Trivia / Doctor Who S30 E1 "Partners in Crime"

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• Blooper: This episode has one of the most noticeable continuity errors in new series history: during the scene with the Doctor and Donna in the window-washing cart, the cable cut by Miss Foster switches sides between the shots of her on the roof and the shots of the Doctor and Donna below.
• The Character Died with Him: Geoff Noble's actor, Howard Attfield, died after he was set to return in Series 4. Therefore, Bernard Cribbins' character Wilfred Mott, introduced in "Voyage of the Damned", was used instead, and filled the role he was supposed to undertake and quietly re-written as Donna's widowed granddad. The scenes with Geoff for this episode were shot and completed, but re-shot with Wilf when Attfield passed away, and Donna's father was mentioned to have died at some point after the events of the wedding. Howard Attfield's scenes as Geoff Noble are included as an extra on the DVD set with a nice intro from RTD.
• Completely Different Title: The French title is "Le Retour de Donna Noble" (The Return of Donna Noble).
• Development Gag: There is a journalist called Penny Carter, which was the name of the intended new companion for Series 4 until it turned out that Catherine Tate wanted to return to Who.
• Harpo Does Something Funny: For the scene where the Doctor and Donna are reunited on either side of soundproof glass and thus have to mime their conversation, the script gave the lines they wanted Donna to mime and then the director let Catherine Tate and David Tennant go to town. The result is one of the most gut-bustingly funny scenes ever to hit television.
• Not Screened for Critics: Donna's conversation with Rose Tyler was removed from the preview copy of the episode to hide Rose's return.
• Refitted for Sequel: The sequence with the Doctor using the window-cleaner cradle on a building was something RTD came up with for the story that would eventually become "Rose", which got thrown out as the story evolved. He then planned for its use in "Smith and Jones", but it got cut for time. Thus Davies was determined to use the cradle setpiece in this episode, no matter what.
• Uncredited Role: Additional material for the episode, namely the reshoots featuring Bernard Cribbins in place of Howard Attfield, and Rose's cameo at the end was directed, uncredited, by Graeme Harper, according to the DVD Commentary.
• What Could Have Been:
  • In the first draft, the initial confrontation between the Doctor, Donna and Miss Foster was to have happened in the cradle, but budgetary and logistics problems meant the scene was moved to the sales cubicles area (and the Doctor's "sonic screwdriver plus sonic pen equals massive sonic feedback" diversion added).
  • Russell T Davies considered setting the story in suburban London, with a spaceship sealing off a section of the city under an enormous dome while an alien was hunted through the streets. He later expressed relief that he dropped this idea when he saw The Simpsons Movie, which featured a very similar idea.
  • Miss Foster was originally called Miss Rattigan. It was changed because Davies felt that it was a more motherly name, and the Rattigan name would instead go to Luke Rattigan in "The Sontaran Stratagem".
  • When it was clear that Howard Attfield would be unable to be in the rest of the season, Davies considered writing his character's death into the story arc, with Donna becoming a stronger person after dealing with her father’s passing.
  • At one point, the story was set in a dilapidated old house which would hide a portal to another planet which had been overrun with vicious, dog-like Vorlax. The last survivors of this world had opened the portal to Earth in order to rid their world of the invaders.
  • At one point, Roger would’ve assured the Doctor that the Adipose pills were government approved, to which the Doctor pointed out “The government who just lost a Prime Minister, who vanished shortly after assassinating the President of the United States?", and then when asked what happened to him, commented "We may never know".
  • Penny Carter would have been the name of the new companion this season if Catherine Tate hadn't been able to come back.

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