The Chase: | ||
 | ep 1 – | When Vicki leaves in a huff, she leaves a pair of pliers on the Time/Space Visualiser. It promptly falls off with a loud clatter that William Hartnell reacts to by groaning. |
 | ep 1 – | Abraham Lincoln manages to get the Gettysburg Address wrong! He says, "It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do so..." instead of "we should do this". |
| ep 1 – | Queen Elizabeth I says to Shakespeare, "You are aware of the concern your character of Falstaff has caused to Sir John Oldcastle". In reality, Sir John Oldcastle was almost 200 years dead by the time of Shakespeare! It was Oldcastle's descendants who, furious at Shakespeare's unflattering depiction of their illustrious ancestor, forced him to change the character's name to Sir John Falstaff. |
| ep 1 – | As the Doctor, Ian, Barbara, and Vicki are watching the Time/Space Visualiser, Ian is seen singing along to the Beatles' "Ticket to Ride". What's amazing is that he knows the words, despite coming from Earth in 1963 (two years before the song was released). |
| ep 1 – | The shot of the Doctor at the console immediately after the TARDIS lands on Aridius is from an unusually low angle, and unfortunately reveals a gap above the top of the TARDIS walls behind him. |
| ep 1 – | Note that when Barbara goes back to the TARDIS to turn off the Visualiser, she walks on to the set from the wrong direction! She's supposed to enter from the door on the left (where they all left when the Doctor announced "We're about to materialise!"), but she just walks on from nowhere... Not only that, but she yells from where she walked on to the Doctor to come quickly, which is followed by him entering from the same "nowhere" that she did! |
| ep 1 – | In the scene where the Daleks first enter their time machine, you can see one lifting itself up to get over the lip at the entrance! |
| ep 1 – | The Dalek time machine takes off with its door still half-open..!
[Silly beggars — let's hope they shut it quick before they catch their death of cold] |
| ep 1,2 – | When the Doc and co. are on Aridius, in the background you can see the sand dunes stretching off into the far distance, but when they walk across the screen they cast shadows on the dunes — rather giving away the fact that they're just cardboard cut-outs. |
| ep 1 – | When Ian yells "Hello", his echo doesn't match! |
| ep 2 – | Keep an eye on the backs of the Aridians' heads, as you can almost always see the actor's hair sticking out from under the mask. |
| ep 2 – | When the Aridian explodes the airlock, he hasn't even begun to push down the detonator plunger when we suddenly cut to the stock footage of the explosion. |
| ep 2 – | When the Doctor and Barbara are being held by the Aridians, Vicki comes to find them. When she is rushing to meet them, she knocks an Aridian over. Keep your eye on him. After a few seconds, he gets up, looks confused for a second and then looks at someone behind the camera. He then "sneaks" off the set. |
| ep 2 – | As the Daleks are about to fire on the TARDIS, one of them (on the left of the screen) blatantly lifts itself up by a few inches in order to move forward! |
| ep 2,4 – | The Doctor appears to leave his coat on Aridius, though he somehow has it back by the time they reach the haunted house. |
| ep 2,3 – | After the TARDIS leaves Aridius, a Dalek moves along the sand towards where it was, and you can see that it leaves footprints in the sand after it! |
| ep 3 – | Just after the Doc and co. escape from Aridius (when Barbara says that he wasn't bursting with enthusiasm), a boom shadow moves across the Time Rotor. |
| ep 3 – | Just after the previous blooper, Ian, Barbara and Vicki all gather around the Doctor. Vicki puts her hands deep in her pockets and starts to wiggle her legs, move her hands (in the pockets) and shake her hips. Judging by the desperate (but hilarious) facial expressions (a silly embarrassed grin with a wide urgent look in her eyes), she had a need to visit the ladies' room! |
| ep 3 – | Watch out for the motionless and rather knackered-looking Daleks standing on either side of the ramp into the Dalek ship. These are actually two ex-movie Daleks which were returned to the BBC to be used in the show, but there wasn't enough time to replace the movie-style large base and jam-jar dome lights... so these bits were simply removed in the hope no-one would notice. |
