If this year’s Doctor Who has lacked for anything it is obviously Game of Thrones actors with skull tattoos and magic detachable fingers. Such is the nightmarish and also slightly silly apparition confronting the Doctor in an episode that sets the controls for the heart of bonkers – and significantly overshoots its destination.
Whovians are divided over Jodie Whittaker’s second year as custodian of the Tardis. Some have warmed to her spirit of chaotic derring-do. Others wish show runner Chris Chibnall would calm down slightly. Too often his storylines have been overwrought and undercooked. It’s as if the ideas came to him as he was nodding off and that he was unable to entirely recall them the following morning but ploughed on anyway.
What everyone will probably agree on is that “Can You Hear Me?” is a season low-point. It is a muddle that tries to many things at once. One moment Doctor Who wants to be Avengers, the next Star Wars, and after that a morality fable with a uplifting message. In the end, it feels like a highlights reel from the inner workings of Chibnall’s brain: exhausting and not at all in a good way.
1/22 The Crown – series 3
The hit Netflix show’s creator Peter Morgan takes plenty of artistic licence with this historical drama. But eagle-eyed royal fans spotted a mistake in the trailer for the third season. When Olivia Colman as Queen Elizabeth II is shown celebrating her 1977 Silver Jubilee, the voiceover gets the date of the Queen’s coronation wrong by a year, saying the Silver jubilee was 25 years after the Coronation. It was actually 24 years, as her coronation took place on June 2, 1953.
Sophie Mutevelian/Netflix
2/22 Wild Bill
The ITV fish-out-of-water detective drama stars Rob Lowe as a US police chief who moves to the UK to take up the role of Chief Constable with East Lincolnshire police. He wears four medal ribbons – Diamond Jubilee Medal, Golden Jubilee Medal, Queen’s Police Medal and Police Long Service and Good Conduct Medal. The trouble is not only are they in the wrong order, but he shouldn’t be wearing any of them. He’s an American who hasn’t previously served in the British police.
Kudos/ITV
3/22 The X-Files
Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) states that his sister Samantha was abducted by aliens but his recollections of it are contradictory. During hypnotherapy regression therapy, he says he was unable to move at the time, but during flashbacks, he is perfectly able to do so. Mulder is also seen wearing a wedding ring in the season five episode “Travellers”. Why had he never mentioned being married? In reality, Duchovny had recently got married. But it added a big change to Mulder’s past.
4/22 Doctor Who
How old is the Doctor? In the classic-era he states he’s anywhere between 500 to several thousand years old. But in the revived series, David Tennant’s Doctor claims he is 904 years old. Unless he’s lying, somewhere along the line, the continuity has slipped up.
5/22 The Sopranos
During Ralphie’s death scene in his kitchen, Tony Soprano is almost blinded by a can of spray, but knocks Ralphie to the floor and kills him. The scene was meant to end with Tony putting his hands on the counter and gasping for air but James Gandolfini, who brilliantly plays Tony, accidentally put his hand down on the oven’s lit burners. The cry of pain was real – but this mistake worked perfectly for the scene.
HBO
6/22 Game of Thrones
The greatest oops moment in GoT’s was in the final season when a stray Starbucks cup is sitting on a wooden table next to Emilia Clarke’s character Daenerys Targaryen. Did nobody spot it? There were also plastic water bottles near Samwell Tarly’s and Ser Davos’s feet in the final episode.
HBO
7/22 The Simpsons
When Marge tells Homer she is pregnant with Maggie in the episode “And Maggie Makes Three”, which first aired in 1995, a picture of Maggie can be seen hanging on the wall of the living room – a right clanger – considering this is before she is even born.
8/22 Stranger Things
The second season of the TV drama is set in October 1984 – a year after the first season. Considering the show trades in nostalgia, you would have thought they’d get the soundtrack right – but they didn’t. Mistakes include The Smith’s song “There is a Light That Never Goes Out” playing in the background during a flashback between Will and Jonathan. Trouble is, this particular Smiths song wasn’t released until 1986. There was also a motoring error: Barb’s Volkswagon Cabrio was actually made in 1988.
Netflix
9/22 Supernatural
In the first season’s episode “Provenance”, it seems that the actors got a bit lazy, referring to characters by their real names, not their character’s name. Dean appears to call his brother “Jared”, when the character’s name is Sam Winchester and an extra calls the character Dean Winchester “Jensen”, which is again the name of the actor who plays him.
CW
10/22 Lost
It’s one of those shows in which fans searched for hidden clues and meanings. But they picked up on more than intended. In the plane crash scene in the first episode, right before the turbine explodes, a mysterious dark object sweeps upwards only visible to fans sifting through the scene frame by frame. Was it an early manifestation of the smoke monster? No, according to producers, it was just a CGI error.
