History TroubledProduction / DoctorWho

* Season 17 essentially had the problems of Season 15 turned Up to Eleven. Season 16 hadn't been entirely trouble-free, not least because Creator/GrahamWilliams was sidelined for most of the season due to health problems, but things were held together by production manager Creator/JohnNathanTurner on the filming side and script editor Anthony Read in the production office. However, Read quit at the end of the season, along with both Romana's actress Mary Tamm and K9's voice actor John Leeson. The companion losses weren't too damaging, as new Romana actress Creator/LallaWard proved way more popular than her predecessor, and David Brierly was a capable enough replacement for Leeson. Read's replacement with Creator/DouglasAdams proved far more damaging; whereas Read did a lot to hold the production team and cast together, Adams was more interested in goofing around — including going on a pub crawl in Paris with the director of "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS17E1DestinyOfTheDaleks Destiny of the Daleks]]" during the filming of "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS17E2CityOfDeath City of Death]]" — and rewriting scripts to incorporate his off-beat brand of humour. Combined with Creator/TomBaker acting up more than ever (now with even his tempestuous offscreen love life bleeding into production notes) and the budget problems and labour disputes returning (in the latter case managing to totally derail production of the season finale, [[Recap/DoctorWhoS17E6Shada "Shada"]]), both Williams and Adams unsurprisingly decided to call it quits at the end of the season. Seasons 16-17 were also the victim of ExecutiveMeddling, with BBC bosses first saying that it couldn't be horrific because of the MoralGuardians, and then that Adams needed to tone down the comedy. And if ''Doctor Who'' can't be scary or funny, there's not much left.

* Season 3 was the first instance of production issues stretching across most, if not all of the season. The show's original producer, Creator/VerityLambert stood down at the start of the season and was replaced by John Wiles, which rapidly turned into a case of TyrantTakesTheHelm when he fired Recap/BigFinishDoctorWho090YearOfThePig early in the season for complaining about the way Vicki was being written. This not only immediately turned Creator/WilliamHartnell and Creator/PeterPurves against Wiles, it caused issues that stretched across the entire season, as initial replacement Katerina proved not to be a workable character, then her replacement, Sara Kingdom was limited to one story due to Creator/JeanMarsh not wanting to commit to the series full-time, and then ''her'' replacement, Dodo, proved extremely unpopular with the viewers. Not long afterwards, the BBC executives foisted a mammoth twelve-part story, "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E4TheDaleksMasterPlan The Daleks' Master Plan]]" on the production team, and actually getting it made proved extremely stressful for both Wiles and script editor Donald Tosh, with Hartnell's relationship with the two further deteriorating over their insistence on making the show DarkerAndEdgier. Eventually, Wiles decided to fire Hartnell himself, and when firmly told by the BBC that wasn't an option, gave them a "he goes or I go" ultimatum... resulting in the BBC firing Wiles without a second thought, and also leading to Tosh quitting in protest. New producer Innes Lloyd and script editor Gerry Davis were left with the task of picking up the wreckage left behind, and despite getting things back on track, they found that Wiles [[JerkassHasAPoint had been right about one thing]] and that Hartnell's health really wasn't up to the task of working on the show any more. Fortunately, between Hartnell himself becoming cognisant of this fact, Lloyd and Davis handling the situation much more delicately than Wiles had, and the BBC management now being aware how just unwell Hartnell was, all agreed that Hartnell would leave at the start of the next season, with Creator/PatrickTroughton taking over the title role.

** Mark Strickson was injured while filming the scene of Turlough throwing himself overboard, when the Kirby wire he was suspended from broke, leaving him only able to walk with difficulty for several weeks.

* Season 3 was the first instance of production issues stretching across most, if not all of the season. The show's original producer, Creator/VerityLambert stood down at the start of the season and was replaced by John Wiles, which rapidly turned into a case of TyrantTakesTheHelm when he fired Maureen O'Brien early in the season for complaining about the way Vicki was being written. This not only immediately turned Creator/WilliamHartnell and Creator/PeterPurves against Wiles, it caused issues that stretched across the entire season, as initial replacement Katerina proved not to be a workable character, then her replacement, Sara Kingdom was limited to one story due to Creator/JeanMarsh not wanting to commit to the series full-time, and then ''her'' replacement, Dodo, proved extremely unpopular with the viewers. Not long afterwards, the BBC executives foisted a mammoth twelve-part story, "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E4TheDaleksMasterPlan The Daleks' Master Plan]]" on the production team, and actually getting it made proved extremely stressful for both Wiles and script editor Donald Tosh, with Hartnell's relationship with the two further deteriorating over their insistence on making the show DarkerAndEdgier. Eventually, Wiles decided to fire Hartnell himself, and when firmly told by the BBC that wasn't an option, gave them a "he goes or I go" ultimatum... resulting in the BBC firing Wiles without a second thought, and also leading to Tosh quitting in protest. New producer Innes Lloyd and script editor Gerry Davis were left with the task of picking up the wreckage left behind, and despite getting things back on track, they found that Wiles [[JerkassHasAPoint had been right about one thing]] and that Hartnell's health really wasn't up to the task of working on the show any more. Fortunately, between Hartnell himself becoming cognisant of this fact, Lloyd and Davis handling the situation much more delicately than Wiles had, and the BBC management now being aware how just unwell Hartnell was, all agreed that Hartnell would leave at the start of the next season, with Creator/PatrickTroughton taking over the title role.