| ep 3 – | You may or may not consider thia a blooper: in one of the TARDIS scenes, Vicki cries "Doctor! The rotor is slowing down!" The (possible) blooper is that Vicki seems to be pointing at those two circular strobe light thingies on the console, whereas the rotor (if you ask most fans) would be assumed to be part of the central column. Now, even if you cut Vicki some slack and accept that the "rotor" might be those two strobe thingies instead, then the blooper is the fact that from that point in the story on, whenever you see the TARDIS console in-flight, you never see those strobe things active again. So someone either forgot to turn on the strobes, or Maureen O'Brien doesn't know where to point. You decide! |
| ep 3 – | The tour guide with the extremely fake Noo Yawk accent obviously failed Physics 101. If it really took 30 seconds to reach the ground if you jumped off the Empire State Building, it would be over 4,000 metres tall! In fact, Manhattan's best-known landmark is 443 metres tall, and leaping from the top will turn you into sidewalk pizza in less than 10 seconds. |
| ep 3 – | On the Mary Celeste, there's a close-up of crewman Richardson grimacing as he hears the TARDIS take-off noise. Unfortunately, the noise is a couple of seconds late in starting, so for what seems like ages the poor fella is gurning away in silence! |
| ep 3 – | How is it that the Daleks could get in close enough to get a very good picture of the Mary Celeste, but were still x minutes away? And besides, how can you have a "10-minute lead" in the Space/Time Continuum?? |
| ep 3 – | In the final TARDIS scene, after the Doctor tells Ian, "They're close on our tracks", you can clearly hear the voice of one of the production crew saying something, before the next line is spoken. |
| ep 3 – | In the final shot of the Dalek time machine in the vortex, the stick supporting the model is very visible. |
| ep 4 – | As the TARDIS materialises in the haunted house, note the shadow of the person on the TARDIS door who quickly runs away when it has fully materialised. |
| ep 4 – | The bat that frightens our intrepid heroes is attached to an embarrassingly-obvious string. |
| ep 4 – | Listen out for a classic Hartnell fluff-and-recovery:
Vicki: "Well, I'm with Barbara. I don't like it here. I think we should go." Doctor: "Yes, in the normal... er... [long pause] progress of time... er, my dear, I would, er... ye- I would agree with you but... um, er... [more quickly] unfortunately we've got to face the Daleks and I think it's essential we take a look around." It's hard to resist letting out a sigh of relief as he finally makes it to the end without further disaster. |
| ep 4 – | As Barbara and Vicki approach the chest near the TARDIS (that turns out to be empty), a mysterious shadow appears momentarily at the far end of it. |
| ep 4 – | As Ian follows the Doctor down the stairs into Frankenstein's lab, there's a boom operator clearly visible behind him. He had previously been capturing the conversation between the Doctor and Ian at the top of the stairs, and clearly wasn't quick enough to get out of the way before the director switched to another angle! |
| ep 4 – | The Doctor and Ian enter Frankenstein's lab in the haunted house and they see the Monster lying unanimated on a table. So far, so good — but behind the table is a large ventilation screen, and behind this screen is none other than an empty Dalek. So what? Just the fact that at this point in the story, the Daleks aren't supposed to have arrived yet!
[A later scene in this same room shows that Dalek in action, "exterminating" poor old Frankenstein's Monster] |
| ep 4 – | Listen for when William Hartnell says: "I say, I think we'd better go and check where Vicki and Barbara is!" It's while he and Ian are running away from Frankenstein's Monster. |
| ep 4 – | When the Doctor and Ian escape from Frankenstein's monster and the monster lies down on its couch again, we hear Vicki's next line ("What's that in aid of?") a few seconds before she actually says it in the next scene!
