Following The Eaters of Light episode commentary on Friday night at Gallifrey One was another episode commentary. This one was of Thin Ice, Series 10 Episode 3, and featured writer Sarah Dollard, costume designer Hayley Nebauer, and Model Unit Supervisor Mike Tucker, and was moderated by Kyle Anderson, Associate Editor at Nerdist. In this episode, the Doctor and Bill travel back in time to the Frost Fair in 1800s London.
When Sarah learned that Bill would be a woman of color, she realized that it could no longer be Bill’s choice to go to Regency London, and that it would have to be the TARDIS’s choice to take her there. She had also been concerned that she wouldn’t be able to properly address the race issue, but she was told not to concentrate too much on the issues, and instead to make the episode fun.
Sarah liked that the previous episode led into this one, and that it was like old school Doctor Who.
She recalled that she had written a long paragraph describing the Doctor’s emotions at the beginning, but Steven Moffat promptly deleted it, saying that Peter didn’t need it.
Hayley talked about Bill’s outfit, telling us the idea was that the Doctor had brought her to the wardrobe in the TARDIS that covered this time period, and that Bill had put together the outfit herself. Hayley pointed out how Bill was wearing certain articles of clothing the wrong way, but that it worked for Bill. She also told us about the feathers that Bill was wearing, and how they had started off curly, but ended up limp. That’s because they got rained on the first day of shooting. They tried curling the feathers again for hours, but eventually gave up.
Sarah spoke about how this episode took place on an exact day in history. She first found out about the Frost Fair through a book that her friend was writing, including the elephant. Oddly, the Thames River never froze again after this day. When Sarah was writing this episode, it was while she had a fascination with the fact that we don’t know what’s in 90% of our oceans, so she had the monster be terrestrial rather than alien.
Hayley shared a story about the couple that was ice skating, revealing that they are actually on roller blades. They had been skating up and down the corridor practicing, and people almost kept running into them! She also pointed out that the way Peter is wearing the top hat on the back of his head was Peter’s decision. He tried the top hat in various different positions and finally settled on that one.
Most of this episode was actually shot inside on a sound stage. It was really hot, in the mid-30s Celsius (35 degrees Celsius would be 95 degrees Fahrenheit).
The moderator asked Sarah if the actors ever say their lines differently than they way she heard them in her head when she was writing, to which Sarah answered that Peter was really good at performing his lines differently than she had heard in her head.
When it got to the scene with Peter Capaldi interacting with the children, Sarah exclaimed, “P-Cap and kids 4 evs!” She then revealed that the middle girl is named after her goddaughter, Harriet, because she was now old enough to watch Doctor Who.
Sarah told us that one of her favorite things about Doctor Who is when the companion gets time away from the Doctor to interact with the character of the week, so she wanted to write a scene like that.
Hayley pointed out the pamphlets in the background, saying that she spent so much time on them, but lamenting that they never got a full on shot. She then moved on to talking about the diving suit, saying that she thought she might get backlash about it because that particular suit wasn’t actually invented until the 1830s. The way the suits are worn, there’s no air circulation, and although Peter had had experience with something like that before, this was Pearl’s first time, so she was a bit claustrophobic.
Sarah had initially written a scene where the Doctor referenced that he had been here before with River Song. He was supposed to have mentioned being there before with his wife, and Bill would have acted surprised that he was married. However, that scene was cut.
Sarah then talked about how Steven Moffat pushes you draft after draft for an exposition scene to push the story forward, in which the Doctor is funny and clever.
The moderator asked about the name Sutcliffe, and whether that was a reference to the original Beatles member. However, Sarah confessed that at the time, she had been writing Hannibal fan fic, and Sutcliffe is the name of the villain in that show. She didn’t realize it until later that she had incorporated his name!
When it got to the point where the Doctor punches the racist in the face, the audience cheered.
Hayley mentioned that she had a strange obsession with buttons, and the the ones Peter was wearing were late Victorian Austrian.
When the Doctor began giving his speech, Sarah commented, “So, I wrote this speech while I was watching the Republican primary…”
Sarah also spoke about how she makes facial expressions when writing dialogue — which makes it hard when she’s writing in a public place!
It was brought up that someone had once commented that you know there are no Black writers in Doctor Who because Martha never complained about getting her hair wet.
Hayley pointed out that the boots Bill was wearing were Elizabeth Banks’s boots from Price and Prejudice and Zombies. There were 20 pairs, so they wouldn’t have noticed if she’d taken a pair, but they weren’t her size — not that she would have actually considered taking a pair!
Throughout the episode, the panelists commented about how the sonic screwdriver appears to be the most important thing to the Doctor, including the scene towards the end where he seems more concerned with getting it back than anything else.
Regarding the scene where the Doctor changes the Will to have the money go to the orphans, Sarah said that someone online had complained that she had defrauded the family to whom the money rightfully belonged, and acted as if she had made the Doctor do something bad!
Sarah commented that by the end of the episode, Bill realizes the changes she can make if she sticks with the Doctor.
Sarah revealed that she did not write the final scene of the episode.
After the commentary wrapped up, Sarah invited audience members up to receive one of her ribbons if they wanted one. I hadn’t made any new ribbons this year or last year, but still had some leftover ribbons from 2 years ago that say “Let me be brave” with a raven on it, referring to the Face the Raven episode — which Sarah Dollard wrote! I probably wouldn’t have bothered going up otherwise, but I thought it would be pretty awesome to give my ribbon to the writer who inspired it.
There was a large crowd of people who went up to trade ribbons with Sarah, probably more than she expected, because — wouldn’t you know it — she gave her last ribbon to the person in front of me! She said that she still had another bag, and that we could get one from her the next day (I suppose at her autograph table). But I went ahead and gave her my ribbon anyway, of course. She glanced at it for a moment, and when she realized what it was, her face lit up and she gave a surprised, gleeful exclamation. This was one of my highlights of Gallifrey One this year. Or any year, really.
Afterwards, I went back up to my room to take a quick nap (I had been up since 5am) before the Idiot’s Lantern sketch comedy show at 10:30pm. Stay tuned for our recap and photos of that!
