Development stood down as show runner for
Doctor Who after resurrecting it after sixteen years off the air.|alt=A bespectacled man in a black jacket, waistcoat, and tie, pink shirt, and jeans, sitting with his back to a marble-effect wall. In his book ''The Writer's Tale
, Russell T Davies reveals that the plan to have only specials for 2009 was to allow the new production team, headed by new lead writer Steven Moffat, enough time to prepare for the full fifth series in 2010. David Tennant took this opportunity to appear in a stage production of Hamlet''. For practical reasons, these specials continued to use series 4 production codes. Russell T Davies announced his departure from the series as show runner, head writer and executive producer of the show on 20 May 2008, with his final episode airing in 2010. The specials not only marked an end to Davies's role as the show runner, but also Tennant's reign as the Doctor. On 28 October 2008 at the
National Television Awards during his speech after winning Outstanding Drama Performance for his work in the fourth series, Tennant announced that he would be standing down as the Doctor for the fifth series and that the specials would be his last.
Writing Davies' role in late 2008 was split between writing the 2009 specials and preparing for the transition between his and Moffat's production team; one chapter of ''The Writer's Tale: The Final Chapter'' discusses plans between him, Gardner, and Tennant to announce Tennant's departure live during ITV's
National Television Awards in October 2008. His final full script for
Doctor Who was finished in the early morning of 4 March 2009, and filming of the episode closed on 20 May 2009. Russell T Davies co-wrote "
Planet of the Dead" with
Gareth Roberts, the first writing partnership for the show since its 2005 revival. Davies also co-wrote the next episode, "
The Waters of Mars", with
Phil Ford. Writing in his regular column in
Doctor Who Magazine 416, Davies revealed that the original title for "Part One" of "The End of Time" was "The Final Days of Planet Earth", while "Part Two" was always referred to as "The End of Time". Due to the sheer scale of the story, however, it was decided that both instalments needed the same title, differentiated by part numbers, He then sent the script to his successor Steven Moffat, who is responsible for all of the Eleventh Doctor's dialogue that follows. Moffat, as incoming executive producer, also assisted in the production of the final scene.
Music Murray Gold composed the soundtrack to these episodes, with orchestration by
Ben Foster.
Filming "The Next Doctor" was filmed in April 2008 at
Gloucester Cathedral,
St Woolos Cemetery in
Newport and the streets of Gloucester, where shooting was hampered by up to 1,000 onlookers. The main setting of
Torchwood, their Torchwood Hub was also redesigned and used as the workshop for the children. "Planet of the Dead" was the first Doctor Who episode to be filmed in
high-definition, prior episodes having been filmed in
standard-definition and then
upscaled for broadcast on
BBC HD. The two major filming locations of "Planet of the Dead" were the desert of
Dubai, used for scenes on the "planet of the dead", and the Queen's Gate Tunnel in
Butetown,
Cardiff, used for the majority of Earth-bound scenes. Filming for "The Waters of Mars" began on 23 February 2009. In late February, Tennant, Duncan and other actors were seen filming in Victoria Place,
Newport. The filming took place on a city street, which the production team covered with artificial snow. The glasshouse scenes were filmed in the
National Botanic Garden of Wales,
Carmarthenshire. The first location filming for "The End of Time" took place on Saturday, 21 March 2009 at a bookstore in
Cardiff.
Jessica Hynes was filmed signing a book titled
A Journal of Impossible Things, by Verity Newman. The specials were produced as follows: ==Release==