[Apparently, Maureen O'Brien jumped her cue and said the line before the camera was actually on her] |
| ep 4 – | Immediately after the previous blooper, Barbara's next line, "And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee..." seems to suggest that we should have just heard a spooky-sounding bell go off about then... So where did it vanish to? |
| ep 4 – | When Barbara backs away from the Grey Lady into the rotating alcove, she has to take a second try at it when her first attempt simply sends her bumping into the corner of the alcove. |
| ep 4 – | After the Doctor says, "Perhaps they [Barbara and Vicki] followed us upstairs", somebody off-stage coughs loudly. |
| ep 4 – | Why does Frankenstein's Monster suddenly put on formal dress for its showdown with the Daleks? |
| ep 4 – | When the Daleks establish that the Doctor and co. are approaching the planet Mechanus, we see a rectangular screen in their time machine with a series of three-digit numbers underneath the main monitor, supposedly part of the machine. But when a Dalek moves in front of the screen, the numbers are (partially) superimposed on the Dalek! |
| ep 4 – | In one scene on the Dalek craft (when the Daleks are approaching Mechanus), you can see someone running across the bottom right-hand corner of the screen — quickly, but noticeably. |
| ep 4,5 – | The actor playing the Doctor's robot double (supposedly "indistinguishable from the original") looks so completely unlike William Hartnell it's not funny. |
| ep 4 – | Frankenstein's Monster is credited as just "Frankenstein".
[To quote Kryten from Red Dwarf: "Frankenstein was the creator — not the monster. It's a common misconception, held by all truly stupid people!"] |
| ep 5 – | As the Doctor, Ian and Barbara are making their way through the jungle (just before the robot Doctor emerges to follow them) the Dalek time machine is in the background, unnoticed by them. You can tell it's not supposed to be noticed by them, either, because it's been partly covered with a black cloth! |
| ep 5 – | Watch the scene where Vicki finds the TARDIS for the first time (on Mechanus). Afterwards, you can see a boom in the background. And if you keep looking at the background you can see the operator's hand pick something up off the ground. |
| ep 5 – | Practically every scene in the cave is marred by loud wooden clumping sounds when the cast walk near or through the cave entrance. |
| ep 5 – | When Ian and the Doctor are carrying Vicki back to the cave, in the background is the Dalek ship, right outside the cave (instead of half-way across the jungle) — and once again they don't even notice it! |
| ep 5 – | BBC Camera 5 is visible behind two motionless Daleks as the other Daleks discuss their battle plans near the TARDIS. |
| ep 5 – | When the Daleks are massing to attack our heroes, they pass by the entrance to their cave and continue half-way across the jungle to the entrance again! |
| ep 5,6 – | At the end of episode 5, the cave wall (which is actually a lift door) slides down into the floor to reveal a Mechanoid. However, in episode 6 when the travellers get into the lift, the door closes by sliding down from the ceiling! |
| ep 6 – | When the door to Steven's "cell" drops, it bounces a few times before it closes for good. |
| ep 6 – | When asked to estimate the distance from the Mechanoid city roof to the ground (over 1,500 feet as it turns out) Steven's first guess is a piddling 15 feet! |
| ep 6 – | As the Doctor and Ian come back down from the roof of the city, Steven walks over to talk to them. The camera "dramatically" follows Steven around the set until a certain point where the camera suddenly jerks, we hear a soft "thunk" and then "Oooh!" from the cameraman!
[Stubbed his toe, methinks!] |
| ep 6 – | When Ian and Barbara are starting to climb down from the Mechanoid city roof, Barbara slips and falls head-first off the roof. Ian saves her... by grabbing her pants! He clings onto her belt for dear life and almost manages to pull her trousers off in the process of rescuing her. |
| ep 6 – | The rope that is supposed to be lowering everyone down almost a quarter of a mile is quite slack! |
| ep 6 – | Classic Hartnell fluff when the Doctor is refusing Ian and Barbara permission to return home in the Dalek's time machine: "You'll end up as a couple of burnt cinders floating around in Spain... in, er, space!" |
| ep 5,6 – | The end credits for episodes 5 and 6 disagree on how to spell the name of those round robots. On episode 5, the name is spelled "Mechanoid", but episode 6 credits the "Mechonoids". |
| ep 1-6 – | Then there's the entire interior design of the Dalek spacecraft, the bad dubs on the Robot Doctor, Barbara suddenly running over to that crumbling wall on Aridius just so that the Mire Beast can grab her, the visible wires on the bats, the misplaced sound effects, William Hartnell's ubiquitous messing up of his lines, the Visualiser that has names of Sol planets written on it although it's supposed to be able to tune anywhere, the bad accents in the Empire State Building — I could go on forever... |