The promotion for Doctor Who season 14 hid one huge detail from the plot of its finale, “Empire of Death”. With the return of Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) villain Sutekh (Gabriel Woolf) and the revelations about the mother of Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson), it makes a lot of sense for Doctor Who’s promotion to hold back from revealing too much. Now that all episodes of Doctor Who season 14 have aired, it’s easy to see where the footage in the trailers differs from the finished edits.
One of the biggest moments from Doctor Who season 7, episode 8, “Empire of Death”, was the creation of the Memory TARDIS to escape Sutekh. The Doctor’s Memory TARDIS is a new innovation by showrunner Russell T Davies, first seen in 2023’s Tales of the TARDIS miniseries, but originally created for “Empire of Death”. Because the Memory TARDIS showed up a year earlier than initially planned, some creative editing had to be deployed to shield its involvement in Doctor Who’s season 14 finale.
Doctor Who Season 14’s Trailer Altered This TARDIS Scene From The Finale
When editing promotional trailers, it’s always good to select the most exciting and emotive scenes from whatever is being promoted. Disney+’s trailer for Doctor Who season 14 which included the scene from “Empire of Death” in which Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor stares out of the TARDIS and screams in horror. In context, the scene is one of several moments this year in which the Fifteenth Doctor’s barely contained emotions spill out. It’s certainly an arresting image, worthy of inclusion in a trailer, but the background had to be changed to protect the secret of which TARDIS Ncuti Gatwa was screaming inside.
The background seen in the trailer was the new console room, to hide the fact that the Doctor was actually inside a Memory TARDIS. This was a wise decision for two reasons; firstly protecting the Memory TARDIS’ comeback made its appearance more impactful, and secondly, it stopped viewers from pondering what happened to the actual TARDIS. The big reveal in Doctor Who season 7, episode 7, “The Legend of Ruby Sunday” which stated that Sutekh had possession of the Doctor’s TARDIS would be ruined if viewers were expecting Ncuti to end up in a different console room.
This Isn’t The First Time Doctor Who Has Removed Key Details From Trailer Footage
There’s a history of Doctor Who trailers removing key details to protect spoilers from leaking out in recent years. For example, trailers for Jodie Whittaker’s second season obscured Sacha Dhawan’s appearance in “Spyfall”, by erasing him from the footage of the Fam and O attending Daniel Barton’s birthday party. This meant that both the guest appearance by Sacha Dhawan, and his later reveal as the latest incarnation of the Master were a total surprise to the audience at home.
The most widely publicized example of removing details in promotional materials was the trailer for Doctor Who’s 60th anniversary specials, which depicted both Ncuti Gatwa and David Tennant’s Fourteenth Doctor against a nondescript background of clouds. This was so fans wouldn’t know where the Fourteenth Doctor would ultimately regenerate, as the clouds were obscuring the UNIT helipad set which was the location of the climactic bi-generation and multi-Doctor battle with the Toymaker (Neil Patrick Harris) in “The Giggle”. So, to paraphrase River Song; “Rule One of promotion on Doctor Who, the trailers lie.”