Early development "The Stolen Earth" and "Journey's End" are the culmination of all four series of
Doctor Who since its revival in 2005 and show runner
Russell T Davies' work in reviving the show. Davies stated the
story arc for the fourth series comprised "an element from every episode—whether it's a person, a phrase, a question, a planet, or a mystery [that] builds up to the grand finale", and the finale "[had] been seeded for a long time, with small but vital references going all the way back to Series One". Several of these thematic motifs are used as major plot points: the significance of
disappearance of bees, the Medusa Cascade, and the Shadow Proclamation are explained in the episode. It is the first major crossover between
Doctor Who and its spin-off series
Torchwood and
The Sarah Jane Adventures. Davies compared the crossover's conception to a typical child's imagination of a crossover between the
Doctor Who and
Star Wars universes: The fourth series finale was first planned in early 2006. Its epic scale—including the threat of the destruction of reality and large number of guest stars—was required to compensate for
Doctor Whos reduced airtime in 2009 and the imminent departure of producers Davies,
Julie Gardner, and
Phil Collinson between mid-2008 and early 2010. The episode's story was defined in early 2007, when Davies disseminated his summary of the fourth series to the production team. In his brief, he described the finale—already titled "The Stolen Earth"—as: Donna was also planned to make a cameo appearance before Tate agreed to reprise the role for the entire fourth series. Midshipman Alonso Frame (
Russell Tovey), who appeared in "
Voyage of the Damned", was present as part of the Shadow Proclamation in several drafts of the episode. Piper's appearance was almost cancelled when filming was originally scheduled during her honeymoon in January 2008.
Freema Agyeman was similarly contracted to appear in the finale when she accepted the role of Martha Jones in 2006. The Doctor's regeneration was conceived in two separate parts in mid-2007: Davies outlined the concept of two Doctors in "Journey's End" in late April 2007; and using a regeneration to end the episode was originally conceived on .
Writing File:Shadow Proclamation.png|thumb|upright|alt=The Doctor and Donna are in the foreground next to the TARDIS; in front of them appears various recurring villains and aliens from the past four series.|Davies' original sketch of his vision of the Shadow Proclamation before he rewrote the scene to be less time- and cost-intensive. His original idea was for the Doctor "to stride in with Donna [...] and walk past every creature we've ever had. Krillitanes swooping. Judoon stomping. Slitheen farting. Maybe even an Isolus fluttering past." He had spent the previous day writing Martha's appearance in New York City. He considered destroying the city but decided against it. Several days before he started writing the episode, he received a call from Bernard Cribbins, who proposed a scene in which his character, Wilfred Mott, would fire a
paintball pellet at a Dalek's eyestalk. He proposed it as a reference to the
Peter Cushing Dr. Who films that he starred in during the mid-1960s, and thought it would provide comic relief in between heavy exposition. The Dalek's response—evaporating the paintball and replying "My vision is
not impaired!"—was added after Cook reminded Davies it was "obligatory" to invert the recurring phrase spoken when a Dalek was blinded ("Vision impaired!"), and remove a weakness the Daleks had exhibited since their first appearance in the 1963–1964 serial
The Daleks. Wilfred's reaction to Rose after she blew up the same Dalek—asking her if she wanted to swap weapons—was likewise added by Cribbins by way of an
ad-lib during filming. The Shadow Proclamation—defined in the script as an intergalactic police force that occupied a "huge installation, metal sci-fi towers ranged across a series of linked asteroids, hanging in space, like a
Roger Dean painting" and a cameo by
Blon Fel-Fotch Pasameer-Day "Margaret Blaine" Slitheen (
Annette Badland) as a Jingatheen (a
Raxicoricofallapatorian family) toddler. The number of monsters and the Proclamation's bureaucratic nature would anger the Doctor and cause Alonso Frame—now employed as a "Shadow Soldier"—to aid him in filling out paperwork. Frame would be killed by the Daleks later in the story. A week after he had written the Shadow Proclamation scenes, Davies decided to rewrite the scenes heavily because of monetary and script constraints. Tovey's cameo was replaced with a scene centred on the "Chief Constable" because he was unavailable for filming, much to Davies' disappointment. The Dalek invasion was also rewritten to the version broadcast after he decided a personal assassination of the Prime Minister was uncharacteristically "diplomatic", and recycled the Prime Minister's name for "
