Trivia / Doctor Who S29 E2 "The Shakespeare Code"

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• Completely Different Title: The French title is "Peines d'amour gagnées" (Love's Labours Won).
• Recursive Adaptation: Loosely based on Gareth Roberts' earlier Ninth Doctor Doctor Who Magazine comic-strip story "A Groatsworth of Wit".
• What Could Have Been:
  • The Doctor acts like he's meeting Shakespeare for the first time — originally there was a line acknowledging that he's met Will Shakespeare before but Will hasn't actually met him before. It ended up being cut.
  • The scene where Doctor and Martha share a room had the Doctor undressing to his underwear, without understanding how awkward it appeared. It was changed for being considered inappropriate.
  • The Carrionites (originally spelt “Karyonites”) were supposed to be based on the witches of Macbeth, but Roberts also thought of basing them on the fairies of A Midsummer Night's Dream. He felt the former were more iconic though.
  • The Doctor and Lilith were originally intended to have a sword fight. This was dropped after Tennant's stunt double got grievously injured during rehearsal and the scene rewritten to just be Lilith casting spells on the Doctor and Martha.
  • Bloodtide and Doomfinger were originally Lilith's sisters rather than her mothers. Their despatching of Peter Streete was also different, with Streete being sucked into his bed.
  • Shakespeare's daughter, Susanna, was to have appeared at one stage.
• Working Title: "Love's Labours Won", "Theatre of Doom".

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