suffering a non-uniform acceleration. (Which was due to the exponential nature of the impending collapse - K9 concluded it was an exponential process). Editor's note: It wasn't me who spotted this one, but I wish it was... [grin.] Now if only I could understand it as well - are there any Physics graduates in the audience?? (ep ?) After Adric and Romana have sneaked into the ship by hiding under the dust-cover for that big gun, you can see a boom mike bobbing around in the background... (ep ?) In one scene, several actors are situated in the lower left of the shot and up a staircase
positioned along the left and upper centre part of the shot. In the lower center and right part of the shot
is the "blaster", the one covered with foil. Watch this lower area for a mike on a boom, extended
perhaps two thirds of the way across the screen, trying to catch the voices of people on the staircase.
Clearly the sound guy thought the staircase was in close-up or something. This one makes the
boom-mike-shadow-on-the- actors-face that was so common in the first 15 or so years of the show
completely invisible. I wonder if the boom mike guy was sick that week and JNT was subbing? ;-)
(ep ?) In the scene where Tremas announces that the Keeper is dead, part of Nyssa's fairy skirt gets caught on the Doctor's arm, so when they stand up and he starts to gesture, the front gets lifted up. Her undergarments are on view for all and sundry to view for quite a long time, unfortunately undermining the serious atmosphere of the scene, but providing many happy hours for all those Sarah Sutton fans... (ep 4) When the Master opens the grandfather clock door, light is reflected off it. Apparently, when this is slowed down on a decent VCR, it becomes a BBC camera, JNT and the director John Black! (ep ?) When the Doctor and Anthony Ainley are being held in a jail cell, spot the bogey in
Tom Baker's nose..
(ep 1) Watch out for the really awful audio dubbing on Tom Baker in the TARDIS console room... (ep 1) Why place a litter-bin next to a 'Take Your Litter Home' sign? It's a bit counter-productive, isn't it?? (This is next to the Police Box.) (ep 4) When the Doctor is fighting the Master outside on the radio telescope, he used his scarf to trip the Master up. Where did he find the time to do this, since the Master was only a few seconds behind him? Just afterwards, when the Master runs back inside the control room to tile the telescope, the Doctor has his scarf back around his neck. Again, how did he find the time to do this? (ep 4) When the Doctor pulls the cord out, as the radio telescope is tilting, the sparks don't fall down. They fall sideways. (Because the effect was achieved by tilting the camera sideways, surprisingly enough.) (ep 4) At the end when the radio telescope is tilting, it is obvious that the Master is just a freeze frame or a cardboard cutout... (eps 1-4) A very annoying inconsistency in this story is the magically metamorphing door control lever.... They must use about four different controls on the console in this story alone to control the doors. When the TARDIS materializes "2.6 metres" away from the London Police box on the Barnett Bypass, Adric's hand reaches out for the familiar red door control lever. Seeing this, the Doctor says "No!" Adric says: "Aren't we going outside to measure it?", confirming that this red lever is the door control... However, for example, when the Doctor materializes the TARDIS underwater, Adric uses that weird green and grey hollow thingy to open the door. He sticks his finger in the hollow part, then runs to the door to brace himself against it. But, when the Doctor is trying to figure out what's wrong with the TARDIS, or something to that effect, when the Police box is in the console room already, the Doctor pulls the black lever with the grey handle to open the doors.... The question is: What on earth is going on in this story with the door lever??? (ep ?) When Adric takes the TARDIS back into the universe, watch the red lever on the console just as he says, "Hold on, here we go!": he starts to push it up, it starts to fall, and he tries to cover up by pulling it down the rest of the way, all in about two seconds... |