Doctor Who: 'The Doctor's Wife' Concept Art and The Silence Details

Posted by: Matt McGloin, Editor/Publisher
June 20, 2011 14:39 | Updated: 1 year 48 weeks Ago

Neil Gaiman's Doctor Who episode, "The Doctor's Wife," was easily the best this season, I thought.

I thought I read somewhere, that due to budget cuts, they had to replace characters with ones already on hand, such as when they used the Ood - who was supposed to be a new character (below).

Was it really buget cuts? Or maybe the creatures would have been too terrifying, as iO9 got their hands on some concept art from this episode with the artist, David Bonneywell, revealing details and explanations.

"It took me a little while to get into the Dr Who groove when it came to designs and I had a lot of stuff rejected for similar reasons before I started to nail the briefs to the producers liking," said Bonneywell.

Do you think the addition of these creatures would have made the episode all the better? Or wouldn't it have mattered? Also, check out what Bonneywell has to say on The Silence and that it was inspired by the famous painting "The Scream."

Click images to enlarge.

The Uncle:

The Nephew (replaced by Ood):

The Silence:

"The design brief for these was a cross between grey aliens and Edvard Munch's The Scream painting. I absolutely hate grey aliens so there's more Munch here than ET."

"The top photo's are of the sculpt. The middle photo's are of the painted masks. I actually made them quite pinkish as I wanted them to look soft and babyish. The open mouthed version you can see was used to create a digital morph of the creature's mouth's distorting as they used their psychic attack!"

"The bottom picture is a publicity shot from the show. They were eventually shot using extremely washed out colours, so all my subtle paint work got lost and in the end they looked closer to those damn Grey buggers after all!....curses!!!"

The Scream (painting by Edvard Munch):