# The Girl in the Fireplace

"The Girl in the Fireplace" is the fourth episode of the second series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was first broadcast on BBC One on 6 May 2006. Written by Steven Moffat and directed by Euros Lyn, the episode is inspired by Audrey Niffenegger's novel The Time Traveler's Wife.
The episode is set in France throughout the 18th century. In the episode, repair androids from a spaceship from the 51st century create time windows to stalk Madame de Pompadour (Sophia Myles) throughout her life. They seek to remove her brain as a replacement part for their spaceship at a particular point in her life as they believe her to be compatible with the ship.
The programme's executive producer Russell T Davies, who conceived the idea while researching for Casanova, described the episode as a love story for the show's protagonist the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant). The episode was filmed in England and Wales in October 2005. The Girl in the Fireplace was well received by most critics, was nominated for a Nebula Award and won the 2007 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form.

## Plot

The Tenth Doctor, Rose, and Mickey arrive aboard a derelict spaceship in the 51st century. They find a time window, a portal to another place in space and time, shaped like a Baroque fireplace. On the other side is a girl named Reinette, who lives in 18th-century Paris. The Doctor steps through and finds himself in Reinette's bedroom, in time to save her from a sinister clockwork automaton. He takes the automaton back with him and identifies it as a repair droid from the ship. When the Doctor returns to Reinette's world, he finds that she has grown into a beautiful young woman. They flirt and kiss. After a servant calls for Reinette using her real name, the Doctor realises she is Madame de Pompadour, the future mistress of King Louis XV.
The ship contains several other time windows, each leading to different moments in Reinette's life. The Doctor sees another droid in one of the windows and steps through to confront it. The droid reveals that it and its companions killed the ship's crew in order to use their organs as parts, and now want Reinette's brain to replace the ship's computer. Believing that the transplant would only work if Reinette and the ship were the same age, they opened a series of time windows in order to find one in which she was 37 years old. Rose asks why they want Reinette in particular. The droid simply says, "We are the same."
Another droid radios the ship to indicate that it has found the 37-year-old Reinette, at a costume ball in Versailles. The droids arrive and take her captive. The Doctor cannot follow them without destroying the time window, but does so anyway, stranding himself and the droids in the 18th century. Cut off from their world, the droids shut down. Reinette tells the Doctor that she had her fireplace moved to Versailles in the hope that he would return. The Doctor finds that it is still operational and uses it to return to the ship, promising Reinette that he will come back for her. When he steps back through the fireplace, he finds that many years have passed and Reinette has died. King Louis gives him a letter that Reinette wrote for him.
As the Doctor and his companions depart aboard the TARDIS, they wonder again why the droids wanted Reinette specifically, and accept that they may never know. The Doctor reads Reinette's letter, in which she expressed hope that she may one day see him again, and shuts down the time windows. As the TARDIS leaves, the name of the spaceship is revealed to be the SS Madame de Pompadour.

## Production
### Writing and characters

In 2004, Russell T Davies—Doctor Who's executive producer—was responsible for Casanova, a serial set in the 18th century. During his research, Davies became fascinated by Madame de Pompadour and wanted to include her in a story which also involved The Turk—a clockwork man who played chess around the same period and which was later revealed to be a hoax. In early 2005, Steven Moffat—who had written "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances" for the series—was assigned to write the story. Euros Lyn was later assigned to direct it. Sophia Myles stated in an interview on Doctor Who Confidential that she did not have to audition for the role of Madame de Pompadour, she was offered it.
In an interview with The Independent, Davies said the episode is "practically a love story for the Doctor ... It's very understated, very beautifully done, but it's nonetheless a Time Lord falling in love and Rose's reaction to him falling in love with someone else." Moffat was inspired by Audrey Niffenegger's novel The Time Traveler's Wife, though the episode's structure is different from that of the novel. During the production, Moffat considered "Madame de Pompadour", "Every Tick of My Heart", "Reinette and the Lonely Angel" and "Loose Connection" for the episode's title. "The Girl in the Fireplace" was planned as the second episode of the 2006 series, but when Davies realised how experimental it had become in Moffat's hands, he decided to move it to fourth in the running order between "School Reunion" and "Rise of the Cybermen".
While Moffat was creating the clockwork automata he first decided to hide their faces with wigs, but when producer Phil Collinson told him this would severely limit camera angles, and that it could appear comical, the androids were given carnival masks to wear. Neill Gorton of Millennium Effects designed the androids and they were constructed by Richard Darwen and Gustav Hoegan.
While the episode appears to follow immediately from the previous episode "School Reunion", Moffat says in the DVD audio commentary that when he wrote "The Girl in the Fireplace" he had not yet read the end of "School Reunion", hence the lack of Rose's continuing animosity shown towards Mickey after he joins the TARDIS crew. After reading the Doctor's mind, Reinette says "Doctor who?", a reference both to the series' title and to the long-running mystery about the Doctor's actual name. She also says that it is "more than just a secret", but does not elaborate further. Moffat said that he added the dialogue because he believes that because the Doctor does not tell even his closest companions his name, there must be a "dreadful secret" about it. Moffat also says that he did not include the word "Torchwood" (an "arc word" in the second series) in the script because Davies did not ask him to do so.