* "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS9E1DayOfTheDaleks]]" saw the Daleks return to the show for the first time in five years. The production team only discovered shortly before filming was due to start that the BBC could only possessed three Dalek props that were still in working order. The final episode was due to feature an asasult from a large Dalek army against a house, which proved incredibly difficult to realise with the limited props available. Forty years later, the BBC decided to fix these problems by staging a re-shoot.

* Season 15: Creator/PhilipHinchcliffe had been sacked as producer due to MoralGuardians, and in revenge he boosted the budgets for the final two serials of Season 14, meaning that incoming producer Creator/GrahamWilliams was money-starved just at the time a crippling UK recession and industrial strikes hit -- and for an encore, Williams' own inexperience when it came to producing and budgeting a sci-fi series caused him to blow much of the season's budget on the first story to be produced, "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS15E2TheInvisibleEnemy The Invisible Enemy]]", crippling the rest of the season (and leading to a memorable occasion where the budget was so low they couldn't even afford sets — "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS15E5Underworld Underworld]]" just used (poorly executed) CSO to put the actors into MiniatureEffects). The companion character Leela was originally intended to be added for only three stories in Season 14 but was kept around as a regular due to the incoming team's desire to cause as little upset as possible with everything else going wrong. ExecutiveMeddling forced the writers to remove all of the horror from the scripts of what had at the time been a GothicHorror show — jokes were used to plug the gaps, but with varying degrees of success. Creator/RobertHolmes quit halfway through the season due to a combination of money problems and burnout. The stories were hastily re-edited to insert a toyetic Robot Dog KidAppealCharacter added by executive mandate and shown out of order, spoiling the character development going on. Creator/TomBaker's mental health, which had begun failing him in Season 14, tanked — he loathed both companion characters, wanted to be the sole star, and started threatening to quit in order to WagTheDirector into letting him do whatever he wanted while also bullying his co-star Louise Jameson due to his dislike of the character she played, who quit after this series due to his treatment of her. Despite all this, the fandom opinion of Season 15 is that it's SoOkayItsAverage — two bad stories, one okayish story, and three good ones (including two all-time classics).
** That season's finale, "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS15E6TheInvasionOfTime The Invasion of Time]]". Firstly the original writer gave the production team a set of scripts that would have been impossible to realize on a ''film'' budget, resulting in the producer and script editor having to come up with a totally new storyline in just a few days. Then the UK's economy imploded due to the Winter of Discontent, rendering the British Pound nearly worthless and leaving NoBudget for the serial. On top of all that, virtually every department of the BBC went on strike at the same time, resulting in a hasty studio session filmed with sets left over from [[Recap/DoctorWhoS14E3TheDeadlyAssassin "The Deadly Assassin"]], followed by location filming at anywhere which would let them shoot, just so that they could get everything in the can. Not to mention the producer didn't believe that Louise Jameson really wanted to leave, so they delayed writing in her exit in the belief she would change her mind, and had to add a hastily written romance with Andred when they realised too late she wouldn't.

** Janet Fielding struggled with the low cut ball-gown she wore during filming, [[WardrobeMalfunction as it threatened to expose her breasts on a number of occasions]]. At one point, Creator/PeterDavison concluded a line with the ad-lib, "Oh, and Tegan, put your boobs back in!" whereupon Fielding realised that she had accidentally exposed herself.

