Doctor Who series 2

Supplemental episodes Two mini-episodes were also recorded: "Doctor Who: Children in Need" was produced for the 2005 Children in Need appeal, and interactive episode "Attack of the Graske" was recorded for digital television following the broadcast of "The Christmas Invasion". Tardisodes Thirteen Tardisodes, ranging from lengths of 40–55 seconds, were produced to serve as prequels to each episode. All episodes were filmed as part of the second series' production cycle. ==Casting==

Main characters 's companion in the first series.|284x284px Series 2 was Tennant's first in the role of the Doctor; his casting was announced on 16 April 2005. Following his brief appearance in the closing moments of "The Parting of the Ways" he was next seen in the Children in Need special, broadcast on 18 November 2005. "The Christmas Invasion", broadcast one month later, marked his first episode. In 2005, Tennant had starred in Casanova, written by Russell T Davies and produced by Julie Gardner, when he was offered an audition as the Doctor, which surprised him as it had not yet been publicly announced that Christopher Eccleston would not be returning to the role. He was offered the role at Davies's home, and was initially concerned that if the series was not recommissioned he would become known as "the person who played the Doctor for 35 seconds". Billie Piper continued her role as companion Rose Tyler, for her second and final series. Piper departed as a regular following "Doomsday". She would return as a regular in the 2008 series, and in a cameo in "The End of Time". She later explained that her decision was due to the unexpected success of the revival. Piper said that she "didn't like the responsibility of being a role model". Guest stars Camille Coduri continued to guest in the series as recurring character Jackie Tyler. Shaun Dingwall returned for several episodes as Pete Tyler and Penelope Wilton reprised her role as Harriet Jones for the Christmas special. Noel Clarke's character Mickey Smith, a recurring guest character during the first series, featured in several episodes as a companion of the Doctor. Zoë Wanamaker reprised her role as Cassandra from "The End of the World". Elisabeth Sladen featured in the episode "School Reunion", returning to the character of Sarah Jane Smith, companion of the Third and Fourth Doctors. Following this episode, Sladen was asked to reprise her role in a spin-off series titled The Sarah Jane Adventures. John Leeson also featured in this episode as the voice of K9. Anna Hope and Adjoa Andoh in "New Earth"; Ian Hanmore in "Tooth and Claw"; Anthony Head in "School Reunion"; Rory Jennings, Jamie Foreman, Ron Cook, Margaret John, and Maureen Lipman in "The Idiot's Lantern", Claire Rushbrook, Danny Webb, Shaun Parkes, Silas Carson, and MyAnna Buring in "The Impossible Planet" / "The Satan Pit"; Marc Warren, Shirley Henderson, and Peter Kay in "Love & Monsters"; Nina Sosanya in "Fear Her"; and Tracy-Ann Oberman, Raji James and Barbara Windsor in "Army of Ghosts" / "Doomsday". Freema Agyeman, who appeared briefly in "Doomsday", would later return to co-star as Martha Jones in the following series. and Gabriel Woolf, who appeared as the voice of The Beast in "The Impossible Planet" / "The Satan Pit", had previously appeared in Pyramids of Mars (1975) as Suktekh, a role he would reprise 18 years following this appearance in the 2024 episodes "The Legend of Ruby Sunday" / "Empire of Death". Nicholas Hoult was considered for the role that went to Jennings. ==Production==

Development replaced Christopher Eccleston who left after one series.|alt=David Tennant at a comic-con panel, in front of a microphoneFollowing the success of the opening episode of the first series, the BBC announced that Doctor Who had been recommissioned for both a second series and a Christmas special on 30 March 2005. The series was the first series of Doctor Who to be preceded by a Christmas special. The success of the Christmas special led to it becoming an annual tradition. Production on the series began on 1 August 2005 and concluded on 31 March 2006. Phil Collinson produced all episodes, with Julie Gardner acting as executive producer. Writing Russell T Davies continued to act as head writer and executive producer, contributing several episodes of the series. New writers for the show included Toby Whithouse, Tom MacRae, Matt Jones, and Matthew Graham. Returning writers Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat also contributed episodes to the series. Stephen Fry was due to write the eleventh episode, but was forced to withdraw as he could not complete the script in time. Davies consequently hired Graham, who he had been trying to hire for series three, to write "Fear Her". The villain of the episode "Love & Monsters", the Abzorbaloff, was designed by the winner of a Blue Peter contest. "The Runaway Bride", which was supposed to be the midway point of the original line-up, was moved early on to be the Christmas special for the next series, and was replaced by "Tooth and Claw", which had its roots in a story about "Queen Victoria and a werewolf", something Davies had been contemplating since 2004. The order of the first few episodes moved around a bit while being written, and were only finalised after the early scripts were partially done, in order to find the best way to develop Tennant's Doctor, especially for those viewers confused by the regeneration. The series is primarily set on Earth (though not as much as the first series was) due to the cost involved in creating another planet, Davies stated; only two stories were set on another planet. However, the team had learnt from the first series about the specific challenges faced by a sci-fi series; instead of last-minute changes to reduce CGI, plots were written in mind to use shots needing less CGI: gardens and concrete plazas, such as those employed in the then-recently released Battlestar Galactica show, which allowed an equitable budgetary distribution between stories. The second series came about quite differently from the first, not having to present every single detail to the BBC: discussions and plot changes happened as much in coffeehouses and on phone as it did in writing, and therefore the first outline had much more detail than the first series, allowing for a more connected series. Just like the first series, the second series saw the return of another classic enemy, the Cybermen. Presented with the opportunity to re-introduce Cybermen to a whole new generation, Davies' prime objective for these Cybermen was to erase the word "silver" and to instead choose to stress the terms "metal" and "steel", emphasising the loss of their humanity as a source of their monstrosity. The mythology of Torchwood is built across the series, though it did not feature in any of the early outlines or drafts for series 2 until its reveal in the finale In "The Christmas Invasion", it is revealed to be a secret organisation which possesses alien technology, and its establishment is shown in "Tooth and Claw", whose late addition to the series allowed Davies to fix it in British history by associating it with Queen Victoria . References then gradually started appearing in the script of every episode: blocked websites, mentions of buildings and archives owned by Torchwood and so on. Contemporary Torchwood is finally visited by the Doctor and Rose in "Army of Ghosts" / "Doomsday", at which point it is situated within London's Canary Wharf and accidentally allows the invasion of the Cybermen and, subsequently, the Daleks. James Strong, Dan Zeff, and Graeme Harper. Harper had previously worked on the show's original run, which included directing The Caves of Androzani (1984) and Revelation of the Daleks (1985) in the show's original run. Recording for the Christmas special began on 23 July 2005. The Clearwell Caves were used twice: the interior of the Sycorax ship, and the Beast's Pit in "The Satan Pit". Production blocks were scheduled around the directors. The majority of filming took place in Wales, Parts of the soundtrack were performed by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and orchestrated by Ben Foster, unlike in the first series, which relied almost completely on orchestral samples. ==Release ==

