Trivia / Doctor Who S36 E1 "The Pilot"

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• Ascended Fanon: Bill's crack about the Doctor running "like a penguin with its arse on fire" appears to have been inspired by fans who have been comparing Peter Capaldi's style of running to that of said bird since 2014.
• Deleted Scene: The nightclub scene was to feature the Doctor on stage, playing Clara Oswald's theme on his guitar. This was filmed but cut from the final episode.
• Missing Trailer Scene: The clip 'Introducing the New Companion...' was released by the BBC a year before the episode aired, but is almost entirely missing from the final cut. In the episode, Bill's expression changes suddenly where the conversation has been removed. This is because the "Introducing the New Companion" (also known as "Friend from the Future") was a standalone scene created to announce Bill and was shot several months before "The Pilot" was filmed, at which point a few sequences from the short were re-filmed for the episode. (Note, among other things, the Doctor holds Bill's hand at the end of the short; he does not in the corresponding scene in the episode which is also on a different set.)
• What Could Have Been: The director has confirmed that the scene in which Bill and Heather meet in a night club was originally to have featured Peter Capaldi on stage as the Doctor playing a version of Clara Oswald's Leitmotif.
• Working Title: "A Star in Her Eye". It was changed after Mark Gatiss pointed out the similarity to the title of the British reality show Stars in Their Eyes, which was not generally associated with high quality.
• You Look Familiar: Bill's foster mum Moira is played by Jennifer Hennessy, who also played Valerie in "Gridlock".

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