The Stolen Earth

Plot

The Earth is teleported out of its spatial location. In order to find the Earth, the Doctor contacts the Shadow Proclamation, a universal police force. The Doctor and Donna determine that 27 missing planets—including Earth and others they learnt were lost—automatically reorganise into a specific pattern when placed near each other. Donna mentions the disappearance of bees on contemporary Earth; this allows the Doctor to trace the planets to the Medusa Cascade, an inter-universal rift.

A Dalek force, led by their creator Davros and the Supreme Dalek, quickly subjugates Earth. Davros, who was thought to have been killed in the Time War, was saved by Dalek Caan, who entered the conflict after performing an emergency temporal shift. The power needed to enter the Time War caused Caan to become precognitive at the cost of his sanity.

The Doctor's former companions—who have all encountered the Daleks before—hide in various places in Britain. Martha, Captain Jack and Sarah Jane are contacted by former Prime Minister Harriet Jones through a secret Sub-Wave Network to contact the Doctor's companions in an emergency, although Harriet is unable to reach Rose. They attempt to reach the Doctor by amplifying the Sub-Wave signal; Sarah Jane uses her supercomputer Mr Smith's computing power, and Jack and his Torchwood team members Gwen and Ianto manipulate the Cardiff Rift. The Doctor, and consequently the Daleks, receive the transmission and trace the signal: the Daleks kill Harriet; and the Doctor locates Earth in a "pocket of time".

The Doctor travels into the pocket universe and receives transmitted images of his companions in the Sub-Wave signal. After Davros hijacks the signal and taunts the Doctor about his resurrection and imminent victory, the Doctor breaks communication and attempts to convene with his companions. He lands on the same street on which Rose is searching for him and runs to embrace her, but is suddenly shot by a Dalek. Jack teleports to the street and promptly destroys the Dalek. In the Torchwood hub, Gwen and Ianto attempt to fight off a Dalek that corners them. Sarah Jane sets off in her car to find the Doctor but two Daleks find her and threaten to kill her. Jack helps Rose and Donna carry the Doctor into the TARDIS, where the Doctor begins to regenerate.

Production

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: When you see the story, it'll make so much sense that all these characters are involved. It's simply doing what kids do in their imaginations: they're experts at crossovers and would think of nothing of having their Dalek toys battling Star Wars droids. Why not have all the factions of the Doctor Who universe going into battle together?

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 Who's 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:

The season finale. Earth is transported halfway across the universe as part of a Dalek plot. These episodes feature Martha, Captain Jack, Sarah Jane, Elton, and Rose. Jackie and Mickey? Also, can I have the Torchwood team, just for a couple of days? Plus, a futuristic space station complex where lots of alien races are gathering for a conference. CGI: Bane, Krillitanes, Gelth, Isolus, everything we've got in the computer.

Prosthetics: Judoon, Slitheen, the Graske, the Moxx of Balhoon, Sisters of the Wicker Place Mat, plus a new female alien, a wise old counsellor, head of the space conference. Lots of gunfire and exterminations. And the biggest Dalek spaceship interior ever – more like a Dalek Temple. Christ almighty! The skies over the Earth need to be changed to weird outer space vistas. Also, visible in the sky, a huge Dalek ship interior. The size of a solar system! This will probably explode. Like they do.

Writing

Davies started writing "The Stolen Earth" on 10 December 2007. 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.

Davies' first drafts of the Dalek invasion and the Shadow Proclamation were fundamentally different from their broadcast counterparts. Instead of hearing the Daleks' repeated cry of "Exterminate", Captain Jack and Sarah Jane reacted to the sight of Dalek saucers. One saucer would descend towards Whitehall, destroy Big Ben in transit, and assassinate the Prime Minister, Aubrey Fairchild. 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"—originally featured "every creature [the revival of the show] ever had" 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):

Casting

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. The episode features many returning characters: Billie Piper, Freema Agyeman, Adjoa Andoh, John Barrowman, Nicholas Briggs, Elisabeth Sladen, and Penelope Wilton reprise roles for "The Stolen Earth". In addition to Tennant and Tate, Agyeman, Barrowman, Sladen and Piper are credited in the episode's opening titles, while Wilton, Andoh, Myles and David-Lloyd receive in-episode starring credits.

Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and comedian Paul O'Grady make cameo appearances on Torchwood's television screen; 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. O'Grady was given a cameo after Davies heard that he was a fan of the show; and Dawkins was added to the script by Davies when Cook suggested him to portray the "elderly professor" on a Newsnight-style television programme discussing the new planets in the sky. 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. Andrew Bullivant—who portrayed the Milkman in the episode's cold open—was given a role in The Sarah Jane Adventures serial The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith as a policeman because of his performance in "The Stolen Earth". Michael Brandon later appeared in the audio play Lurkers at Sunlight's Edge. Kelly Hunter made a further appearance as the Shadow Architect in the opening episode of Series 9, "The Magician's Apprentice".

Davros

"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. Davros was kept as a contingency plan for several occasions: the character would have appeared in "The Parting of the Ways" if the Emperor Dalek prop was too expensive; and was "even a possibility" to reside in the titular prison in "The Satan Pit". Davies wrote an origin story for Davros to clear up the character's convoluted backstory which was eventually cut because of time constraints.

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 and described the character as a whole as "a cross between Hitler and Stephen Hawking" whose "nihilistic desires" made the character "extraordinary". Bleach would later use the German leader's oratorical skills and his "dogmatic speeches" as a reference point.

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. McKinstry aimed to make Davros "bigger and scarier" by updating the "flimsy" design of the classic series:We wanted to get away from the slightly flimsy look of the earlier series. So I beefed Davros up, made him more sturdy. I also think that the reinvented Davros is unusual for the new Doctor Who because he is genuinely grotesque. Sometimes we've held back a bit with the ugliness of the monsters. But Davros is a very unpleasant-looking character, which makes his return all the more powerful.

Daleks

"The Stolen Earth" is the first appearance of the Daleks since the previous series' "Evolution of the Daleks"; consequently, the prop controllers experienced difficulty re-adapting to their roles. Davies's inclusion of the Daleks as part of the crossover was intended to create a "charged atmosphere" for the protagonists: Jack was killed by the Daleks; Rose and Martha were present at two of their apparent extinctions; and Sarah was present at their creation. The animatronic of the Dalek mutant had to be recreated for the episode, because the previous prop that was used in "Dalek" and "The Parting of the Ways" was irreversibly damaged by water when the latter was filmed. "The Stolen Earth" features two new variants of Daleks: the Supreme Dalek, coloured red as an allusion to the Peter Cushing film Dr. Who and the Daleks; and the partially destroyed Dalek Caan. Caan was described in the shooting script as: ...open, gutted, and melted, its harsh lines now curved and warped... in the middle of the warped, open shell sits a Dalek Mutant, tentacles stirring. This creature is more distorted than ever, its skin bubbled. One blind eye staring out; voice ancient, sing-song, mad. Voice actor Nicholas Briggs adopted a different voice for each model: he adopted a grandiose voice for the Supreme Dalek to fit his perception of the character as egotistical; and he adopted a sing-song voice for Caan to reflect the character's insanity as a result of entering the Time War. Briggs justified his interpretation of Caan by explaining that "[Caan] can't tell when he's happy or sad, his emphasis is very strange and he finds things funny when things aren't funny", creating a soothsayer personality with an "almost pure" mind. An expanded theory was published in Briggs' interview with Doctor Who Magazine in July 2008:

My theory on Caan is that being sucked through the Time War and blown out the other end has kind of reverse-wired–or random-wired–his brain, so all his neurons are firing in constantly changing, random, insane ways. That's why he doesn't really know what's funny or serious. He just knows the truth, and it blurts out in this odd, cryptic way. I think he's frozen in a moment of excrutiating [sic] ecstasy. When any emotion surges up inside him, it makes him laugh, whether its appropriate or not.

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".

Filming

"The Stolen Earth" features the first external location shots of the Daleks since the revival of Doctor Who in 2005, and the greatest proportion of filming undertaken at night since the show's revival: apart from the pre-credits sequence set in suburban London, all of the scenes set on Earth were filmed at night.

