Trivia / Doctor Who S28 E10 "Love & Monsters"

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• Cast the Runner-Up: Peter Kay was originally offered the part of Elton, but he felt the "UFO-spotter type" was too similar to his character on Coronation Street and much preferred playing the "baddie".
• Completely Different Title:
  • The French title is "LINDA".
  • The Japanese title is "Elton's Great Adventure".
• Creator Backlash: Peter Kay would later go as far as to say that being in this episode was the biggest regret in his career as of 2012. He specifically stated that although he enjoyed making the episode, he was ultimately disappointed by the final product since it was just him in a costume running around Cardiff.
  I loved making it but when I saw it, I thought, "Oh my God. I'm a big green lizard running around Cardiff? Is that it?"
• Contest Winner Cameo: The monster was the winner of a Blue Peter design-a-monster contest (although he envisioned it as being the size of a bus, which the episode's budget naturally couldn't handle). He's now on YouTube as Channel Pup, and in 2018 made a video saying he's still proud of the episode, and still a fan of the show, even though the bullying he suffered from fans did little to endear him to them.
• Inspiration for the Work: Russell T Davies was inspired by the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "The Zeppo" and the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Lower Decks", both of which focused on atypical characters.
• Official Fan-Submitted Content: The monster was from the winner of a Blue Peter contest. (Blue Peter also ran a similar competition circa 1969, but the winning monster only appeared on Blue Peter, not in Doctor Who itself.) The winner was a kid named William Grantham who went on to create the YouTube channel Channel Pup and he would eventually made a video recounting his involvement in creating the monster.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The episode was originally written as a comic strip for Doctor Who Magazine.
  • Elton was originally to have witnessed more events in Doctor Who history. Namely, his third birthday party was evacuated because of the Daleks' invasion of Shoreditch, his mother was killed by a plastic daffodil (instead of an elemental shade), and he witnessed the Loch Ness Monster rising from the Thames. The BBC pulled an Executive Veto on this, partly because they were still wary about explicitly referencing any pre-2005 stories to that degree, and partly because the episode's budget was low enough as it was, without having to worry about paying royalties to the writers of those stories.
  • The very first scene of the episode, when Elton sees the TARDIS near the warehouses, was originally supposed to be shot at the dockside. However, due to a large shipment of steel cables, that location fell through at the last minute.
  • The original concept concerned a female fan who obsessively stalked the Doctor. Since the show had well-written women in the show, Russell T Davies decided instead to replace the female stalker with a more well-intentioned male named Elton.
  • William Grantham in his video linked above mentioned several different ideas he originally came up with for the monster, such as his skin being liquid and being around 20 feet tall.
• Working Title: I Love the Doctor.

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