Rex Features
11/22 The Big Bang Theory
More name mix-ups occur early on in the long-running US sitcom. The aspiring actress Penny, played by Kaley Cuoco, refers to her dad as “Bob”, but once he’s introduced on the show, he is called “Wyatt”. Also there is a plot mistake regarding the broken elevator in the apartment building. When they lug the time machine up the stairs in season one, Leonard explains to Howard that the elevator has been broken for two years. But Howard should know this considering he was there when Leonard blew it up. This is revealed during a flash back in a later episode, where it also states that the event took place five years ago, not two.
CBS Studios
12/22 Doctor Foster
The BBC hit drama had a continuity error when its star Suranne Jones is seen drinking a glass of wine in her kitchen. As she gulps the wine and texts from her phone, the fridge door in the background is open, then closed, then open – all by itself.
13/22 Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Season one establishes that vampires have no breath – it’s confirmed when Angel is unable to perform CPR. But the vampires talk, pant and even smoke – all which require breathing – while Spike is even tortured by drowning.
14/22 Friends
During a scene in season nine, episode 15 (“The One with the Mugging”), Jennifer Aniston was replaced with a stand-in while her character Rachel was still in shot. She sits at the table at the edge of the frame and is even wearing a different top. In another scene, Phoebe, is chatting to her friend Monica, but it’s not Monica. It’s Courteney Cox’s body double who has been left carelessly in the shot.
Rex Features
15/22 Coronation Street
Fans laughed out loud when Anna Windass (Debbie Rush) finds Seb Franklin (Harry Visinoni) injured on the pavement and picks up her mobile to call emergency services. She managed to do it without touching the screen, unlocking her phone or dialling any numbers.
Rex Features
16/22 Malcolm in the Middle
In the US sitcom about a dysfunctional family, when Lois walks out holding her ruined dress that is soaking wet to confront her kids, there is a crew member crouching in the hallway holding a bucket.
Rex Features
17/22 ER
The heartthrob paediatrician Doug Ross, played by George Clooney, had a son prior to his romance with Carol – or did he? Although he mentions the son a few times in season one, he claims later in the series not to have any children.
Rex Features
18/22 Supernatural
In the first episode of this sci-fi series, the steering wheel has disappeared from the set of the spaceship. Serenity’s pilot Wash, played by Alan Tudyk, can be seen improvising with his hands around an imaginary wheel. It’s hard to believe this mistake wasn’t caught.
Rex Features
19/22 Twin Peaks
The mistake actually ended up changing the plot of the series. Supposedly, David Lynch accidentally caught the crew member Frank Silva on camera when his reflection appeared in a mirror in a scene when Laura Palmer was shown screaming. Lynch liked it so much that he decided to keep it in and cast Silva as the character Killer Bob, a dark spirit who haunts Laura.
Rex Features
20/22 Two and a Half Men
Charlie Sheen is seen talking on an upside down iPhone while sitting in a flash red car with a sexily clad woman next to him.
Rex Features
21/22 Downton Abbey
The whopper of a mistake did not happen on screen, but in a promotional shot posted online. It was a surprise to see a plastic water bottle perched on the mantle piece behind the Earl of Grantham and Lady Edith considering the series is set in the 1920s. Other mistakes onscreen include a TV aerial on top of a house and double yellow lines on the road.
22/22 The Big Bang Theory
More name mix-ups occur early on in the long-running US sitcom. The aspiring actress Penny, played by Kaley Cuoco, refers to her dad as “Bob”, but once he’s introduced on the show, he is called “Wyatt”. Also there is a plot mistake regarding the broken elevator in the apartment building. When they lug the time machine up the stairs in season one, Leonard explains to Howard that the elevator has been broken for two years. But Howard should have known this considering he was there when Leonard blew it up. This is revealed during a flash back in a later episode, where it states the event took place five years ago, not two.
CBS
1/22 The Crown – series 3
The hit Netflix show’s creator Peter Morgan takes plenty of artistic licence with this historical drama. But eagle-eyed royal fans spotted a mistake in the trailer for the third season. When Olivia Colman as Queen Elizabeth II is shown celebrating her 1977 Silver Jubilee, the voiceover gets the date of the Queen’s coronation wrong by a year, saying the Silver jubilee was 25 years after the Coronation. It was actually 24 years, as her coronation took place on June 2, 1953.