The Next Doctor" He also expressed doubts about the Shadow Proclamation to Cook; he thought the Chief Constable was "terribly stripped down", but admitted the Shadow Proclamation was a vital element of the plot. He decided to correct the faults in the Chief Constable by renaming her the "Shadow Architect" (Kelly Hunter): Davies kept the Shadow Proclamation scenes set before the introduction of the Shadow Architect until early February 2008. Davies' submitted script was over the budget afforded for special effects, so he was required to cut the scene, even though Annette Badland had already recorded dialogue for her cameo. The rewritten—and eventually broadcast—scene had the TARDIS "land directly in the Shadow Architect's office" with four Judoon guards. Davies wrote former Prime Minister
Harriet Jones (
Penelope Wilton) into the script on —before Wilton was approached about reprising the role—because Gardner and Collinson wished for the character to have a satisfying and redemptive conclusion; Harriet Jones'
story arc thus formed a tripartite storyline which consisted of an introduction, animosity towards the Doctor, and redemption (albeit at the cost of her life). and almost cancelled plans to celebrate the New Year with his boyfriend. These problems affected his first draft of the Doctor's conversation with his companions and encounter with Davros; he dismissed it as "lame shit" which would waste
licence-payers' money, Cook reviewed the last pages of the script and suggested that the episode should air without a trailer; Davies agreed by noting that "[the BBC] never send out preview discs of the last episode" and that any advertisements for "Journey's End" could "just show lots of Daleks and a repeat of "I'm regenerating" [the Doctor's last line in the episode before the regeneration process starts]. The episode was officially submitted on : the preparation date for "The Stolen Earth" and "Journey's End". Davies discussed the episode's climax in detail in the show's companion series
Doctor Who Confidential. The climax—a Dalek ray shooting the Doctor and his consequent regeneration—was written by Davies as a pastiche of romance fiction. He compared the reunion between Rose and the Doctor to "the biggest romance [the viewer] has ever seen" and joked that seminal films such as
Gone with the Wind should have ended with a Dalek shooting the male lead, The production team realised the halted regeneration and creation of a new Doctor would create a debate amongst fans about whether one of the Doctor's twelve regenerations were used up. The production team originally declined to comment to avoid the debate; However, the 2013 Christmas special "
The Time of the Doctor", written by Davies' successor
Steven Moffat, confirmed that this regeneration did indeed count.
Casting and
humanist Richard Dawkins agreed to a cameo appearance because his then-wife,
Lalla Ward, portrayed companion and
Time Lady Romana in the late 1970s. The finale expands the usual principal cast size of
Doctor Who significantly through its numerous returning characters. As a consequence of the episode's crossover nature, the episode marks the first appearances of
Gareth David-Lloyd as
Ianto Jones and
Tommy Knight as
Luke Smith in
Doctor Who.
Eve Myles, who previously played Gwyneth in "
The Unquiet Dead", makes her first appearance as the
Torchwood female lead
Gwen Cooper. cameos by celebrities such as
Davina McCall,
Derek Acorah, and
Ann Widdecombe had been a part of each penultimate episode since the show's revival. Dawkins accepted because of his pre-existing association with
Doctor Who; his then wife
Lalla Ward portrayed the second incarnation of the Time Lady
Romana between 1979 and 1981. Gary Milner was cast as the
extra "Scared Man" after misreading the callsheet as "Sacred Man" and creating a "priest-like" portrayal of the character.
Davros (portrayed by David Gooderson) and "The Stolen Earth" (portrayed by Julian Bleach). The visual design of Davros in "The Stolen Earth" is nearly identical to the design for Genesis of the Daleks
and Destiny of the Daleks''; the only major difference is a robotic right hand. "The Stolen Earth" is the first appearance of Davros since the 1988 serial
Remembrance of the Daleks. Davies postponed Davros' return as he thought that "Davros would dominate the Daleks... like plain robots, instead of the scheming geniuses that they are", and used the previous series to establish the Daleks' individual intelligence. Davies cast
Julian Bleach to portray Davros after his performances in his
Olivier Award-winning play
Shockheaded Peter and as the Ghostmaker in the
Torchwood episode "
From Out of the Rain". To keep the return of Davros secret, the character was referred to as "The Enemy" or "Dave [Ross]" among the crew and was kept anonymous on the shooting scripts as much as possible; however, the
Radio Times called the secret "one of the worst-kept ... in television history".