Broadcast The second series premiered on 15 April 2006 with "New Earth", and concluded after thirteen episodes on 8 July 2006 with "Doomsday". Doctor Who Confidential also aired alongside each episode of the series, continuing on from the previous series. A Children in Need special and an interactive episode, entitled "Attack of the Graske", were both released alongside the series. A series of thirteen Tardisodes were also produced. These mini-episodes (approximately 60 seconds in length) served as prequels to each forthcoming episode, and were available for download to mobile phones and viewable at the official Doctor Who website. The Tardisodes were recorded intermittently from 31 January to 8 April 2006. Downloads of the Tardisodes to mobile telephones were less popular than expected: around 40,000 downloads, averaging 3,000 per episode. Downloads to personal computers were much more common, with 2.6 million downloads. Iain Tweedale, new media editor for BBC Wales, suggested two reasons for the low number of telephone downloads: although the BBC provided the episodes free, most users had to pay a fee to their mobile network, and many telephones were not compatible with the broadcasts. In Canada, the series aired through the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The corporation won a Constellation Award for their assistance and contributions to the series. A special trailer for the series was produced by Red Bee Media. The trailer included both clips from the series and special footage shot for it. Various episodes received screening prior to their official release, including a Glasgow-based screening for "Tooth and Claw" and a Cardiff-based one for "The Christmas Invasion". The promotion of the second series also took other forms: interviews with cast and crew on such prestigious channels like BBC1 and ITV1; rumours and reports and the occasional interview in tabloids and newspapers such as The Independent, The Sun, The Daily Mirror, The Sunday Herald and so on; discussions about the series, sometimes with the crew, on Radio 1, Virgin Radio, Radio 4, and Radio Wales. The BBC promoted the series using their various holdings: CBBC used the theme with the broadcast of their programme, fictional websites, such as those of Mickey and UNIT, were updated before the associated episodes, the real website saw the release of mini-episodes of 2-3 mins, called Tardisodes, as prologues for every episode, along with the rare banner using in-universe references to ask viewers to check out the current episode. The major promoter for the series, aside from the BBC, was Radio Times: they released their first programme-specific Christmas double issue in 16 years, instead of the usual generic issue, for the release of The Christmas Invasion, a special section called "Doctor Who Watch", and covers and interviews with cast and crew throughout the run of the series. Home media The second series of Doctor Who was first released on DVD in five volumes, with the first volume being released in Region 2 on 1 May 2006 and the final volume on 25 September 2006. The five volumes were also released in Region 4, invariably two months after the Region 2 release. The entire series was subsequently released in a boxset on 20 November 2006 in Region 2. In print "The Christmas Invasion" was adapted into a novel by Jenny Colgan. The novel was subsequently produced as an audio book, narrated by Camille Coduri. ==Reception==

Ratings The second series of Doctor Who was watched by an average of 7.5 million viewers, which was slightly down from the previous series, which was watched by 7.9 million viewers. Doctor Who first Christmas special, "The Christmas Invasion", was watched by 9.84 million viewers upon its premiere on 25 December 2005, The series' finale "Doomsday" was watched by 8.2 million total viewers, The series high was "Tooth and Claw" with 9.24 million viewers, while the series low was "The Satan Pit" with 6.08 million viewers. Many considered the finale "Doomsday" one of the best episodes and "Fear Her" one of the worst, with one reviewer calling the series full of intense highs for both the characters and the plot. The series' CGI, the Torchwood reveal, and use of cliffhangers also received praise, However, they both still found the finale enjoyable: Wilkins calling it "supremely entertaining television", and Ruediger stating "it makes no attempts to play by any rules other than its own" and provides a "gut-wrenching farewell" for Rose. In 2021, Comic Book Resourcess Gabriela Delgado noted the series was the second-highest rated on IMDb of Doctor Whos modern run, behind only the fourth. Delgado praised "Doomsday" as "heart wrenching" and "tragic". Digital Spys Morgan Jeffery and Rebecca Cook ranked the series fourth, praising Tennant's performance; they believed the series brought new levels of success by increasing the show's popularity and securing its future. Den of Geeks Andrew Blair placed the series nineteenth overall, the lowest of Tennant's run, and believed it was a "comedown" in quality from its predecessor. Awards and nominations == Notes ==