Doctor Who Just Tricked You, And Nobody's Talking About It

WhatCulture

We noticed, Doctor Who. We noticed!

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00:00Hello everybody, Ellie here for WhoCulture and today we have a mystery to solve.

00:06Now does anybody remember this all important looking shot of the 15th Doctor? Because it

00:13just vanished. It just disappeared, never to be seen. So we thought we'd do a little

00:18bit of investigating. So let's split up and look for clues. Scoob, you're with me!

00:24So first of all, let's journey back all the way to the 23rd of September 2023, which feels

00:31like a really long time ago even though it really actually wasn't in the grand scheme

00:34of things. And we got a 60th anniversary trailer just before Strictly Come Dancing and the

00:40last shot in this trailer was the aforementioned shot that we're talking about here of the

00:4515th Doctor. Everyone assumed that this was a shot from one of those 60th anniversary

00:49specials. I mean, first and foremost, this was a trailer for the 60th anniversary. Because

00:53of the nature of it, because it was the 15th Doctor in the shot, most people assumed that

00:58it would be in the final of the three specials. I think a lot of people assumed that it was

01:02something to do with the regeneration. The regeneration sound was playing over this section

01:07of the trailer. In hindsight, would they have done that because, you know, is it massively

01:16spoilery? But at the same time, we knew that a new Doctor was coming, so we knew a regeneration

01:22was imminent. And at the time, we didn't know that there was anything special or different

01:26about this particular regeneration, so I don't necessarily think that it was suspicious for

01:31there to be some sort of regeneration shot in the trailer. But I think a lot of people,

01:35that's the assumption they had when they saw this was, well, that's going to be the ending

01:40of special number three. So then we jump ahead to the 25th of November,

01:44which was a very exciting day to the Starbeast. Nope, didn't appear in that episode. Okay,

01:49we wait to the following week, to the 2nd of December, to watch Wild Blue Yonder? Nope,

01:53not there either. Okay, well then we'll jump to the 9th of December, the giggle, we know

01:58the regeneration must be happening in this episode, so it probably will appear here.

02:02And lo and behold, we get to the end of that episode, we've been introduced to Shu Te

02:07Gatwa as the 15th Doctor, we've been introduced to this whole notion of the bi-generation,

02:13and we still have not seen this particular shot that we were teased all the way back

02:19in September. So then we kind of forgot about it, you know, there was a lot of things going

02:22on in the trailers, and I think then we just assumed, well actually, we have got the Christmas

02:26special coming, so maybe it was a shot from the Christmas special. So we'll wait, we'll

02:30wait until Christmas Day, we'll watch the church on Ruby Road, it's probably in that

02:34episode. And guess what folks, it wasn't there either.

02:37So at this point I think the most logical conclusion or assumption about this shot is

02:41that it was intended literally just for the trailers, perhaps as a red herring to dissuade

02:48people from making conclusions about the regeneration. If you put a shot in the trailer

02:53that suggests it's just gonna be a normal regeneration like we've known for however

02:57many years gone by, then no one's gonna suspect that there's anything untoward or different

03:03about what we will be seeing, obviously the bi-generation. And we know that there is precedent

03:09for them to have done this because we know there was another shot of Shu Te Gatwa in

03:13that trailer, the shot where he says, well someone tell me what the hell is going on

03:16here. We know that there was a false background edited onto that scene because we now know

03:22that that scene was on top of Stark Towers and he was surrounded by all the unit people

03:28and David Tennant was stood right next to him, so we know that that scene was edited

03:31in the trailer to just have this sort of cloudy background. So we know there is precedent

03:35for them to throw in false shots or for them to tweak shots or throw in red herrings to

03:41throw us off of the scent. So this very well could have been just put in there to suggest

03:46that everything was normal and we had nothing to suspect. And as I said we learned in the

03:51commentary for The Giggle from Russell T Davis that things had been leaked and so it does

03:55suggest as I've just mentioned that by including this shot they were trying to mislead people

