Doctor Who showrunner Russell T. Davies recalls Ncuti Gatwa’s first day on set, shooting one of the show’s most peculiar and thought-provoking episodes.
The first scenes Ncuti Gatwa shot as the new Doctor in Doctor Who can be seen in Episode 5, “Dot and Bubble,” a Black Mirror-inspired episode set in Finetime, a world where society exists in a closed-off, social media bubble.
The episode follows Lindy (Callie Cooke), who is in danger when monsters try and eat her and all of her friends. That’s when the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) enter her social network bubble and attempt to guide her blindly through the monster-filled streets of Finetime. Once they manage to guide her and the residents to safety, the Doctor becomes enraged when they choose not to follow him to a place of safety.
Gatwa’s performance in the episode’s final moments is breathtaking. We rarely see the Doctor as animated as he becomes in that moment, when the residents of Finetime refuse his offer of safety. And what makes it even more impressive it that this was Gatwa’s first time on set. Talk about stepping in at the deep end!
“We handed that script to Ncuti and I was wary, I was thinking, ‘My god,’ especially as it’s the first thing he shot,” showrunner Russell T. Davies explained on the BBC’s behind-the-scenes showDoctor Who: Unleashed. “It is astonishing because he comes in – he did the regeneration way back with David [Tennant] but actually the scene at the end episode 5 was his first day with us, his first proper day.”
The team wondered whether they should backtrack and let Gatwa begin his journey with something a little easier, but where’s the fun in that? Plus, the risk paid off in the end:
“”We were all kind of holding our breaths thinking, ‘That’s no way you’d start any lead actor off’. We talked about it – ‘Should we reschedule? Should we let him settle in? Should we hold this scene off?’ And we decided to go for it, and bang – that’s a great actor, he just hits it and it’s one of the most remarkable performances I’ve ever seen.”
Gatwa himself admits that his first scene was pretty intense, but it helped him get right on the pace. “My first day on Doctor Who was that episode, episode 5, the barrage scene. That was an incredibly intense scene to start Doctor Who on but very exciting to get my teeth into it.”
“Dot and Bubble” is now streaming on BBC iPlayer and Disney+ for international viewers. If this was Doctor Who‘s answer to Black Mirror, next up is Rogue, a Bridgerton-inspired episode. There’s been a whole lot of pop culture inspired stories this season, and Davies wants to keep ’em coming. “It’s an amazing universe where these doppelgangers keep appearing!” he told Mashable. What next? Doctor Who meets Game of Thrones?
