#catherine's lack of doctor who knowledge will never fail to amuse me

[mizgnomer]

Behind the Scenes of Partners in Crime - Part  12

Excerpt from a TV Week interview with David Tennant and Catherine Tate:

The Doctor has always had an eye for the ladies. Martha worshipped him, and there was more than a slight frisson between the Time Lord and Rose. But strident Donna Noble is different...

“The thing about Donna is that she can’t really get past the fact that he’s an alien,” says Catherine Tate who plays the feisty Londoner.  “She does adore him, but she doesn’t see him through a romantic filter, so she can challenge him and not be bothered about impressing him.”

Her leading man agrees: “Our relationship has been compared to Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. There’s a real equality between them, and the Doctor soon realizes that he can’t baffle Donna with science.”

Just as Donna has no time for technical jargon, the same is true of Tate who finds the dogged devotion of the show’s many fans rather puzzling.  “Science fiction is another language to me,” says Tate. “And growing up, I never really watched Doctor Who. I thought the Daleks were in it every week! Clearly it was never as interesting to me as Basil Brush.”

And Tennant takes great delight in his co-star’s apparent ignorance of the Whovian universe. “It’s astonishing what she doesn’t know,” laughs the 36-year-old. “Like the fact that the Doctor regenerates.”

“I just thought they recast,” admits Tate sheepishly. “I thought it was the same as Miss Ellie in Dallas.”

Link to [ part one ] of the Partners in Crime Behind-the-scenes posts, or click the #whoBtsPartners tag, or the full episode list [ here ]