The two-parter took approximately six weeks in 2008 to film; regular filming began on 18 February 2008 and ended on 29 March. The first scene shot for "The Stolen Earth"—a news report that starred Lachele Carl as Trinity Wells—was filmed on 31 January 2008 in a news studio at BBC Wales' Broadcasting House. 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 26 February on Nant Fawr Road, Cyncoed, Cardiff; the Crucible Vault set in the Upper Boat Studios was used on 3 March; and scenes at the Shadow Proclamation were filmed at the School of Optometry at Cardiff University on 8 March 2008.

Filming for the episode's outdoor scenes began in the afternoon of 11 March. The first outdoor scene filmed was the cold open, on West Mound Crescent in Tonteg. Two scenes were filmed in Pontypridd on 12 March: 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. Tennant and Tate meanwhile filmed the trailer for the fourth series because they were not required on location.

The Doctor and Rose's reunion was filmed on 13 March 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. Graeme Harper insisted that the scene appear "mystical" because the characters' reunion was "the most magical moment" in the entire episode and Ernie Vincze, the Director of Photography for the show, compared the scene's feeling to the 1980s science-fiction film Blade Runner. Exterior filming for the week finished in Brook Street and the adjoining Plantagenet Street in Riverside, Cardiff, for scenes where Daleks kidnap humans for experimentation and Wilf's attack on a Dalek respectively. Scenes in the UNIT headquarters in Manhattan were filmed on the evenings of 16 March and 19 March: the first night, depicting the Dalek invasion, was filmed in a traffic control centre on Junction 32 of the M4 motorway, with the actual Dalek invasion of the building filmed in six minutes at 5:30am the following morning; and the second night, depicting Martha's escape from UNIT, was filmed in a warehouse in Nantgarw owned by the National Museum Wales. Because of a traffic accident on the first night, the production team were prepared to postpone the shoot if needed.

Post-production

The episode was given to post-production team The Mill after filming concluded. The number of effects in the first draft was almost three times larger than broadcast; consequently, several scenes—most notably, all but one shot of the attack on the Valiant—were cut from the episode. The Mill created two notable effects for "The Stolen Earth": the invasion of New York City, using reconnaissance photos and establishing shots from the filming of "Daleks in Manhattan" to create a 2.5D shot of the city; and the planetary array at the Medusa Cascade, using a fully three-dimensional model.

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 [sic] 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.

Broadcast and reception

Partial media blackout, broadcast, and ratings

The title of the episode was the last of the fourth series to be revealed; in April 2008, when the other twelve episode titles were revealed, "The Stolen Earth"'s was withheld because "it [gave] away too much"; its title was only revealed two weeks before broadcast. Like the second series finale comprising "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday", the final scene of "The Stolen Earth" was removed from preview DVDs sent to reviewers and a media blackout was imposed on any plot details from "Journey's End".

Overnight ratings estimated that "The Stolen Earth" was watched by 7.4 million viewers, approximately 38.3% of the total television audience. The final viewing figure was 8.78 million viewers, the second highest figure of the week beginning 23 June 2008; the highest was the UEFA Euro 2008 Final, watched by 8.84 million viewers. Prior to the episode's broadcast, only "Voyage of the Damned" had ranked as high; the record was subsequently broken by "Journey's End" a week later. Consequently, rival channel ITV1 suffered its second worst average audience share in the channel's history: the daily average was 10.2% compared to BBC One's 26.9% average share. The episode received an Appreciation Index score of 91 (considered excellent), the highest rating ever received by the series and one of the highest ratings ever for a terrestrial television programme. Including its viewership on the BBC iPlayer and the following repeats on BBC Three and BBC One, "The Stolen Earth" was eventually viewed by 12.86 million viewers: over two million higher than the series average of 10.59 million.

The episode depicted 07700 900 461 as the Doctor's phone number; the number is reserved by Ofcom for dramatic purposes. After transmission, approximately 2,500 viewers attempted to call the number and received a network message that explained the number was not in service. Ofcom consequently released a statement saying that the calls were free because the number did not exist.