04:02into thinking that the leaks they'd seen weren't actually true. I guess that's kind of sneaky,

04:06kind of clever but if the leaks are already out there then you're not going to stop people

04:10from listening to them, reading them, jumping on them and ripping them apart. But from a

04:15creative point of view I mean it's not a difficult shot to create so if these leaks

04:19were made then it's not difficult for them to go oh shooty would you just stand here

04:24we're just going to get a close up of your face and we're going to edit it in a way that

04:27we can kind of throw people off the scent of these leaks and suggest to them that everything

04:32is fine and normal and that they shouldn't be listening to these leaks because we want

04:36it to be a surprise. So it could have very easily been a last minute addition just to

04:41throw people off the scent as I said. And it is something that is common practice within

04:44marketing campaigns, we've seen it probably most famously in the trailer for Avengers

04:49Infinity War where we had the Hulk running in Wakanda but we later learned by watching

04:55Infinity War, spoiler alert if you haven't seen it, but the Hulk is never the Hulk. Bruce

04:59Banner never hulks out in that entire film but the trailer suggested that he was there

05:03with all of those heroes and while he was there it would have been a spoiler to show

05:06him in a big Iron Man suit so they just edited the trailer to mislead the audience to kind

05:12of lie to us basically but for the better. So that's one suggestion, yeah? It was a fake

05:18shot for the trailer. Case closed. Good looking for clues. We've unmasked the bad guy. But

05:26there could be more to it than that. At the end of The Church on Ruby Road we then got

05:29a trailer for season 1 and we also got confirmation that season 1 will be coming in May 2024.

05:35And then interestingly the official Disney Plus Twitter page posted a little promo, I

05:41think it said New Home, New Who. Guess what the only shot in that teaser was? You guessed

05:47it right folks, it's that same shot that's just been floating around but mysteriously

05:51disappearing. So is this a shot from season 1? And the thing is we need to remember as

05:55well is they started filming season 1 all the way back in December 2022 so they would

06:02have had shots of that season ready and waiting to go. The other thing that makes that a potential

06:08possibility is if you look very closely at the collar in that teaser it looks very similar

06:14to what we saw Shooty Gatwill wearing at the end of The Church on Ruby Road. Again that

06:18just lends itself to the suggestion that this is a shot that we may be seeing within season

06:231. So I think there are 3 possibilities here. Of 4 possibilities it was a fake shot intended

06:30for the trailers only to mislead people, it was an actual shot that was intended to be

06:35in the 60th anniversary but was cut, it's a shot from season 1 that we are yet to see

06:41or it's a shot that was created for the only purpose of marketing. Now that does happen,

06:47they do plenty of promo shoots, they stand and pose as their character in different positions,

06:52we've seen plenty of those promotional images of the characters all posing together, you

06:57know the famous one with David Tennant doing his little pointing. Because now we are moving

07:02on to the age of social media and streaming then the promo stuff advances with that so

07:10rather than having the promotional images then it is very very possible that this was

07:15a shot that was created just for the marketing, just for promotional content. It's not a difficult

07:22shot to achieve so it's very simple and look it's got us all talking. But it did seem like

07:27a very important shot to be seeing and it did just seem slightly odd that we ended up

07:33not actually seeing it. I guess the only other thing is if it is a shot from season 1, why

07:37was it in the 60th trailer? Other than the fact that most footage of the 15th Doctor

07:43that could be used from the Giggle would have been massively spoilery. But then we've seen

07:49them edit footage from it to suit the trailers. So there's just a lot of mystery surrounding

07:54this random shot. It's much more fascinating than it probably should be for all of about

07:59three seconds worth of footage. But we like to get those discussions rolling so let me

08:05know in the comments down below, let me know your theories. I know a lot of you are probably

08:09going to go, it's just a shot, get over it. And that's fine! But I like the conspiracy

08:14theorists out there so join me in speculating what happened to this mysterious shot of the

08:2015th Doctor.

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