Colum Sanson-Regan never planned to save Kylie Minogue from a bridge when he showed up on set as a Doctor Who extra, but when David Tennant was absent, producers decided that Colum looked enough like the Doctor to pass. “I’ve saved Kylie, flown the Tardis, held the screwdriver and had Billie Piper look deep into my eyes and tell me how much she loved me,” joked Colum. What started as a way to make some extra cash before the arrival of his first child grew into a much bigger role.
Colum’s first day on set was filled with surprises. He was asked to be there early but had no idea why. When he arrived, he was ushered past the usual extras area and was shown to a posh trailer. “All of a sudden I was standing with the suit there, and I was handed a script and told ‘You’re gonna need this’,” recalled Colum. “I was thinking pinch me, what’s going on?”
The scene he was called upon to perform was one where the Doctor and Kylie’s character, Astrid Peth, are on a bridge and attacked by killer robot angels. David Tennant had to leave the set, so Colum stood in for the Doctor for some extra shots showing his back. He was then called back to play the Doctor again in the 2008 episode Journey’s End, this time as his clone in the final episode of the fourth series.
“That meant he had to be in the same scenes with Tennant, Billie Piper, John Barrowman and Catherine Tate, making her final appearance as a regular,” reports the BBC. “I got to fly the Tardis in Journey’s End,” Colum recalled. “Everybody was gathered around the central console of the Tardis. We all had to have our hands on the machine and flying controls. There was a real buzz.”
Colum’s stint as a Doctor Who extra has had a lasting impact. He recalls getting in a car with his bandmates after filming and telling them who he’d worked with that week. “We’d been driving for almost two hours and had nearly hit Birmingham and they still hadn’t guessed. I had to tell them! They’re like ‘absolutely no way’. It was so bizarre.
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