Trivia / Doctor Who S34 E1 "Deep Breath"

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• Completely Different Title: The French title is "En apnée" (In apnea).
• Contest Winner Cameo: In this case involving cool gadgets, not people.
• No Export for You: The "kiss" between Vastra and Jenny was deleted from versions of the episode shown in parts of Asia, due to various cultural stigmas against same-sex intimacies.
• Recycled Script:
  • The basic plot is sort of a Darker and Edgier version of the Fourth Doctor's first story, "Robot", which Steven Moffat mentioned using as a reference — with the A and B-plots swapped. The Doctor regenerates and suddenly develops an absolutely crazy and seemingly uncaring personality that disconcerts his companion(s) and the people his previous self works with ("Robot" B-plot, "Deep Breath" A-plot, with Clara's discomfort central to the story) while a robot with an ambiguously humanlike personality and psychological complexes mirroring the Doctor's own is responsible for some bizarre murders ("Robot" A-plot, "Deep Breath" B-plot). The Doctor's defeat of it is rather ambiguous as a happy ending, but the companion agrees to give the new Doctor a chance to befriend her — after a bit of talking to from the Doctor. Several lines and setpieces from "Robot" were lifted into "Deep Breath" to indicate the similarities: Vastra quotes one of the Brigadier's lines apropos of nothing, and the Twelfth Doctor's white nightgown is similar to how the Fourth Doctor is dressed in the infirmary.
  • The minisode playing before it in cinemas shows Strax giving a Field Report to the audience about all of the previous faces the Doctor has had, with funny descriptions of their personalities, to assuage an audience needing a reminder that the Eleventh Doctor was not always the Doctor — a format previously used for one of the "Strax's Field Report" online minisodes. The introduction is repeated almost word-for-word, although Jenny and Vastra interrupt it in the cinema version. Few of the jokes are recycled, though — Strax's opinions on the other Doctors (not to mention which gender he thinks they are) are completely different between both minisodes.
• Throw It In!: The Matt Smith mask the Doctor wears during the climax of the story was completely unintentional; the prop department grabbed a random latex mask from storage when taping, and wasn't aware of what happened until after the scene was already shot. The production team found the accidental symbolism so fitting that they left the gaffe in.
• What Could Have Been: Ben Daniels was the second choice for the role of the Twelfth Doctor before Peter Capaldi was cast.
  Daniels: I was approached and asked if it was something I'd be interested in doing. Apparently, usually when it's announced that the Doctor is leaving, the new Doctor's already firmly in place. But a BBC email had apparently been leaked, talking about Matt Smith's departure or something, so they had to announce it officially much sooner than they'd have liked. So I was asked, and when I eventually managed to peel myself off the ceiling, I said, "Yeah, of course it'd be something I'd be interested in doing," and I was hugely excited by it. I was a huge fan of the show as a kid, like we all were really. My era was Jon Pertwee into Tom Baker and then also when it returned, penned thrillingly by the amazing Russell T Davies with Christopher Eccleston. To be thrown into that mix as a possibility was fantastic.
• Write Back to the Future: Matt Smith's cameo was filmed during production of "The Time of the Doctor" nearly a year before the broadcast. Hence shots of the unmodified TARDIS interior with aqua neon piping lights rather than the new orange, and no furnishings as of yet. Notice that the only scenes of the TARDIS interior in this episode concentrated in the present are set after it is "redecorated"- hiding the fact that set designers had painstakingly remodeled the room. Before the "redecoration" takes place, there are no shots set directly within the TARDIS interior. The camera merely shows the entrance of the TARDIS as the Doctor and Clara step out.
• You Look Familiar: Brian Miller who plays Barney the tramp had previously appeared in "Snakedance" and the The Sarah Jane Adventures episode "The Mad Woman in the Attic". He's also the widower of Elisabeth Sladen.

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