Sophie Mutevelian/Netflix
2/22 Wild Bill
The ITV fish-out-of-water detective drama stars Rob Lowe as a US police chief who moves to the UK to take up the role of Chief Constable with East Lincolnshire police. He wears four medal ribbons – Diamond Jubilee Medal, Golden Jubilee Medal, Queen’s Police Medal and Police Long Service and Good Conduct Medal. The trouble is not only are they in the wrong order, but he shouldn’t be wearing any of them. He’s an American who hasn’t previously served in the British police.
Kudos/ITV
3/22 The X-Files
Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) states that his sister Samantha was abducted by aliens but his recollections of it are contradictory. During hypnotherapy regression therapy, he says he was unable to move at the time, but during flashbacks, he is perfectly able to do so. Mulder is also seen wearing a wedding ring in the season five episode “Travellers”. Why had he never mentioned being married? In reality, Duchovny had recently got married. But it added a big change to Mulder’s past.
4/22 Doctor Who
How old is the Doctor? In the classic-era he states he’s anywhere between 500 to several thousand years old. But in the revived series, David Tennant’s Doctor claims he is 904 years old. Unless he’s lying, somewhere along the line, the continuity has slipped up.
5/22 The Sopranos
During Ralphie’s death scene in his kitchen, Tony Soprano is almost blinded by a can of spray, but knocks Ralphie to the floor and kills him. The scene was meant to end with Tony putting his hands on the counter and gasping for air but James Gandolfini, who brilliantly plays Tony, accidentally put his hand down on the oven’s lit burners. The cry of pain was real – but this mistake worked perfectly for the scene.
HBO
6/22 Game of Thrones
The greatest oops moment in GoT’s was in the final season when a stray Starbucks cup is sitting on a wooden table next to Emilia Clarke’s character Daenerys Targaryen. Did nobody spot it? There were also plastic water bottles near Samwell Tarly’s and Ser Davos’s feet in the final episode.
HBO
7/22 The Simpsons
When Marge tells Homer she is pregnant with Maggie in the episode “And Maggie Makes Three”, which first aired in 1995, a picture of Maggie can be seen hanging on the wall of the living room – a right clanger – considering this is before she is even born.
8/22 Stranger Things
The second season of the TV drama is set in October 1984 – a year after the first season. Considering the show trades in nostalgia, you would have thought they’d get the soundtrack right – but they didn’t. Mistakes include The Smith’s song “There is a Light That Never Goes Out” playing in the background during a flashback between Will and Jonathan. Trouble is, this particular Smiths song wasn’t released until 1986. There was also a motoring error: Barb’s Volkswagon Cabrio was actually made in 1988.
Netflix
9/22 Supernatural
In the first season’s episode “Provenance”, it seems that the actors got a bit lazy, referring to characters by their real names, not their character’s name. Dean appears to call his brother “Jared”, when the character’s name is Sam Winchester and an extra calls the character Dean Winchester “Jensen”, which is again the name of the actor who plays him.
CW
10/22 Lost
It’s one of those shows in which fans searched for hidden clues and meanings. But they picked up on more than intended. In the plane crash scene in the first episode, right before the turbine explodes, a mysterious dark object sweeps upwards only visible to fans sifting through the scene frame by frame. Was it an early manifestation of the smoke monster? No, according to producers, it was just a CGI error.
Rex Features
11/22 The Big Bang Theory
More name mix-ups occur early on in the long-running US sitcom. The aspiring actress Penny, played by Kaley Cuoco, refers to her dad as “Bob”, but once he’s introduced on the show, he is called “Wyatt”. Also there is a plot mistake regarding the broken elevator in the apartment building. When they lug the time machine up the stairs in season one, Leonard explains to Howard that the elevator has been broken for two years. But Howard should know this considering he was there when Leonard blew it up. This is revealed during a flash back in a later episode, where it also states that the event took place five years ago, not two.
CBS Studios
12/22 Doctor Foster
The BBC hit drama had a continuity error when its star Suranne Jones is seen drinking a glass of wine in her kitchen. As she gulps the wine and texts from her phone, the fridge door in the background is open, then closed, then open – all by itself.
13/22 Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Season one establishes that vampires have no breath – it’s confirmed when Angel is unable to perform CPR. But the vampires talk, pant and even smoke – all which require breathing – while Spike is even tortured by drowning.
14/22 Friends
During a scene in season nine, episode 15 (“The One with the Mugging”), Jennifer Aniston was replaced with a stand-in while her character Rachel was still in shot. She sits at the table at the edge of the frame and is even wearing a different top. In another scene, Phoebe, is chatting to her friend Monica, but it’s not Monica. It’s Courteney Cox’s body double who has been left carelessly in the shot.
