page_title: The Stolen Earth
section_title: Filming
hierarchical_section_title: The Stolen Earth / Production / Filming
caption_attribution_description: 13th March 2008, filming Dr Who in Penarth, David Tennant, Billie Piper, Catherine Tate and John Barrowman were all there.
context_page_description: "The Stolen Earth" is the twelfth episode of the fourth series and the 750th overall episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was first broadcast on BBC One on 28 June 2008. The episode was written by show runner and head writer Russell T Davies and is the first of a two-part crossover story with spin-offs The Sarah Jane Adventures and Torchwood; the concluding episode is "Journey's End", the finale of the fourth series, broadcast on 5 July.
  The finale's narrative brings closure to several prominent story arcs created during Davies' tenure as show runner. In the episode, contemporary Earth and 26 other planets are stolen by the Daleks, aided by their megalomaniacal creator Davros and a shattered but precognitive Dalek Caan. As the Doctor and his companion Donna Noble try to find Earth, his previous companions Jack Harkness, Martha Jones, Sarah Jane Smith, and Rose Tyler convene to contact him and mount a defence against the Daleks. In the episode's climax, the Doctor is shot by a Dalek and begins to regenerate.
  The episode marks the first appearance of Davros since the 1988 serial Remembrance of the Daleks; he is portrayed by Julian Bleach.
context_section_description: "The Stolen Earth" features the first external location shots of the Daleks since the revival of Doctor Who in 2005, and the greatest proportion of filming undertaken at night since the show's revival: apart from the pre-credits sequence set in suburban London, all of the scenes set on Earth were filmed at night.
  The two-parter took approximately six weeks in 2008 to film; regular filming began on 18 February 2008 and ended on 29 March. The first scene shot for "The Stolen Earth"—a news report that starred Lachele Carl as Trinity Wells—was filmed on 31 January 2008 in a news studio at BBC Wales' Broadcasting House. The first week of filming took place entirely at the show's studios in Upper Boat, Rhondda Cynon Taf; most of the scenes set in the Torchwood Hub and the TARDIS—including the regeneration scene—were filmed in the period.
  The filming schedule of the second and third week alternated between "The Stolen Earth" and "Journey's End". Three days were allocated to filming for "The Stolen Earth": scenes in Donna's house were filmed on 26 February on Nant Fawr Road, Cyncoed, Cardiff; the Crucible Vault set in the Upper Boat Studios was used on 3 March; and scenes at the Shadow Proclamation were filmed at the School of Optometry at Cardiff University on 8 March 2008.
  Filming for the episode's outdoor scenes began in the afternoon of 11 March. The first outdoor scene filmed was the cold open, on West Mound Crescent in Tonteg. Two scenes were filmed in Pontypridd on 12 March: exterior scenes of the Noble household took place on Hawthorn Road—rather than the usual location in Cyncoed—before relocating to Market Street in the town centre to film the scenes where Rose encounters members of the public in the middle of a riot. Tennant and Tate meanwhile filmed the trailer for the fourth series because they were not required on location.
  The Doctor and Rose's reunion was filmed on 13 March in Penarth town centre, in front of two hundred people; consequently, the scene was leaked onto the Internet and reported in the next day's edition of The Sun. Graeme Harper insisted that the scene appear "mystical" because the characters' reunion was "the most magical moment" in the entire episode and Ernie Vincze, the Director of Photography for the show, compared the scene's feeling to the 1980s science-fiction film Blade Runner. Exterior filming for the week finished in Brook Street and the adjoining Plantagenet Street in Riverside, Cardiff, for scenes where Daleks kidnap humans for experimentation and Wilf's attack on a Dalek respectively. Scenes in the UNIT headquarters in Manhattan were filmed on the evenings of 16 March and 19 March: the first night, depicting the Dalek invasion, was filmed in a traffic control centre on Junction 32 of the M4 motorway, with the actual Dalek invasion of the building filmed in six minutes at 5:30am the following morning; and the second night, depicting Martha's escape from UNIT, was filmed in a warehouse in Nantgarw owned by the National Museum Wales. Because of a traffic accident on the first night, the production team were prepared to postpone the shoot if needed.
  Penelope Wilton reprised her role as Harriet Jones to film a scene on 18 March, in a cottage in Dinas Powys. Filming was stalled because of difficulty transporting the Dalek props into the cottage: specifically, the raised patio doors made it difficult to balance and maneuver the props. The remainder of the fifth week was used to film Dalek-only scenes at Upper Boat Studios, when the Vault set was redressed as the Crucible command deck. Scenes that featured Martha and Sarah in their houses were filmed alternately during the sixth week—the former in the previously regular location of Lower Cwrt-Y-Vil Road in Penarth and the latter primarily at Upper Boat—ending on 28 March with scenes of Sarah and Luke in their attic. The last exterior scene filmed for the episode was recorded on 25 March in the regular The Sarah Jane Adventures filming location of Clinton Road in Penarth, and consisted of external shots of Sarah's house and two Daleks accosti
caption: Billie Piper and David Tennant filming Doctor Who in Penarth.
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