* Season 3 was the first instance of production issues stretching across most, if not all of the season. The show's original producer, Verity Lambert stood down at the start of the season and was replaced by John Wiles, which rapidly turned into a case of TyrantTakesTheHelm when he fired Maureen O'Brien early in the season for complaining about the way Vicki was being written. This not only immediately turned William Hartnell and Creator/PeterPurves against Wiles, it caused issues that stretched across the entire season, as initial replacement Katerina proved not to be a workable character, then her replacement, Sara Kingdom was limited to one story due to Creator/JeanMarsh not wanting to commit to the series full-time, and then ''her'' replacement, Dodo, proved extremely unpopular with the viewers. Not long afterwards, the BBC executives foisted a mammoth twelve-part story, "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E4TheDaleksMasterPlan The Daleks' Master Plan]]" on the production team, and actually getting it made proved extremely stressful for both Wiles and script editor Donald Tosh, with Hartnell's relationship with the two further deteriorating over their insistence on making the show DarkerAndEdgier. Eventually, Wiles decided to fire Hartnell himself, and when firmly told by the BBC that wasn't an option, gave them a "he goes or I go" ultimatum... resulting in the BBC firing Wiles without a second thought, and also leading to Tosh quitting in protest. New producer Innes Lloyd and script editor Gerry Davis were left with the task of picking up the wreckage left behind, and despite getting things back on track, they found that Wiles [[JerkassHasAPoint had been right about one thing]] and that Hartnell's health really wasn't up to the task of working on the show any more. Fortunately, between Hartnell himself becoming cognisant of this fact, Lloyd and Davis handling the situation much more delicately than Wiles had, and the BBC management now being aware how just unwell Hartnell was, all agreed that Hartnell would leave at the start of the next season, with Creator/PatrickTroughton taking over the title role.

* Season 3 was the first instance of production issues stretching across most, if not all of the season. The show's original producer, Verity Lambert stood down at the start of the season and was replaced by John Wiles, which rapidly turned into a case of TyrantTakesTheHelm when he fired Maureen O'Brien early in the season for complaining about the way Vicki was being written. This not only immediately turned William Hartnell and Creator/PeterPurves against Wiles, it caused issues that stretched across the entire season, as initial replacement Katerina proved not to be a workable character, then her replacement, Sara Kingdom was limited to one story due to actress Jean Marsh not wanting to commit to the series full-time, and then ''her'' replacement, Dodo, proved extremely unpopular with the viewers. Not long afterwards, the BBC executives foisted a mammoth twelve-part story, "The Daleks' Master Plan" on the production team, and actually getting it made proved extremely stressful for both Wiles and script editor Donald Tosh, with Hartnell's relationship with the two further deteriorating over their insistence on making the show DarkerAndEdgier. Eventually, Wiles decided to fire Hartnell himself, and when firmly told by the BBC that wasn't an option, gave them a "he goes or I go" ultimatum... resulting in the BBC firing Wiles without a second thought, and also leading to Tosh quitting in protest. New producer Innes Lloyd and script editor Gerry Davis were left with the task of picking up the wreckage left behind, and despite getting things back on track, they found that Wiles [[JerkassHasAPoint had been right about one thing]] and that Hartnell's health really wasn't up to the task of working on the show any more. Fortunately, between Hartnell himself becoming cognisant of this fact, Lloyd and Davis handling the situation much more delicately than Wiles had, and the BBC management now being aware how just unwell Hartnell was, all agreed that Hartnell would leave at the start of the next season, with Creator/PatrickTroughton taking over the title role.

* Season 3 was the first instance of production issues stretching across most, if not all of the season. The show's original producer, Verity Lambert stood down at the start of the season and was replaced by John Wiles, which rapidly turned into a case of TyrantTakesTheHelm when he fired Maureen O'Brien early in the season for complaining about the way Vicki was being written. This not only immediately turned William Hartnell and Peter Purves against Wiles, it caused issues that stretched across the entire season, as initial replacement Katerina proved not to be a workable character, then her replacement, Sara Kingdom was limited to one story due to actress Jean Marsh not wanting to commit to the series full-time, and then ''her'' replacement, Dodo, proved extremely unpopular with the viewers. Not long afterwards, the BBC executives foisted a mammoth twelve-part story, "The Daleks' Master Plan" on the production team, and actually getting it made proved extremely stressful for both Wiles and script editor Donald Tosh, with Hartnell's relationship with the two further deteriorating over their insistence on making the show DarkerAndEdgier. Eventually, Wiles decided to fire Hartnell himself, and when firmly told by the BBC that wasn't an option, gave them a "he goes or I go" ultimatum... resulting in the BBC firing Wiles without a second thought, and also leading to Tosh quitting in protest. New producer Innes Lloyd and script editor Gerry Davis were left with the task of picking up the wreckage left behind, and despite getting things back on track, they found that Wiles [[JerkassHasAPoint had been right about one thing]] and that Hartnell's health really wasn't up to the task of working on the show any more. Fortunately, between Hartnell himself becoming cognisant of this fact, Lloyd and Davis handling the situation much more delicately than Wiles had, and the BBC management now being aware how just unwell Hartnell was, all agreed that Hartnell would leave at the start of the next season, with Creator/PatrickTroughton taking over the title role.

* The very first episode, Part One of "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS1E1AnUnearthlyChild "An Unearthly Child]]", had to be re-recorded, after the initial recording was beset by numerous technical and production errors, including a light problem causing William Russell (Ian Chesterton)'s face to be hidden in shadow, Ian falling over in the scrapyard and dropping his torch, a camera running into a piece of scenery in the scrapyard, the doors to the TARDIS set falling open when they weren't supposed to, and the studio ceiling being visible in the TARDIS set. The episode also incurred the displeasure of Creator/SydneyNewman for its overly harsh characterisation of the Doctor. He described it as "the worst piece of work I've seen in a long time." Ironically, the full version of the unaired initial recording still exists in the BBC archives, even as 97 episodes that were actually transmitted have been lost.

* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS2E5TheWebPlanet "The Web Planet"]]'s demanding nature took its toll on the production. The first episode required a 16-minute overrun, brought about by a variety of flubbed lines, missed cues, equipment problems, and troubles with the Zarbi costumes, one of which broke and had to be repaired. The start of recording on the third was delayed when it was found that some of the sets had not been delivered to the studio, and the Carsenome floor had not been painted. Lighting and camera problems continued to plague the increasingly frazzled cast, and this time taping went 37 minutes behind schedule. One of the Zarbi operators, his vision impaired by his costume, ran right into the camera. So rushed was the recording, however, that this blooper was retained in the finished episode. (So stressful was the shoot, and for so ridiculous a story from the cast and crew's perspective, that fans like to try to spot the moment where Ian's actor, William Russell, finally got fed up with the programme once and for all and resolved to tender his notice.)

* The ending of Season 6 was a fiasco due to multiple scripts falling through after production had started, and replacements being hurriedly written as well as extended with tons of {{padding}}. [[Recap/DoctorWhoS6E7TheWarGames "The War Games"]], the grand finale of the season, was written in mere weeks to take up the space of a six-parter and a four-parter that fell through. Several more stories had to be heavily rewritten — Creator/PatrickTroughton was going to quit at the end of the season, and lead companion Frazer Hines at first announced he would be going mid-season but later decided to quit at the end of the season with Troughton. This vacillation was bad enough to kill at least one story at the last minute — "The Prison in Space" was commissioned as a comedy serial that wrote out Jamie and when Hines announced that he was staying, the serial had to be rewritten to include him. The production team and director hated the script for various reasons (it was an outrageously sexist MarsAndVenusGenderContrast comedy set in a dystopian matriarchy and included setpieces like Jamie disguising himself as a woman and, later, spanking Zoe to break her out of StrawFeminist brainwashing) and requested changes, and when the writer announced he was sick of rewriting the script, the producer decided to cut his losses and commissioned [[Recap/DoctorWhoS6E4TheKrotons "The Krotons"]] as a rush replacement.

* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS7E4Inferno "Inferno"]]: Director Douglas Camfield had to withdraw from production after suffering a heart attack, leaving Barry Letts to finish the job. Fortunately, Camfield's preparations were so meticulous he merely followed Camfield's plans. Then Creator/JonPertwee accidentally injured stuntman Alan Chuntz when he ran over his leg while filming the chase sequence. Pertwee felt so awful about the accident that he became ill himself, which threatened to disrupt filming.

* Season 15: Creator/PhilipHinchcliffe had been sacked as producer due to MoralGuardians, and in revenge he boosted the budgets for the final two serials of Season 14, meaning that incoming producer Graham Williams was money-starved just at the time a crippling UK recession and industrial strikes hit -- and for an encore, Williams' own inexperience when it came to producing and budgeting a sci-fi series caused him to blow much of the season's budget on the first story to be produced, "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS15E2TheInvisibleEnemy The Invisible Enemy]]", crippling the rest of the season (and leading to a memorable occasion where the budget was so low they couldn't even afford sets — "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS15E5Underworld Underworld]]" just used (poorly executed) CSO to put the actors into MiniatureEffects). The companion character Leela was originally intended to be added for only three stories in Season 14 but was kept around as a regular due to the incoming team's desire to cause as little upset as possible with everything else going wrong. ExecutiveMeddling forced the writers to remove all of the horror from the scripts of what had at the time been a GothicHorror show — jokes were used to plug the gaps, but with varying degrees of success. Creator/RobertHolmes quit halfway through the season due to a combination of money problems and burnout. The stories were hastily re-edited to insert a toyetic Robot Dog KidAppealCharacter added by executive mandate and shown out of order, spoiling the character development going on. Creator/TomBaker's mental health, which had begun failing him in Season 14, tanked — he loathed both companion characters, wanted to be the sole star, and started threatening to quit in order to WagTheDirector into letting him do whatever he wanted while also bullying his co-star Louise Jameson due to his dislike of the character she played, who quit after this series due to his treatment of her. Despite all this, the fandom opinion of Season 15 is that it's SoOkayItsAverage — two bad stories, one okayish story, and three good ones (including two all-time classics).

