Trivia / Doctor Who S30 E13 "Journey's End"

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• Acting for Two: David Tennant plays both the Doctor and his half-human metacrisis clone, with a body double doing him when the two had to share a scene together.
• Ascended Fanon: People had been thinking for years that the TARDIS needed six pilots because of the usual hexagon shape of the control console (though this one is actually round).
• Bad Export for You: In Canada, the CBC's broadcast was edited immensely, stripping about 20 minutes out of the extended-length episode, deleting the original ending and rendering numerous scenes and plot points incomprehensible. This, combined with the fact the network decided to artificially split the season into two broadcast blocks months after the UK (as a result, the finale actually was released on DVD in Canada before it aired there), and not broadcast the 2007 Christmas special at all, led many fans to call for the network to give up the rights to another broadcaster. This indeed happened, and in 2009 the Space cable network took over the broadcasts, making this the final episode to air first-run on CBC.
• Creator Backlash: Billie Piper disliked having Rose end up with the Meta-Crisis Doctor, feeling that it was a cop-out from the Bittersweet Ending of "Doomsday", and also not being keen on the implication that she had settled for an inferior copy of the Doctor.
• Deleted Scene:
  • According to the original script, the Doctor was to give Rose's Doctor a small piece of "coral" from the TARDIS so that he could grow his own TARDIS. Normally this would take millennia, but the DoctorDonna explains how to accelerate the process. This was filmed and survived until the last edit of the episode, but was ultimately cut because the production team felt it made the Bad Wolf Bay scene "too long and complicated". In addition, Davies decided it should not be seen to be so easy to produce another TARDIS. The scene can still be seen on the DVDs.
  • The original ending featured the Doctor in the TARDIS, when a scanner begins receiving a strange signal, prompting the Doctor to launch into his traditional "What? What? What?" response, after which two Cybermen suddenly rise up behind him — a cliffhanger. Russell T Davies explained that the cliffhanger ending was dropped in response to comments by Ben Cook, a writer with Doctor Who Magazine, who felt it was inappropriate after such a sad series of scenes, and that whilst Davies was keen to remind the audience that And the Adventure Continues, the Christmas special had been filmed unusually early that year so they could run a trailer after the end credits instead. This scene is also available on the DVDs.
• Edited for Syndication:
  • The CBC Canadian broadcast of the episode cut 20 minutes out of the episode for an hour-long broadcast with commercials. A list of the cuts can be found here.
  • The BBC America version cut out Martha's scenes in Germany.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The original script contained the following dialogue for the scene in the Crucible:
    Rose: So how was that sentence going to end?
    The Doctor: Which one?
    Rose: The one that started with "Rose Tyler"?
    The Doctor: "...it's cold out."
    Rose: Seriously!
    The Doctor: Does it really need saying?
    Rose: Yes.
    Davros: Such intimacy with your companions, Doctor. So different from the man I once knew.
  • The original script contained the following dialogue between Rose and Davros:
    Rose: What happened to you? I mean, your face... your eyes...
    Davros: Do you pity me, Ms. Tyler?
    Rose: Someone must have, once.
  • Before Davies settled on the metacrisis as the impetus for Donna's departure from the TARDIS, he briefly considered other ideas like physical injury or death, Sylvia's death, or Donna being lost in time as a Sequel Hook for one of the 2009 specials, which entailed finding an Older and Wiser Donna on an alien planet.
  • Originally, Donna was to hear the sound of the TARDIS dematerialising and a brief look of recognition registered on her face before being dismissed. This shot was dropped at the suggestion of Julie Gardner, who felt this would be incompatible with her memory loss.
  • Davies revealed in 2020 that he planned to have a mention of Nyssa and Tegan, revealing that they are now a couple. In 2020, he wrote the webcast "Farewell, Sarah Jane", which outright confirms that they're together. However, it was ignored by the canonical 2022 special "The Power of the Doctor", in which Tegan makes no mention of Nyssa when giving a precise of her life over the last thirty-eight years and says she's seen off two husbands.

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