History SpecialEffectFailure / DoctorWho

* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E7TheMacraTerror "The Macra Terror"]]: The Macra. The prop cost £500 (a record amount of money spent on a prop at that time — the equivalent of about £8000 today) and was heavily promoted as the biggest monster yet. While this episode is lost, production stills reveal that [[https://doctorwhomindrobber.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/the-macra-terror-the-macra-cover.jpg there's more to making a convincing monster than just spending lots of money on it]]. The thing was so bad that [[ThisIsUnforgivable it all but ended the BBC's relationship with Shawcraft Models, which had supplied the series with special props since 1963]].

* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS12E5RevengeOfTheCybermen "Revenge of the Cybermen"]]: The Vogon rocket being launched is represented by some NASA stock footage of a Saturn V rocket. [[StockFootageFailure It looks exactly like some NASA stock footage of a Saturn V rocket.]]

* Due to the episode getting shipped before the BBC could change the titles back, Australia (but not the UK) got a version of [[Recap/DoctorWhoS10E2CarnivalOfMonsters "Carnival of Monsters"]] which begins with a ghastly wheedling, boingy version of the theme that is noticeably out of time with itself. It had been done to show off a new, expensive, unfriendly synthesiser (the Delaware) which the Radiophonic Workshop hadn't quite worked out how to use properly yet.

* The surviving clips of [[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E3ThePowerOfTheDaleks "The Power of the Daleks"]] suggest a valiant attempt to portray a limitless supply of Daleks being produced by the factory ship, when all you have is a handful of Dalek casings. The usual trick of having them all go past the camera, then go past the camera again, actually works quite well. The meeting in which the real Daleks address a row of cardboard cutouts of Daleks, not so much.

* The surviving footage of the last episode of [[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E9TheEvilOfTheDaleks "The Evil of the Daleks"]] is notorious for featuring Dalek ''[[OffTheShelfFX action figures]]'' in the climactic fight scene between the "humanised" Daleks and the Emperor's troops. (Which ''might'' have worked, except they're [[OffModel the Marx Toys bump-n-go Daleks]], which looked very different from their full-sized inspirations.) The same action figures are used again for the shots of the frozen Dalek army in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS10E4PlanetOfTheDaleks "Planet of the Daleks"]].

* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS17E3TheCreatureFromThePit "The Creature from the Pit"]], which bears an [[UnfortunateCharacterDesign uncanny resemblance to a giant penis and scrotum]] — how BBC effects missed this is a mystery. After its first episode went out, the Creature was hastily remodelled for the next by the simple expedient of changing its front end, but it's easy to spot the join.

* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E9TheSatanPit "The Satan Pit"]]: The maintenance tunnels the crew use to escape have to be remotely filled with air by manipulating the oxygen supply, because they were designed for maintenance robots rather than people. However, the tunnels are clearly not airtight at all, as the crew get in and out of them by lifting thin metal grilles.

** The Zarbi also suffer from the fact that the costumes were so delicate that the Doctor and Ian couldn't actually touch most parts of the costume when fighting them, which both actors said made the job unbearably hard. This led to a lot of FightSceneFailure — for instance, in a scene where Ian fights the Zarbi, he does a weird manoeuvre where he drops to his back and kicks it away with both legs, simply to ensure he could drop a controlled blow on it at the one point he knew wouldn't fall off (the Zarbi's torso). On top of that, [[CueIrony many of the actors playing the Zarbi developed back problems as a result of the uncomfortable costumes and the way they forced them to move]]. The BBC even had to have special stools made for them.

* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS1E5TheKeysOfMarinus "The Keys of Marinus"]]: In one story, the ice on the cave walls is represented with clingfilm stretched over the set. It's quite obvious, but is also forgivable... except for how when the actors run through the the caves, every step makes that distinctive clingfilm squeak.

* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS10E2CarnivalOfMonsters "Carnival of Monsters"]] has a moment in Part 4 when an Inter Minorian's bald cap completely slips loose. This was considered so bad by an editor that for some transmissions, ''the whole ending scene got cut out of rebroadcasts''.

* The TARDIS consple used between Season 15 and Season 20 had no set panel order until [[Recap/DoctorWhoS18E7Logopolis "Logopolis"]] in Season 18, meaning the console's appearance and layout would shift noticably from episode to episode.

** And before that in "tacky colour filters", there was an attempt at doing a SpecialEditionTitle for each story in Season 12, by refilming the title sequence with colour filters on it. After blue titles for [[Recap/DoctorWhoS12E1Robot "Robot"]], [[Recap/DoctorWhoS12E2TheArkInSpace "The Ark in Space"]] had its titles done through a pink filter, which turned the whole thing a dull sludge brown. Everyone hated it and the blue titles were used for every other sequence.

* The iconic wooden appearance of the TARDIS is in fact an example of this. Real Police Boxes were made of concrete. The prop was made of lightweight wood for obvious reasons, but the paint job didn't hide the wood grain. This was kept, as by the time the BBC had the budget to do anything about it, [[TheCoconutEffect people thought Police Boxes were made out of wood thanks to constant exposure to the clearly wooden TARDIS]].