* Season 17 essentially had the problems of Season 15 turned Up to Eleven. Season 16 hadn't been entirely trouble-free, not least because Graham Williams was sidelined for most of the season due to health problems, but things were held together by production manager Creator/JohnNathanTurner on the filming side and script editor Anthony Read in the production office. However, Read quit at the end of the season, along with both Romana's actress Mary Tamm and K9's voice actor John Leeson. The companion losses weren't too damaging, as new Romana actress Creator/LallaWard proved way more popular than her predecessor, and David Brierly was a capable enough replacement for Leeson. Read's replacement with Creator/DouglasAdams proved far more damaging; whereas Read did a lot to hold the production team and cast together, Adams was more interested in goofing around — including going on a pub crawl in Paris with the director of "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS17E1DestinyOfTheDaleks Destiny of the Daleks]]" during the filming of "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS17E2CityOfDeath City of Death]]" — and rewriting scripts to incorporate his off-beat brand of humour. Combined with Creator/TomBaker acting up more than ever (now with even his tempestuous offscreen love life bleeding into production notes) and the budget problems and labour disputes returning (in the latter case managing to totally derail production of the season finale, [[Recap/DoctorWhoS17E6Shada "Shada"]]), both Williams and Adams unsurprisingly decided to call it quits at the end of the season. Seasons 16-17 were also the victim of ExecutiveMeddling, with BBC bosses first saying that it couldn't be horrific because of the MoralGuardians, and then that Adams needed to tone down the comedy. And if ''Doctor Who'' can't be scary or funny, there's not much left.
** Even among the chaos of Season 17, "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS17E4NightmareOfEden Nightmare of Eden]]" stands out for having one of the most troubled, disastrous shoots in the show's entire run. Already suffering the usual behind-the-scenes issues, things went further south with the hiring of ageing director Alan Bromly. Not only did Bromly not get along with Baker, Ward, or Brierly at all, he insisted on using outdated shooting schedules and production techniques, making things even harder for the crew. Baker frequently refused to follow instructions and constantly picked fights with Bromly, and later on in the shoot, when it became obvious that literally no-one on the crew supported him in his arguments with the lead actor, Bromly quit, leaving Graham Williams to direct the remainder of the episode, and visual effects designer Colin Mapson to oversee editing and post-production. On the last day of filming, one of the production assistants had t-shirts reading "I survived the Nightmare of Eden!" printed up for the rest of the crew.

* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS7E1SpearheadFromSpace "Spearhead from Space"]] was derailed when the video camera operators went on strike, leading producer Derrick Sherwin to make the whole thing on film instead. This made the whole thing very expensive, which was bad enough even before Sherwin and Peter Bryant were suddenly sent to rescue a disastrous German TV production mid-shoot. Barry Letts took over at the last minute, got it done, and got handed the producer job for the Creator/JonPertwee era as a result. (The film production unwittingly meant the serial could be released in HD in the distant future, which no other classic serial can ever be due to quirks of the usual VideoInsideFilmOutside production.)

* The very first episode, Part One of "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS1E1AnUnearthlyChild "An Unearthly Child]]", had to be re-recorded, after the initial recording was beset by numerous technical errors, including a light problem causing William Russell (Ian Chesterton)'s face to be hidden in shadow, Ian falling over in the scrapyard and dropping his torch, a camera running into a piece of scenery in the scrapyard, the doors to the TARDIS set falling open when they weren't supposed to, and the studio ceiling being visible in the TARDIS set. The episode also incurred the displeasure of Creator/SydneyNewman for its overly harsh characterisation of the Doctor. He described it as "the worst piece of work I've seen in a long time."

* The very first episode, Part One of "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS1E1AnUnearthlyChild "An Unearthly Child]]", had to be re-recorded, after the initial recording was beset by numerous technical errors. The episode also incurred the displeasure of Creator/SydneyNewman for its overly harsh characterisation of the Doctor. He described it as "the worst piece of work I've seen in a long time."

* The very first episode, Part One of "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS1E1AnUnearthlyChild "An Unearthly Child]]" had to be re-recorded, after the initial recording was beset by numerous technical errors. The episode also incurred the displeasure of Creator/SydneyNewman for its overly harsh characterisation of the Doctor. He described it as "the worst piece of work I've seen in a long time."

* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E7TheCelestialToymaker "The Celestial Toymaker"]] was the studio-bound cheap episode after "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E6TheArk The Ark]]" went over-budget. And it still had problems:

* The first shoot of the 2005 revival series was a very troubled affair. The full details have never been made public, but by all accounts the director set about making himself unpopular, and after the first week of shooting they managed to be three weeks behind schedule. Creator/ChristopherEccleston has since implied in interviews that tensions on-set were among the reasons he decided to quit the show after the first series. He returned to film and theatre and speaks fondly of his fans from the show, but did not participate in any of the events or episodes in the run-up to the show's 50th anniversary in 2013. In 2020 Big Finish announced an audio production featuring Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor, his first return to the role. Eccleston said in interviews he was glad to return to the role without “BBC producers” involved.
** In 2021 when [[Creator/NoelClarke Noel Clarke]] was accused of sexual harassment it was revealed he had engaged in this behaviour on set. John Barrowman's habit of flashing may also have contributed to the feeling of discomfort that Christopher Eccleston had on set.

