Doctor Who: 10 Years Of The Tenth Doctor: Doomsday




It's ten years since David Tennant's first series of Doctor Who was first broadcast in the UK. To celebrate we take a look back in time...


Doomsday

First Broadcast on 8th July 2006. Running Time: 45 Minutes. Viewing Figures: 8.22 million.
Written By Russell T Davies.
Directed By Graeme Harper.
Executive Producers Russell T Davies and Julie Gardner.



Synopsis:

It's the end of an epic journey as two mighty armies wage war across the Earth. As an unstoppable terror emerges, the Doctor faces an even greater dilemma - does saving the world mean the death of Rose Tyler?

Extras: Promotional Photos | On Set Photos | Screen Caps | Videos | Articles | MP3 Commentary 




Production Notes: 

Doomsday is the final episode of David Tennant's debut series as the Doctor and sees his companion Rose Tyler, played by Billie Piper, bow out..
The episode is a firm favourite with fans and critics alike and scored an Audience Appreciation Index of 89. 
Doomsday was filmed in the same production block as Rise Of The Cybermen, The Age Of Steel and Army Ghosts, to ensure that the actors who would be appearing in all episodes, such as Shaun Dingwall and Noel Clarke would be available to film their scenes.
Russell T Davies previously toyed with the idea of calling Army Of Ghosts and Doomsday, Torchwood Rises and Torchwood Falls. 

The scene in which Rose is rescued from the void by Pete Tyler caused debate amongst production staff and cast members. Writer Russell T Davies and executive producer Julie Gardner felt that she should be saved by Pete, as this would emphasise his acceptance of Rose as his daughter. However, some thought was given to giving the role of rescuer to Rose's on /off boyfriend Mickey Smith,  with  producer Phil Collinson and Mickey actor Noel Clarke both keen for him to act as Rose's saviour.

The idea that the Genesis Ark needed to be activated by a time traveller was thought up to give an excuse for the Daleks to keep Rose Tyler and Mickey Smith alive for so long.
When writing the episode Davies also thought that this would provide the motivation for why the Daleks would have invaded 21st century London. He reasoned that the Daleks would find it the most likely place to track down the Doctor and one of his companions.  However he decided not to make this an obvious fact of the story as he felt it would place too much responsibility upon the Doctor and implicate him in the many deaths.

To safeguard the final conversation between the Doctor and Rose, only David Tennant and Billie Piper and essential members of crew were given the final pages of the script. 
Only essential crew made the journey to Southerndown Beach, in Ogmore Vale near Bridgend, on January 16th 2006 where Billie was to film Rose's final scenes at Darlig Ulv Stranden or as we know it Bad Wolf Bay.
Although at the time of recording Rose's final scene Billie still had five episodes left to film, it was still a highly emotional shoot for the actress who ended up in floods of tears.
It was also the last day of recording for both Noel Clarke and Shaun Dingwall.



The Friends: Rose Tyler, from shop girl to defender of the Earth...

The only daughter to Pete and Jackie Tyler, Rose grew up with her Mum on the Powell Estate in South East London, her Dad, Pete was killed after being hit by a car when she was just six months old.
Rose left school to live with Jimmy Stone, who left her £800 in debt and broke her heart, she left him and moved back home to live with her Mum. She then rekindled her romance with mechanic Mickey Smith and found herself a job as a shop assistant at Henrik's department store. It was whilst working here that she first met the Doctor in 2005.
After she helped the Doctor defeat the Nestene Conciousness ('Rose') she was invited to join the Doctor on board the TARDIS. 
During her travels in the TARDIS Rose met Charles Dickens and was made a Dame by Queen Victoria. She saw the war-torn London of 1941 and the post-war London of 1953. She and the Doctor took a trip to the 2012 London Olympics and she visited a spaceship 3,000 years after her own time. She chatted to a French aristocrat 250 years before she herself was born and had a narrow escape from Japan's 14th century capital Kyoto. 
She also saw what would become of television in the 200,001st century and a future for the human race badly at odds with the Doctor's description of a 'great and bountiful Empire.'