* An example of a character who became TheScrappy (if not to the audience, certainly to the cast and crew) as the result of this is the RobotBuddy K-9. The actual K-9 prop looks nice and solid if you like the {{Camp}}y design, and some of the touches, like its twizzly ears and tail, are quite cute. But the cast, crew and writers soon grew to hate it because it was poorly made and constantly broke. It also moved very slowly and unsteadily, especially annoying as it's the companion of a particularly tall and kinetic Doctor who was forced to pace down his naturally fast and comical movements to speeds matching that of K-9, usually with an adlibbed "come along, K-9" every time it just stopped for no reason. Quite often, the prop would break, and so the character would just be [[AbsenteeActor written out of the serial]] with its important lines [[CompositeCharacter rewritten and given to Romana]], and as it could barely even handle a straight, perfectly level floor, it would never show up in stories shot anywhere more exciting than corridors (such as the BBCQuarry, the wetlands in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS16E5ThePowerOfKroll "The Power of Kroll"]] or the streets in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS17E2CityOfDeath "City of Death"]] and [[Recap/DoctorWhoS17E6Shada "Shada"]]). Many of the scripts are peppered with sarcastic stage directions for K-9, such as (from "Shada") "K-9 HEADS OFF AT WHAT PASSES FOR TOP SPEED", and (in one of the few recorded cases of [[CreativeDifferences on-set rivalries]] between a human and a prop robot) Tom Baker developed a habit of subjecting K-9 to ad-libbed verbal abuse in rehearsals, footage of which occasionally surfaces in HilariousOuttakes BBC shows ("Yeah, you never fucking know the answer when it's important"). On top of that, it was the K-9 prop that caught fire in a prop warehouse thanks to an electrical fault, in the famous fire that destroyed many better-made and more loved 1960s and 70s ''Who'' props.

* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E2TheTenthPlanet "The Tenth Planet"]]: The Cybermen are obviously just made of surgical tape, paper and wires. They have normal human hands, because ''the costume designer forgot to bring the gloves''. However, this fits their nature as once-human creatures who had been altered through technology, and a common complaint in the fandom is that [[ILikedItBetterWhenItSucked the better-looking Cybermen from later on are not as scary as the shoddy ones from "The Tenth Planet"]], who fall firmly into the UncannyValley. (This is one reason the Mondasian Cybermen were brought back for the Twelfth Doctor's penultimate story.)

* The panels on the doors of the TARDIS used for some scenes of ''Castrovalva'' and ''Black Orchid'' don't match the design of the side walls, due to the prop being the retired Fourth Doctor prop redressed and partially rebuilt to match the new prop introduced in Season 18.

* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS25E3SilverNemesis "Silver Nemesis"]]: The TARDIS door that gets struck with an arrow is clearly a replica specially built for the stunt, as the panels don't line up with the opposite door, the lock is missing and the struck panel is a darker blue than the rest of the prop.

* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS18E6TheKeeperOfTraken "The Keeper of Traken"]]: When Kassia is shown under the influence of the Melkur, her possessed eyes look like they were made of felt or cardboard, and really ruins the scene.
** The Master's very existence in this story is another big offender. Here, John Nathan-Turner opted to have Geoffery Beavers don prosthetic makeup for the overcooked Master rather than have him don a rubber mask like the one in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS14E3TheDeadlyAssassin "The Deadly Assassin"]]. The reason for this was because the mask was physically restrictive to Peter Pratt, muffling his voice (infamously resulting in his line "I wear the sash of Rassilon" being nigh-unintelligible) and forcing him to act almost exclusively with his body due to him not being able to move his face on-camera. However, Beavers' makeup was amateurish-looking at best; he looks more like he's wearing a mud mask than like an animated corpse, and his "teeth" are very obviously painted onto his lips, a fact that becomes even more painfully noticeable when he talks. The end result looks more like a ''parody'' of Pratt's rendition of the Master than like the genuine article.

** The proportions of the "Police Public Call Box" signage fluctuate in terms of height during Series 10 due to the 2013/Series 7B prop being brought out of retirement to replace the Series 9 "Clara TARDIS" prop.

* The TARDIS consple used between Season 15 and Season 20 had no set panel order until ''Logopolis'' in Season 18, meaning the console's appearance and layout would shift noticably from episode to episode.

** At some point during the filming of the ''Key to Time'' season, one of the console's glare shields has fallen off, leaving one of the console panels with a flat disc on one side and a full shield on the other, until the other finally goes missing in ''Earthshock.''
* The additional plinth cover that hid the mechanism for the motorised keyboard in ''Logopolis'' is not present in the majority of Season 19, leaving a big rectangular hole with the mechanisms clearly visible.

** Similarly, the CGI TARDIS used during the crash-landing sequence in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E1TheEleventhHour "The Eleventh Hour"]] is the Eleventh Doctor design, especially visible in the shot where the TARDIS hurtles over Big Ben, despite the fact that the rest of the scene is using the Tenth Doctor design.
*** Additionally, the floor of the TARDIS switches back and forth between the reddish-brown tiles of the interior set's doorway and the flat black of the prop's floor during close-up shots.

* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS24E3DeltaAndTheBannermen "Delta and the Bannermen"]]: The Chimeron baby goes from an effective model to just a baby in a pull over an green paint after it hatchs.

** You can see the point at which the Vinvocci's rubber cap joins their heads very clearly. It's particularly noticeable with the female actress, who has a tendency of furrowing her brow while the top of her forehead remains suspiciously immobile. They were actually called "Prostheticons" in early drafts of the script, anticipating this. (The original intention was that only the headpieces would be green, and the rest of their bodies would still have human skin tones; the decision to make them completely green was only taken in post-production.)