** The location filming for "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS22E4TheTwoDoctors The Two Doctors]]" was plagued by numerous small problems, including high heat that caused make-up to melt, a three-day delay to replace Creator/PatrickTroughton and Jacqueline Pearce's wigs (which had somehow got lost in shipping), Carmen Gómez' refusal to wear a costume designed for her, and a local stunt man (the truck driver) who refused to perform his stunt as it had been choreographed. Pearce also says that she was a last-minute replacement for another, unspecified actress who had to drop out of the production. Creator/JohnNathanTurner 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 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 VideoInsideFilmOutside 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.[[/note]] 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.

* "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS13E5TheBrainOfMorbius The Brain of Morbius]]" was largely the result of two writers having a falling out. Creator/TerranceDicks submitted a story concerning a robot building a new body for a Time Lord war criminal currently stuck as a disembodied brain, but the serial got stuck as the BottleEpisode of the season, so to save money the script editor Creator/RobertHolmes rewrote it from the ground up to replace the robot with a human character. This enraged Dicks, who felt the rewrite opened up massive plot holes — he saw the story as a TurnedAgainstTheirMasters scenario about a robot that cannot understand beauty building a new body for his master, while a human who would be able to understand Morbius would rather be in a better body — and was also upset about how Holmes' rewrite turned the story into more of a Hammer Horror pastiche than science fiction. Eventually Dicks realised he'd lost the argument and suggested Holmes replace his name on the script with "some bland pseudonym", so Holmes passive-aggressively credited the story to "Robin Bland" (which Dicks [[ActuallyPrettyFunny thought was hilarious]], breaking the ice between the two).
* Season 15: Previous producer Philip Hinchcliffe had been sacked due to MoralGuardians, and in revenge he boosted the budgets for the final two serials of Season 14, meaning that incoming producer Graham Williams was money-starved just at the time a crippling UK recession and industrial strikes hit -- and for an encore, Williams' own inexperience when it came to producing and budgeting a sci-fi series caused him to blow much of the season's budget on the first story to be produced, "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS15E2TheInvisibleEnemy The Invisible Enemy]]", crippling the rest of the season (and leading to a memorable occasion where the budget was so low they couldn't even afford sets — "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS15E5Underworld Underworld]]" just used (poorly executed) CSO to put the actors into MiniatureEffects). The companion character Leela was originally intended to be added for only three stories in Season 14 but was kept around as a regular due to the incoming team's desire to cause as little upset as possible with everything else going wrong. ExecutiveMeddling forced the writers to remove all of the horror from the scripts of what had at the time been a GothicHorror show — jokes were used to plug the gaps, but with varying degrees of success. Creator/RobertHolmes quit halfway through the season due to a combination of money problems and burnout. The stories were hastily re-edited to insert a toyetic Robot Dog KidAppealCharacter added by executive mandate and shown out of order, spoiling the character development going on. Creator/TomBaker's mental health, which had begun failing him in Season 14, tanked — he loathed both companion characters, wanted to be the sole star, and started threatening to quit in order to WagTheDirector into letting him do whatever he wanted while also bullying his co-star Louise Jameson due to his dislike of the character she played, who quit after this series due to his treatment of her. Despite all this, the fandom opinion of Season 15 is that it's SoOkayItsAverage — two bad stories, one okayish story, and three good ones (including two all-time classics).

* "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS12E5RevengeOfTheCybermen Revenge of the Cybermen]]" suffered from a long string of bad luck attributed by the director to witchcraft. When scouting the ancient cave system of Wookey Hole — a place associated by the locals with bad luck and supposedly the grave of an ancient witch — for its suitability for location shoots, the director's wife found some Iron Age arrowheads and decided to take them home, unwittingly calling an ancient curse on the production team. First, the team encountered a strange individual in potholing gear who had apparently wandered into set, of whom the staff had no knowledge, which the director began to believe was the ghost of an Irish potholer who had died in the cave three years earlier. The boats used in the cave scenes repeatedly broke down; one production team member had to be replaced due to an attack of claustrophobia, and another was taken seriously ill. On a day when staff disobeyed instructions not to touch the "Witch" formation (said to be the petrified body of the witch), Creator/ElisabethSladen nearly died — her boat went haywire and she had to dive overboard to keep herself from smashing into the cavern wall, where a stuntman had to pull her out to save her from drowning, and who later fell ill. An electrician broke his leg when a ladder collapsed under him, and the pyrotechnician found nothing would light or work correctly. The director took the arrowheads from his wife and reburied them, after which production ran smoothly.

