Hello everyone! 🙂

Welcome to ‘Bradley’s Basement’ blog and I’m Tim Bradley!

On ‘Doctor Who Day’ (the 23rd of November), we were given a compilation of deleted scenes from episodes of Series 15 of ‘Doctor Who’, starring Ncuti Gatwa. I anticipated that these deleted scenes would appear on the official ‘Doctor Who’ YouTube channel. 🙂

The deleted scenes are from the Christmas Special ‘Joy to the World’ as well as ‘The Robot Revolution’, ‘Lux’, ‘Lucky Day’, ‘The Story & The Engine’, ‘The Interstellar Song Contest’ and ‘Wish World’/‘The Reality War’. No deleted scenes from ‘The Well’, apparently. Hmm.

As I shared some brief thoughts on the compilation of deleted scenes from the 60th anniversary specials and from Series 14 on ‘Doctor Who Day’ last year, I thought I might as well share some thoughts on the deleted scenes from Series 15 in this blog post.

So, without further ado, let’s get cracking! Check out the video first before you read my thoughts on the deleted scenes from Series 15.

Okay, so, to start, I’m very disappointed we didn’t get to have that extra scene of Millie Gibson as Ruby Sunday in ‘Joy to the World’. That would have been so amazing if that was included in the Christmas Special. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad she made a cameo in the special.

But it makes me wonder why film that scene with Ruby Sunday and her family and friends at Christmas time at all if you’re not going to include it in the special at all. At least it would have heightened the Doctor’s sadness at Christmas whilst at the hotel with Anita Benn. 😦

Otherwise, it was lovely to see that deleted scene featuring Millie Gibson as Ruby Sunday in ‘Joy to the World’. Having met Millie at conventions, getting to see more of Millie in ‘Doctor Who’ instead of less is reassuring, as she’s one of my favourite companions. 🙂

Moving on to ‘The Robot Revolution’, one of the things that stands out for me in those scenes between the Doctor and Belinda is “Gosh, how quiet things are when you don’t have Murray Gold’s music playing in the background”. 😀 Some of those scenes work well.

This is particularly in the TARDIS scene between the Doctor and Belinda where she asks him to take her home. Some of the dialogue is included in the final cut of the episode, I believe, but it amazes me how that scene was originally longer and had more dialogue. 🙂

It also goes to show how amazing Ncuti Gatwa and Varada Sethu work well together as the Doctor and Belinda when acting opposite each other. If scenes like this had less music for audiences to cope with, I would appreciate the quite recent episodes far more.

Onto ‘Lux’, there’s not really much I can say about the one deleted scene included in the compilation. Maybe it was cut to save time, but I would have to revisit ‘Lux’ and do an in-depth review on the episode to be sure whether cutting it from the final edit was a wise choice.

And then there’s ‘Lucky Day’. Okay, to be fair, I’ve just seen the deleted scenes featuring Ruby and Conrad as a couple for the first time, and to be honest…they’re very nice scenes. If it wasn’t for happens later in the episode, I’d be very happy to consider them worthwhile. 🙂

And that’s not to say, they’re not worthwhile. They are. It’s just…with my issues concerning ‘Lucky Day’ starting off as a romance story before becoming a conspiracy story with Conrad turning out to be the villain, seeing the two scenes is sadly quite painful. 😦

This is especially in the third deleted scene where we see Conrad being the villain after, presumably, his true colours are revealed. I’ll explain more when it comes to doing my in-depth review on ‘Lucky Day’. Aside from that, it’s lovely to see more of Millie Gibson. 🙂

With ‘The Story & The Engine’, again, like with ‘Lux’, there’s not much to go on from seeing that scene apart from the fact that one of the customers gets to tell a story whilst the Barber gives him a haircut in order to feed ‘the engine’. The Barber gets angry in that scene too.

I will say this though, the scene does work better without music, much like how the TARDIS scene between the Doctor and Belinda in ‘The Robot Revolution’ works without music. Perhaps that’s why the latest episodes weren’t so good for me. Too much music?

Onto ‘The Interstellar Song Contest’, it was interesting to see a scene where the Fifteenth Doctor and Rylan Clark were floating or drifting when the gravity was off and they were about to be sucked out into space. Again, it works very effectively when the music isn’t being played. 😀

Also, and this is a bit of a minor point, but it was interesting to see how the pre-visual effects looked compared to how they would have ended up in the episode. I don’t know if it’s me, but the pre-effects look more impressive compared to episode’s final effects. 😀

And finally, ‘Wish World’/’The Reality War’! Some are probably going to be disappointed that the original ending scenes featuring the U.N.I.T. party with the Doctor, Belinda and presumably Ruby as well as Susan appearing with Poppy aren’t in the video compilation.

Honestly, I anticipated they wouldn’t be included, considering the form the final version of the two-parter took. It’s a shame, since it would have been fascinating to have seen the direction that the two-parter originally went in had Susan appeared in ‘The Reality War’. 😦

With that said, it was nice to see scenes between Ncuti Gatwa and Verada Sethu as the Doctor and Belinda, particularly in ‘Wish World’ where the Doctor shares his doubt to Belinda, as well as in ‘The Reality War’ where the Doctor gets to say goodbye to Belinda. 🙂

It’s been nice to check out the deleted scenes compilation from Series 15 of ‘Doctor Who’ on YouTube recently. I can’t say it makes my appreciation of Series 15 better, as I need to do in-depth reviews on both Series 14 and 15 to express my thoughts on the neo-RTD era.

There’s no denying that Series 15 of ‘Doctor Who’ as well as the entire neo-RTD era is a mess. It’s been fascinating to check out the two seasons featuring Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor though, and I’m looking forward to revisiting the episodes to share my in-depth thoughts on them.

In some ways, seeing the deleted scenes from Series 14 and 15 of ‘Doctor Who’ over the past couple of years has been enlightening in preparation for my in-depth reviews on the episodes. Interesting the deleted scenes weren’t included as extras on DVD and Blu-ray.

Thanks for watching and reading!

Bye for now!

Tim 🙂