Trivia / Doctor Who S22 E4 "The Two Doctors"

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• Acting for Two: Laurence Payne (Dastari) also supplies the voice of the Space Station Camera computer but was uncredited on-screen.
• Creator Backlash: Director Peter Moffatt wasn't happy with the amount of violence in the script, while Robert Holmes was unhappy with the direction, saying that it could have been more horrific and Oscar's death should have been tragic rather than comedic.
• Creator's Favourite Episode: Colin Baker stated in this interview that this was his favourite story to make, mainly because he got the chance to work with Patrick Troughton.
• Distanced from Current Events: The DVD release was quickly pulled from circulation in 2012 following the revelation that the late Jimmy Savile, who arranged and appeared in the non-canon short "A Fix With Sontarans" (which appears on the DVD as an extra), had sexually abused hundreds of children over the years. In 2014, the DVD was reissued without "A Fix With Sontarans" before the BBC eventually opted to simply cut out Savile's parts in the short, put together a new ending via CGI featuring the cast discovering a fleet of Sontaran ships on the scanner instead of Savile, and include it on the Season 22 Blu-ray set in 2022.
• Edited for Syndication: Like all of Season 22, this story was made for forty-five minutes. When sold to other countries, the episodes were edited into six twenty-five-minute episodes and had added cliffhangers. This included Peri fainting on the station, Anita leading the sixth Doctor to Chessene's hideout and the sixth Doctor dealing with the Androgum genes which have infected him.
• Fake Nationality: Neither of the credited Spanish characters is played by a Spaniard:
  • The Doña Arana is played by English actress Aimée Delamain.
  • Anita is played by Gibraltarian actress Carmen Gómez.
• The Other Marty: Elizabeth Spriggs was cast as Chessene, but was fired when she failed to attend rehearsals.
• Out of Order: This story was produced before "The Mark of the Rani", and intended to air before it at the time of production. However, because "The Mark of the Rani" and the next-produced story "Timelash" both featured famous historical figures (George Stephenson and H. G. Wells respectively), it was decided at a late stage to swap "The Mark of the Rani" with "The Two Doctors" in the broadcast order. Happily, this didn't cause too many continuity issues; the reference to the Stattenheim remote control in "The Mark of the Rani" was intended as a Callback to this story, in which it was used, but it works just as well as Foreshadowing instead.
• Prop Recycling: The Second Doctor's TARDIS console is the same one used between 1974 and 1983. This would be its last use on the show. The console was fashioned for this story to have a "retro" look, as the budget wouldn’t allow for the original 1963 prop to be rebuilt (having deteriorated to being unusable by 1971).
• Recycled Script: The idea of villains trying to steal the Doctor's genetic code was part of Robert Holmes' version of "The Five Doctors".
• Recycled Set: According to Nicola Bryant, part of the Top of the Pops set was used to construct of the bowels of Space Station Chimera.
• Romance on the Set: Frazer Hines met and fell in love with a married Spanish girl while on location.
• Throw It In!: According to Colin Baker, Jacqueline Pearce came up with the scene where Chessene tastes the Doctor's blood on location.
• Troubled Production:The location filming was plagued by numerous problems:
  • The intense Seville heat (approaching 40°C) caused make-up to melt, largely evaporated the river in which the Doctor and Peri were fishing, and led to discomfort and frayed tempers throughout the shoot.
  • The casing Patrick Troughton and Jacqueline Pearce's wigs, alongwith the Androgum eyebrows for Pearce, John Stratton and Laurence Payne, somehow got lost in shipping. The production schedule was re-jigged in the hope that they would eventually arrive, so the first few days were spent filming scenes that did not involve Troughton, Pearce, Stratton or Payne. When they still did not arrive, they had to be replaced with materials purchased in Seville. (Pearce recalled that the lost wig had been made for Elizabeth Spriggs prior to the recasting and she was glad to see it replaced.)
  • Carmen Gómez refused to wear a costume designed for her, and a local stunt man (the truck driver) refused to perform his stunt as it had been choreographed.
  • John Nathan-Turner was informed that a filmed scene with Oscar and Anita in the olive grove was ruined by a scratch on the negative, so James Saxon and Carmen Gómez, who had already returned to England, had to be quickly brought back to Spain at considerable expense, only for it to then turn out that the reported scratch was virtually invisible and the original footage was perfectly fine.^note This specific incident played a big part in the series abandoning the Video Inside, Film Outside practice in favour of shooting stories entirely on videotape come the next season, the other factor being a slashed budget following the 18-month hiatus.
  • There was also a major spat between director Peter Moffat and Nathan-Turner, which resulted in the latter deciding not to hire Moffat for the show again. The upshot of the multiple problems with the location filming was that Nathan-Turner either decided to not film outside the UK again or was ordered by BBC executives not to do so (reports vary), although it ended up being academic due to the latter seasons not having big enough budgets to permit international shoots.
• Vacation, Dear Boy: This was the last time John Nathan-Turner suggested overseas filming, in this case Seville.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Eric Saward commissioned Andrew Smith (of "Full Circle") to write "The First Sontarans", which was eventually shelved when Robert Holmes agreed to come back. Big Finish adapted it as one of their "Lost Stories" in 2012.
  • The story originally took place in New Orleans and the Androgums were obsessed with jazz. The setting was changed to Spain when the expected funding for location filming in the United States fell through. Venice was another alternate setting, but was deemed too expensive.
  • Peter Cushing and Freddie Jones were considered for Dastatri.
  • BRIAN BLESSED!!!!!, Denholm Elliott, Donald Houston, Freddie Jones, Donald Pleasence and Peter Vaughan were considered for Shockeye.
  • In the early 1990s, Paul Vanezis of the Restoration Team wanted to do an extended version of the story after hearing that the original raw footage still survived. But sadly it was junked by the time he got there. However, Vanezis discovered the raw footage from the 20th anniversary special and decided to do that instead.
• Working Title: The Kraglon Inheritance, The Androgum Inheritance, Parallax, The Seventh Augmentment and Creation.

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