Scandalous secret history of Doctor Who from ‘horny’ spin-off with topless scene to Time Lord's double life with lover | The Sun
SECRET double lives, skimpy costumes that left one star with frostbite and stunts that nearly ended in tragedy – this is the side of Doctor Who you don't see on TV.
It has been six decades since William Hartnell played the original Time Lord, when the first episode of the legendary BBC drama aired on November 23, 1963.
Fifteen Doctors later, Sex Education star Ncuti Gatwa is preparing to make his debut as the space traveller, but not before David Tennant returns to mark the 60th anniversary.
And in honour of this milestone, a new Channel 5 documentary, Doctor Who: 60 Years of Secrets & Scandals, lifts the lid on all the drama on and off stage. We reveal the most scandalous.
Skimpy costumes
Actress Sophie Aldred who played the Seventh Doctor’s companion Ace, says “Doctor Who girls, as they were called in those days” wore “quite revealing costumes for the dads”, which on one occasion left another assistant with pneumonia and frostbite.
Nicola Bryant played Peri Brown, a companion to both the Fifth and Sixth Doctors, from 1984 to 1986.
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She says of her character’s outfit: “Shorts, bikini top, little shirt and it’s like she never got to put proper clothes on for the rest of the season."
She also reveals that the crew had to “slap me” after she turned blue on set due to wearing just a bikini in sub zero – with her later needing antibiotics for the chest infection.
But like a pro she was back on Monday, only to discover she had frostbite.
She laughs: “There’s not a lot you can do with that. You just have to wrap it up. Nowadays everyone would sue, wouldn’t you?”
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And Nicola also claims a producer told her to pretend to be single to help boost her appeal.
Sexy spin-offs
When the show got cancelled in 1989, fans decided to make their own spin-offs starring the original cast – and free from having to appeal to a family audience, they were far raunchier than the BBC original.
One series, The Stranger, was produced by Bill Baggs, a young video editor at BBC Nottingham, who astonishingly even managed to get Colin Baker, who played the Sixth Doctor, and his assistant, played by Sophie, to star.
In a bizarre scene dubbed "horny" by online fans, Baker – playing a similar character to the Doctor – stands behind the mysterious Miss Brown as they both talk while half naked in a water-filled cave.
Sophie says: “It was Bill Baggs and he had a company called BBV and he was doing fan videos so he asked if we’d like to do things like that and we went, ‘Yeah, what the heck, we’re going to have a laugh.’”
But she admits: “I think we were relatively irresponsible about what we were doing.
"Colin Baker, the maker and I were filming in a cave in Wookey Hole and he was half-naked to the waist and I was covered in green paint so yeah, we didn’t really think about the audience.”
The spin-offs were a thriving business and in another episode, Colin gets his kit off again – this time with an assistant-type played by Nicola, as the pair share a passionate kiss.
“I remember it being quite fun," Nicola recalls.
"I remember Colin being quite disturbed by it all and I remember being charged with the job of convincing Colin this is going to be alright. I don’t know why I ended up with that job. I just did.”
Doctor's double life
The film also explains how Second Doctor Patrick Troughton lived a double life for decades, with even his own mum dying believing he was still with his wife 24 years after he left her.
By the time the veteran actor took over as Time Lord in 1966, he had left his wife Margaret and their three young kids to set up a new home with girlfriend Ethel Nuens, known as Bunny. The couple went on to have three children.
Frazer Hines, who played assistant Jamie in the show, says in the film: “I first became aware of Patrick having two families when one day he gave me a lift home from rehearsals and he deviated and said, ‘I’m just going to pop in.’
"And he went down this path, knocked the door and a lady came out and he gave her a brown envelope.
“I said, ‘Oh who’s that?’ He said, ‘That’s my wife’ and I said, ‘Well, who’s that?’ And he said, ‘Well that’s my girlfriend who I’m living with.’
"And that was the first time I thought, ‘Ah, two families.’ Because he was quite quiet. He wouldn’t boast about it.”
Death-defying stunts
In 1989, cast and crew were filming the cliffhanger for episode two of the 'Battlefield' serial, but things took an unexpected twist when one star almost drowned.
Sophie recalls: “I'm in the tank and it's the end of the episode moment where the water’s all bubbling up and I know it's going to be a cliffhanger, with like, ‘Doctor! Doctor!’”
She continues: “And all of a sudden I can feel this crack under my hands.”
Script editor Andrew Cartmel explains: “Somebody hadn't done the mathematics, which is how much stress that amount of water would put on the glass or the plexiglass or whatever it was.”
In dramatic footage, unseen by viewers, Doctor Who actor Sylvester McCoy realises the danger she is in and orders production to get her out.
Sophie says: “Sylvester, my hero, shouted at the top of his voice outside the front of the tank.
"The visual effects guys reached down, pulled me out and I could see this surreal moment where time stretched like they say it does, where the front of the tank bulged and all this water and broken glass just crashed out into the studio."
The studio floor was covered in gallons of water.
Sophie says: “Slyvester’s next heroic thing was to realise that electricity and water don’t mix that well so he shouted again at the top of his voice, ‘Turn off the power!’”
She adds: “He saved my life.”
Police complaint
When it launched in 1963, the kids' sci-fi show had children hiding behind the sofa and one episode was so scary that even the police complained about it, with Scotland Yard writing a letter to the BBC.
Recalling the 1971 episode Terror of the Autons, fan and actor Toby Hadoke, says: “There’s one episode where the doctor is arrested and he goes, ‘I’m not sure this is a genuine policeman.’ The Doctor knocks his face off and it’s the blank Auton underneath.
“And of course, the police are going, ‘Oh come on, we’re trying to get kids to trust the police and you just made police scary aliens.'”
The film also reveals that the episode Resurrection of the Daleks even had a higher body count than the Terminator.
Doctor Who: 60 Years of Secrets & Scandals airs 8.30pm Saturday on Channel 5.
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