While there may have been nine Doctors, there's only one Tardis.
What's a police public call box'?
But if a big blue box landed on your doorstep...
Does it fly'?
...wouldn't there be a few questions on your mind?
The insides bigger than the outside?
130, take 1, A camera.
Action.
You've got such a great planet...
It's 3:30 in the morning
and Christopher Eccleston is shooting his first scene with the Tardis.
I came around this corner,
I just glanced to my left, and there was the Tardis.
And that's when it dawned on me, kind of, what I was doing.
And I also realized how much the Tardis is part of our cultural lives.
I didn't say police telephone box, which is basically what it is.
I thought, "Tardis, there's the Tardis."
The interior of the Tardis, from a technical point of view,
and for Doctor Who fans, who are legion, is a, you know, an important area.
On this production, we've really gone for it.
The design team have created a massive space.
I was so overwhelmed by the size and the scale of it,
how beautiful it was, as well.
And...
you know, there are no limits in that Tardis. We can do anything in that thing.
Right. Where do you want to start'?
- The inside's bigger than the outside? - Yes.
- It's alien'? - Yeah.
It's quite daunting at first for Rose.
And, obviously, it's a completely alien experience.
It's something she's never seen before.
The Tardis has changed over the years, so many times
so I wanted to make it feel as if it had arrived at this junction in history.
So, we looked mostly to nature, to organic structures.
Things like coral were quite a nice idea.
So, the main metal structure of the Tardis has been covered in this coral-type effect.
So, you've got a range of ceramic, glass, wood, metal.
It's all, sort of, living things, really.
We've got some Gallifrean text,
which spells out all the different information that's relevant to flying the Tardis.
Because the Tardis is nigh on 700 years old,
it's really made up of an amalgamation of lots of bits and pieces.
There's very few of the original switches on it anymore.
So, it's what the Doctor's cobbled together over the years,
which are all relevant to making the beast fly.
Hold that one down. I'm holding this one down.
Hold them both down. It's not going to work.
I promised you a time machine and that's what you're getting.
That Tardis that we see is actually supposed to be manned by six or seven Time Lords.
And he does it all on his own, hence his energy and his chaos.
-1860. How does 1860 sound'? - What happened in 1860'?
I don't know. Let's find out. Hold on, here we go.
The Doctor loves the Tardis. He speaks very admiringly and affectionately about it.
I did it. Give the man a medal. Earth, Naples, December 24, 1860.
And he loves it and he kind of treats it as if it's alive.
And that's part of the mystery of the Tardis. Maybe it is part organic.
And it's nice to see in the new series that it does take the Doctor to the wrong places.
It does get him embroiled in the adventures by just being a bit rubbish.
- I got the flight a bit wrong. - I don't care.
- It's not 1860, it's 1869. - I don't care.
- And it's not Naples. - I don't care.
It's Cardiff.
Right.
Episode three is designed to show off, you know,
the range of the program, to go back in history.
And I decided the template for the entire series
right at the beginning of it so it was like...
I wanted to go back to the Victorian, I wanted an episode set in Cardiff.
'Cause I think it's quite important that we made it in Cardiff, we put Cardiff on screen
and get a Welsh cast in there. And I wanted Charles Dickens in there.
Charles Dickens, you're brilliant, you are. Completely 100% brilliant.
I've read them all. Great Expectations, Oliver Twist.
What's the other one, the one with the ghost'?
- A Christmas Carol? - No, no, no. The one with the trains.
The Signal Man. That's it. Terrifying!
The best short story ever written. You're a genius.
- You want me to get rid of him, sir'? - No, I think he can stay.
And set. Set on A.
If the Doctor is going to go back in time, he has to do it in style.
But the challenge of creating a 19th century scene is not as easy as some might think.
Cardiff in 1869 was a relatively small place
and not much of Cardiff from that period has been left behind.
So that meant that we had to go elsewhere.
So we ended up going to Swansea, which is where I'm from.
So it was fantastic.
And the director wasn't the only one pleased to see Doctor Who come to town.
I was born in Swansea and always, as a little schoolboy, I loved Doctor Who.
I used to walk around dreaming of Doctor Who being in Swansea.
Now it's actually here and it's not the episode I wrote,
which is, like, so close. So close and yet so far.
It seems so unreal.
I never really thought it was happening. It seems like a strange dream.
'Cause I waited, honestly, all my life to do this.
And I was quite overwhelmed for a few moments. I had a few tears.
It was like... I got the kind of Saturday night feeling again.
First time, I don't know how long, it just felt amazing.
It was not only I was watching Doctor Who being made,
I was watching my Doctor Who being made.
Bringing the period to life is a massive task
so the first job of the night is to recreate a scene that Dickens would be proud of.
Obviously there was gas in Dickensian time,
but mostly fire-lit and oil lamps and candles.
The way I'm making it warm is a combination of putting color filters on lights
and putting filters on color.
Please turn on the CTO on the inside.
Sixth light as well, please.
This is the productions biggest shoot to date,
where time is money and the pressure is on.
It's always very complicated, but it's doubly so tonight
'cause we've got special effects, we've got horses and carriages,
we've got something like 70 extras all in period dress this evening as well.
And so it's an enormous thing to coordinate. Terrifying.
Here we go. Stand by, then.
And action.
From the very beginning of that night, we knew that we were up against it.
Not only were they mooing against the clock,
they were battling against the elements.
There was a wind kind of howling and the snow is actually made of paper
so it kind of gusts it up into the air and the horses were terrified.
Action.
Keep her knees up.
The whole central idea of Doctor Who, the time, the time travel things,
means that you are always really dealing with matters of life and death.
Hey, I saw the fall of Troy, World War V.
I've pushed boxes at the Boston Tea Party, now I'm gonna die in a dungeon.
In Cardiff.
But in his latest adventure,
all the Doctor has to worry about are the ghostly Gelth.
They wanted the make-up not too long really, not hours.
So, really, we just ended up shading it, really. There's no prosthetics on it.
It's just, like, light and dark and shade and color, really.
And just, basically, shading in the temples and jawbone
and all those things that sort of give us that skull and that eye socket look.
Zombie look, really.
And then just really adding veining in,
big veins and broken capillaries and brown teeth
and everything very unflattering really, for a grandmother.
In episode three, set in Victorian Cardiff in 1869, there's a visual effect, the Gelth.
It was decided to shoot a live action plate
of a lady called Zoe Thorne, who was playing the part of the Gelth speaking.
We descend.
There's a 3-D apparition for her body that sort of hovers around.
And then there's a plate of Zoe shot against black
with a red light, a green light and a blue light...
so that we could actually control light direction on her face.
You've come to help.
So, actually, it's quite convincing, sort of one 3-D looking model.
But the head speaking has been shot live-action.
As the dust settles on this Dickensian drama,
where will the Tardis take the Doctor next?
I shot episode one, and that was set in the present.
And there was aliens, first ingredient of Doctor Who, the aliens.
When we got to episode two
and we're suddenly transported into the future, I realized that was another element.
This is the day the sun expands.
Welcome to the end of the world.
And then episode three with Dickens, we went to the past.
And, by then, I was getting to know the territory.
Nice to meet you. Fantastic.
Bye, then. And thank you.
Part of the fun of the series is each time you turn on at 7:00,
you just don't quite know where you're gonna be, past, present or future.
Oh, that's just not fair.