** As "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS22E3TheMarkOfTheRani The Mark of the Rani]]" entailed one part to be in clear weather and the other in the rain, this resulted in the team having to constantly shift back and forth between areas in order to get everything filmed properly. One such scene in the clear weather portion involved the Doctor being tied to a pole in the forest by his hands and feet, and because it took a long time to set up (due to Creator/ColinBaker needing a special rigging to keep his back supported while tied up), it wasn't easy to shift from that scene to a rainy one on the fly. As fate would have it, rain started coming in exactly as they were filming that scene, and the crew were in such a rush to get to the other location that they left Baker stranded in the woods, tied to the pole, for around half an hour. Baker later related the story in the DVDCommentary for the serial.

* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS1E8TheReignOfTerror "The Reign of Terror"]]: The main director, Henric Hirsch, had a mental breakdown during the shoot due partially to the punishing shooting schedule and the mutual dislike between himself and Creator/WilliamHartnell, and ended up in hospital. Another director had to be drafted in at short notice to finish the fourth episode, allowing Hirsch time to recover and return for the rest of the story, but no surviving members of the cast or crew are able to remember who it was. John Gorrie is the man usually credited with it and he doesn't remember doing it. The alternate theory is that the episode was effectively co-directed by producer Creator/VerityLambert and assistant director Timothy Combe. For the record, the actual episode does not credit a director.

* The ending of Season 6 was a fiasco due to multiple scripts falling through after production had started, and replacements being hurriedly written as well as extended with tons of {{padding}}. [[Recap/DoctorWhoS6E7TheWarGames "The War Games"]], the grand finale of the season, was written in mere weeks to take up the space of a six-parter and a four-parter that fell through. Several more stories had to be heavily rewritten — Creator/PatrickTroughton was going to quit at the end of the season, and lead companion Frazer Hines at first announced he would be going mid-season but later decided to quit at the end of the season with Troughton. This vacillation was bad enough to kill at least one story at the last minute — "The Prison in Space" was commissioned as a comedy serial that wrote out Jamie and when Hines announced that he was staying, the serial had to be rewritten to include him. The production team and director hated the script for various reasons (it was an outrageously sexist MarsAndVenusGenderContrast comedy set in a dystopian matriarchy and included setpieces like Jamie disguising himself as a woman and, later, spanking Zoe to break her out of StrawFeminist brainwashing) and requested changes, and when the writer announced he was sick of rewriting the script the producer decided to cut his losses and commissioned [[Recap/DoctorWhoS6E4TheKrotons "The Krotons"]] as a rush replacement.

* "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS13E5TheBrainOfMorbius The Brain of Morbius]]" was largely the result of two writers having a falling out. Creator/TerranceDicks submitted a story concerning a robot building a new body for a Time Lord war criminal currently stuck as a disembodied brain, but the serial got stuck as the Bottle Episode of the season, so to save money the script editor Creator/RobertHolmes rewrote it from the ground up to replace the robot with a human character. This enraged Dicks, who felt the rewrite opened up massive plot holes — he saw the story as a TurnedAgainstTheirMasters scenario about a robot that cannot understand beauty building a new body for his master, while a human would be able to understand Morbius would rather be in a better body — and was also upset about how Holmes' rewrite turned the story into more of a Hammer Horror pastiche than science fiction. Eventually Dicks realised he'd lost the argument and suggested Holmes replace his name on the script with "some bland pseudonym", so Holmes passive-aggressively credited the story to "Robin Bland" (which Dicks [[ActuallyPrettyFunny thought was hilarious]], and broke the ice between the two).

** And, as if the production didn't need MORE problems, the ''Privateer'' bridge set was briefly condemned as unsafe by inspectors in the middle of the production block using it until a compromise was made that limited the number of people who could be up on its upper level at any one time.

* "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS21E7TheTwinDilemma The Twin Dilemma]]": Anthony Steven's progress on the scripts was very slow, and he began offering the production team fantastical excuses such as his typewriter exploding. He eventually fell ill, leaving script editor Eric Saward to heavily restructure the scripts, which director Peter Moffatt felt had serious logistical and storytelling problems. Although the serial eventually made it into studio, one of the studio sessions for the previous story, "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS21E6TheCavesOfAndrozani The Caves of Androzani]]", was cancelled due to strike action by scenery movers, and one of this story's studio sessions had to be given over to it instead. The story might have been cancelled or held over to the following season in a revised form, but Creator/JohnNathanTurner was able to secure a fresh studio slot, arguing to his superiors about the importance of a new Doctor's debut.