David Tennant liked Davros' "Hitlerian megalomaniac" attitude and the nostalgic feeling he created—Tennant's first memory of
Doctor Who was Davros' debut in
Genesis of the Daleks—and described himself as being "absolutely captivated by [the] extraordinary creature". To prepare for his role, Bleach reviewed
Genesis of the Daleks, one of his favourite serials, to remind himself of Davros' voice. Bleach described his interpretation of Davros as that of "[a] twisted
megalomaniac, [a]
mad scientist, [and a] misguided genius" at the same time Davies, prosthetics designer Neill Gorton, costume designer Louise Page, and concept artist Peter McKinstry then met to discuss the design of Davros for the episode. They agreed to keep the visual design of Davros faithful to that shown in his debut
Genesis of the Daleks; The only major change was to replace the hand destroyed in
Revelation of the Daleks with a weaponised robotic version. An expanded theory was published in Briggs' interview with
Doctor Who Magazine in July 2008: Briggs' portrayal was well-received by the production team: Graeme Harper "loved Caan's giggling" and requested "more ... on every take"; and Davies described Caan as "the creepiest Dalek yet". The finale also introduced minor changes to the Daleks: the characteristic Dalek "plunger" was replaced with a gear mechanism for scenes that featured Davros' guard: the mechanism is used to control Dalek machinery aboard the Dalek flagship
Crucible more efficiently; and the Dalek eyestalk exhibits a minuscule twitch in scenes, a characteristic added by Graeme Harper to make them appear cautious and "on-edge". 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 on Nant Fawr Road,
Cyncoed, Cardiff; the
Crucible Vault set in the Upper Boat Studios was used on ; on 8 March 2008. Two scenes were filmed in
Pontypridd on : 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. The Doctor and Rose's reunion was filmed on 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. and the adjoining Plantagenet Street in
Riverside, Cardiff, for scenes where Daleks kidnap humans for experimentation and Wilf's attack on a Dalek respectively. with the actual Dalek invasion of the building filmed in six minutes at 5:30am the following morning; 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, and the latter primarily at Upper Boat and consisted of external shots of Sarah's house and two Daleks accosting Sarah en route to meeting the Doctor. General filming for the episode—and the two-parter—closed with Dawkins' and O'Grady's cameos: Dawkins was filmed at Upper Boat
Murray Gold concurrently composed the score for the episode. In conjunction with new cues composed for the fourth series, Gold used some of his earlier work, such as Rose's and Harriet Jones'
leitmotifs, the
Ood's "Song of Freedom" from "
Planet of the Ood", and the appearance fanfare for
Mr Smith, the latter being played
in diegesis. Gold discussed the new cues in the release of
the fourth series soundtrack: :*"'''The Doctor's Theme Season Four'''" is an orchestral and choral arrangement of the Doctor's leitmotif from the first series performed by the
BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales. The original theme was a minimalist solo performed by
Melanie Pappenheim. Davies and Collinson described the music as "President Flavia [from "
The Five Doctors"] singing out of the Time Vortex" and was intended to be used when "things get too Time Lord-y". An instrumental of the new arrangement was used at the end of "
Forest of the Dead", when the Doctor tries to save
River Song (
Alex Kingston) from death. The rearrangement—and first full prolific use of the cue since "
The Parting of the Ways"—specifically represents Rose's return and the four-series story arc's cyclic nature. :*"
The Greatest Story Never Told" is a cue used regularly in the second half of the fourth series. The cue evokes the scores of previous episodes to represent the Doctor's "past love". :*"
The Rueful Fate of Donna Noble" is a cue that first appeared in "
Turn Left". It represents Donna's realisation of her grand destiny and her demises at the end of "Turn Left" and "Journey's End". :*"
Davros" is the eponymous character's leitmotif. Gold described Davros as having a "sound motif that underscored him" in addition to "the fingernails ... voice ... [and] face emerging from the shadows". Part of the theme was taken from the score of "
Midnight" to represent Dalek Caan's prophecies. :*"
The Dark and Endless Dalek Night" is the Dalek leitmotif for the series finale, and features the BBC National Chorus of Wales. Orchestrator and conductor
Ben Foster described the track as his "defining moment" of scoring the entire fourth series. :*"
A Pressing Need to Save the World" is a rearrangement of a theme first used in the second series of
Torchwood; Gold felt it "was appropriate to bring it back" for the series finale. :*"
Hanging on the Tablaphone" is a
tabla-centric cue that is played over scenes that depicted the Doctor's companions using the subwave network to reach him. The episode was allocated a fifty-minute slot on BBC One and the only cuts to the episode were minor pieces of dialogue.
Post-synchronisation of crowd dialogue took place on and the episode's final mix took place on : the same day the episode was officially announced by the BBC. ==Broadcast and reception==