At the very start of their travels together the Doctor had hoped to impress her with the prospect of watching the world end from the safety of an orbiting space station some five billion years in the future ('The End Of The World'). They later made a return trip to that era, and visited the New Earth that the human race had gone on to establish. On each of these trips Rose encountered a selection of alien races of all shapes, sizes and colour, her early wariness quickly evolving into appreciation for the different wonders that the Doctor could show her. On one visit to an unnamed alien world the Doctor asked her long she would stay with him, her answer was "Forever".
However many aliens that Rose encountered with the Doctor were less friendly, among them the Gelth, Raxacoricofallapatorians, the Jargafess, Roboform Santas, Sycorax, a Werewolf, Krillitanes, Clockwork Droids, the Wire, the Beast and the Abzorbaloff.  She also endured bodily possession by the self proclaimed 'Last Human' Lasy Cassandra O'Brien ('New Earth').



Early in their adventures, the Doctor and Rose returned to the Powell Estate to find that they had been missing for a for a whole year and a distraught Jackie Tyler thought that her beloved daughter had been murdered. Jackie pleaded with Rose not to return to the Doctor and go on further adventures with him, but this had no effect on Rose's decision to keep travelling with the Doctor. Rose did however stay in touch with her Mum, the Doctor upgraded her mobile so that she could call her from any time or place and she returned home on frequent visits.

Rose pleaded with the Doctor to take her back to 1987 (Father's Day) as she wanted to be with her father when he died. He did as Rose asked but she couldn't resist saving Pete's life and created a wound in time which let in the Reapers, which rampaged across the planet until Pete sacrificed himself for the sake of saving the world.
Later when Rose travelled to a parallel universe (Rise Of The Cybermen / The Age Of Steel) she discovered an Earth where Pete was still alive and had become a successful businessman - she however had never been born and, much to the Doctor's amusement,  her mother Jackie doted upon a small dog named Rose instead. It was only after Jackie had been converted into a Cyberform that Rose revealed her true identity to Peter but he was confused by her claims and shunned her.
Rose was to meet with this version of Pete again when the 'Pete's World' Cybermen attacked Rose's Earth. The breach that they used also let through the Daleks...



Rose had first encountered a Dalek in 2012 in an underground museum in Utah ('Dalek'). Unaware of its true nature, Rose has initially felt sympathy for the imprisoned creature and had inadvertently allowed it to absorb her DNA, enabling it to regenerate. As the Dalek killed the inhabitants of the base, Rose used her connection to the Dalek to end the slaughter, ordering it to commit suicide in the process.

Some time later, the TARDIS crew, were transported onto the Game Station in the year 200,100, shortly before it came under attack from a huge Dalek fleet. The Doctor sent Rose home in the TARDIS, condemning himself to death alone. Desperate to return to his side, Rose forced open the ship's console hoping to communicate with the heart of the TARDIS. Instead she absorbed the Time Vortex itself, granting her mastery over the whole of time and space and allowing her to return to the Game Station. Here she confronted the Dalek Emperor and divided its fleet into atoms. The power though was killing Rose and the Doctor absorbed it from her, with a kiss, sacrificing his own life to save her from a certain death.
This was the first time that Rose 'lost' the Doctor - the Vortex energy triggered his regeneration and Rose found herself with an apparent stranger. The second time also involved the Daleks..



As the Cult Of Skaro and the Cybermen from the parallel Earth battled at Canary Wharf, the Doctor devised a plan that would seal both species into the Void. Rose made the decision not to accompany her family in to 'Pete's World' and chose the Doctor over them.

As Rose helped the Doctor to activate the levers that opened the breach and sucked the Daleks and the Cybermen into the Void, she slipped and fell towards the opening, but she was saved by Pete Tyler. She was transported to 'Pete's World', where she joined Jackie and Mickey. Rose now had her whole family around her, with Pete and Jackie reunited and expecting a new baby. But the breach was closed and she could never see the Doctor again. Rose was inconsolable and sobbed uncontrollably. It became clear that Rose was madly in love with the Doctor and she was beyond heartbroken at being parted from him.
Sometime later Rose began to hear the Doctor's voice calling her. She told her family and they all followed the voice to Bad Wolf Bay in Norway where a projection of the Doctor appeared; he was harnessing the power of a supernova to transmit through one of the final breaches.
Because the breach was to close permanently in two minutes, the pair shared one last but very brief conversation. Rose broke down as she confessed to the Doctor that she loved him, but just as the Doctor started to reply, the breach closed and he was gone from her life forever. The last we see of Rose Tyler is her devastated figure sobbing against the bleak landscape...