Rex Features
15/22 Coronation Street
Fans laughed out loud when Anna Windass (Debbie Rush) finds Seb Franklin (Harry Visinoni) injured on the pavement and picks up her mobile to call emergency services. She managed to do it without touching the screen, unlocking her phone or dialling any numbers.
Rex Features
16/22 Malcolm in the Middle
In the US sitcom about a dysfunctional family, when Lois walks out holding her ruined dress that is soaking wet to confront her kids, there is a crew member crouching in the hallway holding a bucket.
Rex Features
17/22 ER
The heartthrob paediatrician Doug Ross, played by George Clooney, had a son prior to his romance with Carol – or did he? Although he mentions the son a few times in season one, he claims later in the series not to have any children.
Rex Features
18/22 Supernatural
In the first episode of this sci-fi series, the steering wheel has disappeared from the set of the spaceship. Serenity’s pilot Wash, played by Alan Tudyk, can be seen improvising with his hands around an imaginary wheel. It’s hard to believe this mistake wasn’t caught.
Rex Features
19/22 Twin Peaks
The mistake actually ended up changing the plot of the series. Supposedly, David Lynch accidentally caught the crew member Frank Silva on camera when his reflection appeared in a mirror in a scene when Laura Palmer was shown screaming. Lynch liked it so much that he decided to keep it in and cast Silva as the character Killer Bob, a dark spirit who haunts Laura.
Rex Features
20/22 Two and a Half Men
Charlie Sheen is seen talking on an upside down iPhone while sitting in a flash red car with a sexily clad woman next to him.
Rex Features
21/22 Downton Abbey
The whopper of a mistake did not happen on screen, but in a promotional shot posted online. It was a surprise to see a plastic water bottle perched on the mantle piece behind the Earl of Grantham and Lady Edith considering the series is set in the 1920s. Other mistakes onscreen include a TV aerial on top of a house and double yellow lines on the road.
22/22 The Big Bang Theory
More name mix-ups occur early on in the long-running US sitcom. The aspiring actress Penny, played by Kaley Cuoco, refers to her dad as “Bob”, but once he’s introduced on the show, he is called “Wyatt”. Also there is a plot mistake regarding the broken elevator in the apartment building. When they lug the time machine up the stairs in season one, Leonard explains to Howard that the elevator has been broken for two years. But Howard should have known this considering he was there when Leonard blew it up. This is revealed during a flash back in a later episode, where it states the event took place five years ago, not two.
CBS
The action begins in medieval Syria, where a home for the mentally unwell is overrun by a giant CGI werewolf. That sounds fantastic until you see the actual werewolf: a pixellated clunker thrown together on a BBC Acorn computer retrieved by the Doctor from the mid-Eighties. What a howler: it makes the sharks in Sharknado look like the T-Rex from Jurassic Park.
Doctor Who is soon turning into Dr WTF? as Whittaker’s Timelord is hoodwinked into freeing an alien goddess Rakaya (Clare-Hope Ashitey). She is an immortal whose party trick is gorging on nightmares. Naturally she is in cahoots with aforementioned Baldie Terror Zellin (Ian Gelder, aka Kevan Lannister from Game of Thrones).
The cheeky sod has been utilising his detachable airborne fingers to induce terrifying visions in random members of the public. The fingers plug into the ear and serve as transmission devices that beam bad thoughts to Zellin’s incarcerated pal Rakaya. Amazing that nobody thought of doing something like this sooner. If anyone wants to beam Premier League highlights into my brain using magic flying fingers, feel free to give it your best shot.
The Doctor eventually saves the day but not before the Nightmare Goddess and her tattooed companion have beamed down to Sheffield and drank deep of locals and their uneasy dreams. With “Can You Hear Me?” clocking in at a trim 49 minutes, it isn’t long, though, before the duo have received their cosmic comeuppance. Yaz, Ryan, Graham and their Syrian friend Tahira (Aruhan Galieva) conquer their fears and use the werewolf – actually a metaphor for Tahira’s anxieties – to send the two aliens packing.
Chibnall tacks on a coda in which the Doctor’s companions reflect on their past, and their future hopes and worries. Graham (Bradley Walsh), for instance, speaks of his concern about his cancer returning. A bit weirdly, the Doctor hand waves away this heartfelt admission of vulnerability with an excuse about her social awkwardness.
Doctor Who is clearly trying to inject a note a real emotion into all the planet-hopping. The problem is that the message that our fears are what make us human is too trite for adults and will soar over the heads of children. It’s difficult to be underwhelmed by an episode of Doctor Who featuring both Tywin Lannister’s brother and a giant space werewolf. But somehow “Can You Hear Me?” has just that effect.