Public interest

The episode's airing—in particular, its shock regeneration—contributed to a public surge of interest, and speculation about Tennant's replacement: actor Robert Carlyle was the bookmaker's favourite and actors James McAvoy, Jason Statham, Alan Davies, and James Nesbitt were less popular predictions. The increase of public interest peaked in the two days prior to the transmission of "Journey's End": the day before transmission saw the Seventh Doctor's actor Sylvester McCoy, Collinson, Davies, and Agyeman appear on separate daytime television shows; and coverage of the series finale was the top story in BBC News Online's entertainment section several hours before transmission. Davies attributed the amount of interest the episode created—which was greater than he expected—and the success of the new series to the measures made in keeping plot details secret and creating a "live experience":

It's exciting... when you get kids in playground talking about your story, about who's going to live or die, then I consider that a job well done, because that's interactive television, that's what it's all about: it's debate and fun and chat. It's playing a game with the country and I think that's wonderful.

Critical reception

The episode was well received by viewers, in particular, the show's fanbase. In Doctor Who Magazine's 2008 viewer poll, the episode won the awards for "Best Story", "Best Guest Actor" for Julian Bleach, "Best Monster" for the Daleks, "Best Music", and "Best Villain" for Davros; the last was won with a supermajority of the votes cast. The episode was the best-received episode of the fourth series among members of the Doctor Who Forum, with an approval rating of 92.4%. In Doctor Who Magazine's 2009 viewer poll The Mighty 200, rating all of the Doctor Who stories transmitted at the time, the story was rated thirteenth of two hundred, with an approval rating of 84.62%—one hundredth of a percentage point less than the immediately preceding episode, "Turn Left"—and rated as the best story by under-18s and fans since the show's revival in 2005.

The Guardian published three reviews of the episode. Sam Wollaston gave the episode a positive review; he thought it was a "wonderful episode" that "would be hard to top". Wollaston joked in his review about Richard Dawkins's cameo, and compared his anti-theological mannerisms to the Daleks. Gareth McLean described the end of the episode as a "genuine, jaw-dropping, outta-nowhere cliffhanger". He commended the production team for successfully suppressing information about the regeneration in an industry often stifled by leaks. Stephen Brook, of The Guardian's media blog Organgrinder, thought the episode was "unbelievably good" and "genuinely scary and exciting". He theorised about the questionable regeneration: whether it was genuine and, if so, who would portray the next incarnation of the Doctor; and which companion will die in "Journey's End".

The Independent's Thomas Sutcliffe gave the episode a negative review and expressed that the episode was "extermination without inspiration". Before the episode's transmission, he was excited about how Dawkins and O'Grady would appear, and was disappointed when they only appeared when Ianto was channel surfing. Sutcliffe expressed disbelief at the idea that O'Grady would continue to film his talk show, and with a studio audience, in the midst of planetary disaster, but nevertheless praised the cameos. After the cameos, he "began to lose interest" because he did not like the continuity and crossover elements of the episode. He criticised the re-occurrence of clichéd lines "But... that's impossible!", "It can't be!", and "Exterminate!". He closed his review by requesting the producers to "change the record".

Mark Wright of The Stage posed the question: "How on Earth do you review that?". Wright put the episode as "the most bonkers, delicious, audacious, brilliant, silly, exciting and scary piece of Doctor Who seen in the 45-year history of [the] TV series", and described it as "Doctor Who at its most show stopping, entertaining and brilliant best." In his review, Wright explained his love of crossover fiction and commended Davies for turning Doctor Who into a "small television industry". Wright complimented the way the episode was keeping with tradition, specifically aspects such as: "Daleks trundling around spaceships having shouty conversations with each other"; "UNIT [being] as useless as ever at repelling alien marauders", and the visual appearance of Davros. He described Bleach's portrayal as a "halfway house between the original version as played by Michael Wisher and the more exuberant...turn by Terry Molloy". He also thought positively of the final scenes; he commented that "the most flint-hearted must have had a misty eye as Rose found her Time Lord again and they ran towards each other in candy box slow-mo" and he cheered when the "outpouring of romance was brought to an end, as it should be in Doctor Who, by a big Dalek gun".