The Foes: The Daleks Fight Back

The Daleks were said to have disappeared from space following the Tenth Dalek Occupation, but they went to fight against the Time Lords in the Last Great Time War. The Time War ended when the Doctor destroyed both civilisations.
Far into the future, the Dalek Emperor had survived, hiding in the depths of space. Although crippled, its ship remained alive, and the Emperor shaped the development of Earth through its news and television output, guiding humanity's progress for centuries. It waited patiently, then infiltrated the systems of Earth, harvesting disposessed humans and nurturing them in Dalek form: a new army of Daleks and a fleet of 200 ships. The Emperor soon proclaimed himself to be God, creating new life in his image, claiming Earth as a Dalek Paradise. It then perished alongside every other Dalek in the universe when Rose Tyler absorbed the Time Vortex and reduced them to atoms.
Although every Dalek had now been destroyed, a secret order had escaped shortly before the end of the Time War, The Cult Of Skaro.
Above and beyond the Emperor, who had established the cult to think and reason outside the Dalek norm, these four Daleks had fled into the Void between different realities. They emerged from their Void Ship in Earth's Torchwood institute in 2007, just as Cybermen from a parallel world took over the planet. The Cult quickly declared war. They primed the Genesis Ark and unlocked it in the skies over London, releasing millions of Daleks from within. These were all later drawn back into the Void when the Doctor briefly reopened the breach between realities.



Quotes: 



  • Dalek Leader: Place your hand upon the casket!
  • Rose Tyler: All right! You're gonna kill us anyway, so what the hell..... If you... survived the Time War, don't you want to know what happened...?
  • Dalek Leader: Place your hand...
  • Rose Tyler: ... What happened to the Emperor?
  • Dalek Leader:  ... The Emperor survived?
  • Rose Tyler: Well, until he met ME. Because if these are gonna be my last words, then you're gonna listen. I met the Emperor, and I took the Time Vortex and poured it into his head, and turned him into dust. D'ya get that? The God of all Daleks, and I destroyed him! HA!
  • Dalek Leader: You will be EXTERMINATED!

  • The Doctor: You're never gonna see her again, your own mother!
  • Rose Tyler: I made my choice a long time ago. I'm never leaving you. Now what can I do to help?

  • Rose Tyler: I... I love you.
  • The Doctor: Quite right too.....And I suppose... if it's my last chance to say it... Rose Tyler...



Facts:



  • The Cult of Skaro are Sec, Caan, Jast and Thay. Jast was originally called Rabe, but the production team changed their minds and renamed him during sound dubbing for the episode.
  • This is the first time the Daleks and Cybermen have battled each other on TV, although both briefly appeared during the Doctor's trial in the final episode of The War Games (1969) and in separate scenes during The Five Doctors (1983).
  • The final Bad Wolf Bay scenes were secretly filmed at a place called Southerndown, on the Welsh coast just west of Cardiff.
  • This episode sees the first instance of a Dalek's ability to escape from a dangerous situation by using an Emergency Temporal Shift. This feature is almost certainly limited to The Cult Of Skaro.
  • Russell T Davies briefly considered creating a one-off special starring Billie Piper, Rose Tyler: Earth Defence,  following Rose's adventures on the parallel Earth. He abandoned the idea, considering it a spin-off too far.
  • Catherine Tate's appearance, one of the best kept secrets in Doctor Who, was secretly filmed during the Series 2 wrap party.
  • Although the Doctor wears 3D glasses in the episode, the only real use of 3D filming on Doctor Who was the Children In Need special, Dimensions In Time (1993). That was until the 50th Anniversary episode, which screened in 2013 in both 2D and 3D versions.
  • It was later revealed in the Torchwood episode Cyberwoman that Ianto Jones used to work at the Canary Wharf branch of Torchwood. Ianto's first actual appearance in Doctor Who was The Stolen Earth.


Cast:



  • David Tennant - The Doctor
  • Billie Piper  - Rose Tyler
  • Noel Clarke - Mickey Smith
  • Camille Coduri – Jackie Tyler
  • Shaun Dingwall – Pete Tyler
  • Andrew Hayden-Smith – Jake Simmonds
  • Tracy-Ann Oberman – Yvonne Hartman
  • Raji James – Dr. Rajesh Singh
  • Paul Kasey – Cyber Leader
  • Nicholas Briggs – Dalek and Cyberman voices
  • Catherine Tate – Donna Noble
Videos:





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