Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS
The read through for Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS was held immediately after production on
The Snowmen wrapped for the day on Wednesday, 29 August, 2012. It took place in the BBC’s Roath Lock studios in Cardiff.
Principle
filming began on Tuesday, 4 September, 2012 and ran through to Monday,
24 September. However, as the adventure contains a fragment from the
very first episode of Doctor Who (see below) it could argued that
Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS began shooting on 18 October, 1963 –
the day the Doctor’s debut was shot!
The vast majority of the
adventure was filmed in studio but the scene on the apparent edge of a
rocky ravine was shot on location, weeks after the rest of the episode
was in the can. This nail-biting sequence was shot in the Argoed Isha
Quarry in the Vale of Glamorgan on Wednesday, 28 November, 2012.
When
Clara explores one of the TARDIS’ many rooms she finds the Doctor’s cot, first seen in
A Good Man Goes to War and what looks to be Amy’s toy TARDIS from
Let’s Kill Hitler. She also comes across a magnifying glass – possibly the one used by the Doctor in the console room in
The Power of Three – and an umbrella that looks very similar to the Seventh Doctor’s brolly in
Paradise Towers.
The adventure is written by Steve Thompson who also wrote the 2011 pirate yarn,
The Curse of the Black Spot.
It’s the first episode of Doctor Who directed by Mat King whose
previous credits include M.I. High, DCI Banks and Law and Order: UK.
Gregor
van Baalen is played Ashley Walters, also known as Asher D, formerly of
the group So Solid Crew. Bram van Baalen is played by Mark Oliver who
starred alongside Matt Smith in the BBC’s 2009 series, Moses Jones.
This is the second adventure in a row where we hear the Cloister Bell. The Eye of Harmony was also referenced in
Hide – you can read about them both in
that episode’s Fourth Dimension.
Lancashire is a northern English county and its most famous towns include the seaside resort of Blackpool, referenced in
The Rings of Akhaten
and the ‘real life’ birth place of Jenna-Louise Coleman. It borders
several other counties, including Cumbria; indeed prior to the boundary
reforms of 1974, certain regions of what is now Cumbria were part of
Lancashire.
When the Encyclopaedia Gallifreya ‘leaks’ and we hear
knowledge ebbing from its container, you might just be able to catch the
familiar voice of Timothy Dalton – in other words, Rassilon himself
from
The End of Time.
Immediately after Bram tries to dismantle the
TARDIS
console we hear an audio mosaic of lines from previous episodes– some
more clearly than others… We initially catch the Doctor’s granddaughter,
Susan, from
An Unearthly Child,
revealing how the initials of TARDIS stand for Time and Relative
Dimension in Space. Also from that story, towards the end of the
sequence, you can hear one of the people she was addressing –
Ian Chesterton – expressing his astonishment at the nature of the ship! The clips from that scene are taken from:
•
An Unearthly Child, episode 1. (see above)
•
Colony in Space, episode 1.
The Third Doctor explains to Jo Grant that the TARDIS is dimensionally transcendental.
•
The Robots of Death, episode 1.
The Fourth Doctor discusses trans-dimensional engineering with Leela.
•
The Doctor’s Wife.
The TARDIS asks if ‘sexy thing’ is her name!
•
Rose.
The Ninth Doctor assures Rose that the assembled hordes of Genghis Khan couldn’t get through ‘that door’.
•
The Beast Below.
Amy Pond reflects that she is in space…
•
Smith and Jones.
Martha Jones struggles to understand the TARDIS.