* In a less tense version of this, Creator/RussellTDavies had never managed a sci-fi series before, and didn't really know how to properly budget it. This led him to blow the majority of the first series' budget on its second episode, "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E2TheEndOfTheWorld The End of the World]]". While the rest of Series 1 did struggle a little because of it — the settings and sets are noticeably limited[[labelnote:*]]No fewer than three of the thirteen episodes use the same set: "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E7TheLongGame The Long Game]]", "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E12BadWolf Bad Wolf]]", and "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E13ThePartingOfTheWays The Parting of the Ways]]". Five others take place on contemporary Earth: "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E1Rose Rose]]", "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E4AliensOfLondon Aliens of London]]" / "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E5WorldWarThree World War Three]]", "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E6Dalek Dalek]]", "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E11BoomTown Boom Town]]" and part of "The Parting of the Ways". In fact, ''all'' of the season's episodes take place on or around Earth, either in present, past, or future, marking the first time since the Third Doctor that a whole season had passed without a single alien locale (although New Series Adventure novels exist from the Ninth Doctor tenure that establish that the Doctor did take Rose to other planets in off-screen adventures)[[/labelnote]]. — the show was already a guaranteed success from the revival's initial episode and remains fondly remembered today despite this.

* The "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E4DaleksInManhattan Daleks in Manhattan]]" and "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E5EvolutionOfTheDaleks Evolution of the Daleks]]" two-parter suffered from Russell T. Davies being busy working on the pilot for ''Series/TheSarahJaneAdventures'' and therefore not having much time to advise writer Helen Raynor, who had worked as script editor for the first two seasons of the revival, but whose only actual prior scriptwriting experience had been on ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'' episode "[[Recap/TorchwoodS1E3GhostMachine Ghost Machine]]". On top of that, the BBC ended up being unable to find anyone willing to fund an actual location shoot in New York City, resulting in the location being recreated purely via StockFootage, CGI, and CaliforniaDoubling. However, the real kicker came when the story received an underwhelming reception, leading to Raynor being abused online by sexist trolls, and the production office reportedly even receiving ''death threats'' aimed at both Raynor and Davies. Though Raynor remained with the franchise until the end of Davies' tenure as executive producer, the experience reportedly put her off any ideas of becoming a showrunner in her own right (the BBC had supposedly earmarked Raynor as a potential successor to Davies had Creator/StevenMoffat proved unavailable).

* The first shoot of the 2005 revival series was a very troubled affair. The full details have never been made public, but by all accounts the director set about making himself unpopular, and after the first week of shooting they managed to be three weeks behind schedule. Creator/ChristopherEccleston has since implied in interviews that tensions on-set were among the reasons he decided to quit the show after the first series. He returned to film and theatre and speaks fondly of his fans from the show, but did not participate in any of the events or episodes in the run-up to the show's 50th anniversary in 2013.

* Budget problems were a thing that followed into series two, which is what resulted in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E11FearHer Fear Her]]" happening. "Fear Her", incidentally, was a result of lessons Davies learned from shooting on the first series. The eleventh episode of that season was supposed to be a completely different story written by Paul Abbott that had to be dropped without much time to replace it due to budget and scheduling constraints, forcing Davies to step in and hastily assemble "Boom Town". Because of this potentially disastrous production, the series two production team felt that they should probably have some backup scripts if an episode fell through and something needed to be shot quickly and for cheap in its place. "Fear Her" was supposed to be a 1920s period piece written by Creator/StephenFry. Not much has ever really been revealed about the story itself, but Fry's presence at the first table reads makes clear that when the series began shooting, his story was still supposed to be going ahead. However it soon turned out that his script was too expensive to make, and so "Fear Her", written by ''Series/LifeOnMars2006'' showrunner Matthew Graham, was put into production in that shooting block instead. Its role as a backup script, and need to shoot on a limited budget, explains why the action is largely confined to a single street. In addition, Davies asked Graham to make it something more for children, rather than for adults and older fans, since it would be the last episode before the much darker series finale. Given all this, it's not surprising that it fell flat for the older audiences. Davies, Creator/DavidTennant, and episode director Euros Lyn have all admitted that the episode could have been a lot better had it not been for the lack of budget and rushed writing and filming schedules. Fry's script, in the meanwhile, slipped to series three (retooled for Martha instead of Rose), and was then abandoned altogether.

* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS12E3TheSontaranExperiment "The Sontaran Experiment"]]: Filming on Dartmoor was hampered by nonstop rain, and the crew had to drag heavy cameras around, thanks to a short-lived decision to switch the show to all-video production instead of the VideoInsideFilmOutside style that was then prevalent for BBC productions -- video cameras were still bulkier than their film counterparts at this point, and it wouldn't be for over a decade later, in Creator/ColinBaker's second season in the title role, that they were finally able to make the switch permanently. On top of that, Creator/TomBaker, in the second story he actually filmed, broke his collarbone, which required him to be doubled for the Doctor's fight with Styre. On that note, the heavy Sontaran costume exasperated Kevin Lindsay's heart condition, requiring him to be doubled for the fight as well (he died shortly afterwards).