While filming episode one of “Doctor Who” season 14, entitled “Space Babies,” Millie Gibson had to do the impossible: keep the attention of 20 infants at once. Although she was bearing her soul in a speech integral to her character’s backstory, the babies kept dozing off and losing their attention to the flashing lights of the space-age set. So, to keep their little eyes focused on her, she delivered her lines while a nursery rhyme played on her phone just out of camera view.
“It was so hard honestly,” recalled Gibson. “It was the most bizarre thing but it will stay in my mind forever.”
The cast and crew of “Doctor Who” walked the red carpet on premiere night Wednesday at the NeueHouse in Hollywood ready to celebrate 60 years of the Doctor and discuss how they brought the new season’s debut episode to life.
The 14th season of “Doctor Who” follows the 15th Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and his companion Ruby Sunday (Gibson) as they adventure through spacetime in the iconic police box time machine known as the Tardis. In “Space Babies,” Ruby and the Doctor are stranded on a spaceship occupied by talking newborns and must find a way to return them to their home planet.
“They were such divas,” Gatwa joked about his toddler co-stars. “They had so many demands.”
Although taxing, Gatwa described the experience as “magical” since it forced the entire set to work together to keep the little actors focused.
“All the crew had to get involved in keeping the babies entertained,” Gatwa said. “Very much a group effort. Chaotic though. Very, very chaotic.”
Russell T Davies, the writer and showrunner of “Doctor Who” from 2005-2010, has returned to the Whoniverse as showrunner, writer and executive producer . He said working with the toddlers posed a challenge both on set and in post-production when figuring out how to make them talk.
“We tried to do adult voices on them and that was strangely creepy. Also, the mouth was too expressive,” Davies explained.
The idea of using CGI babies was also tossed around. But ultimately they brought in younger actors to record the lines and mapped out the dialogue onto the babies’ faces.
“I think they’re about nine or 11 years old,” Davies said. “We recorded them and mapped [the dialogue] out on CG. It takes…many many hours of working on it.”
Season 14 of “Doctor Who” launches worldwide on Disney Plus (excluding the U.K.) on May 10 at 7 p.m. ET. The U.K. premiere starts May 11 at midnight GMT on BBC iPlayer.