### Filming

Filming for the episode took place between 12 and 27 October 2005. The scenes set in Versailles were filmed elsewhere: the first scenes filmed, in which Reinette's body is taken away, were filmed at Culverhouse Cross in Cardiff; Madame de Pompadour's sitting room and bedroom scenes were filmed at Tredegar House—a 17th-century mansion in Newport; Dyffryn Gardens, in the Vale of Glamorgan, was used as the set for the palace gardens; and Ragley Hall near Alcester was used for the ballroom scenes. The scenes on the spaceship, which were shot by the second unit, were also filmed in Newport.
Two horses were used in the episode; one was used for the scenes in close quarters on the spaceship, and another for jumps. According to Doctor Who Confidential, the horse was not allowed into the ballroom for the climactic scene. Thus, the elements of the Doctor riding through the mirror, the horse, the mirror breaking and the reactions of the extras in the ballroom had to be filmed separately and then composited together with chroma key. Tennant's head was superimposed upon that of the stunt rider in post-production. Initially, the programme's staff considered the use of special effects but realised this would be very expensive and rejected the idea.

## Broadcast and reception

The Girl in the Fireplace was first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC One on 6 May 2006. The final rating for the episode was 7.90 million, making it the thirteenth most watched programme on British television that week. It received an Appreciation Index of 84, considered "excellent". The episode's script was nominated for the 2006 Nebula Award, and "The Girl in the Fireplace" won the 2007 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form.
Writing for IGN, Ahsan Haque praised Tennant and Myles' acting, the episode's pacing and the "extremely touching" story, but felt it failed to sufficiently explain why the Doctor could not use the TARDIS to see Reinette before she died. He wrote that "with a little more attention to temporal details, this episode would have been considered as one of the series' greatest moments". Metro said the clockwork androids were one of the "most memorable villains" while The Guardian's Daniel Martin said "The Girl in the Fireplace" is "one of the most acclaimed episodes from the Davies era".
Ross Ruediger from Slant Magazine wrote that the episode "may be the crowning achievement" of Doctor Who's second series. Ruediger called it an episode "for the new millennium" as he thought it "could never exist under the banner of the old series." He called it a "thought-provoking piece", and wrote that episodes like this could not be broadcast every week since it "would be too taxing on the average viewer's brain". IGN's Matt Wales ranked "The Girl in the Fireplace" the third best Tennant Doctor Who story, calling it "one of Doctor Who's most touching adventures".
Not all reviews were positive. In a 2008 retrospective piece, Nivair H. Gabrie criticised problematic elements of the episode, calling the Doctor and Reinette's relationship a "random, thoughtless romance". He similarly called the Doctor's decision to give up his and his companion's lives for Reinette "pretty jarring" and contrasting with his established character. In the 2015 book The Doctors Are In, co-author Stacey Smith praised the cast but found the Doctor and Reinette's relationship awkward, especially due to the Doctor first meeting her as a child. She criticises the dialogue and characterisation – questioning, for example, Rose's small role and her lack of upset at the Doctor leaving her for Reinette, calling it "criminal" for Rose.