2009 Christmas Special (Doctor who) Wiki

A two-part Doctor Who special will be broadcast during the 2009–2010 Christmas season. This will be the last story for David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor prior to the character's regeneration into his eleventh incarnation, who will be played by Matt Smith. It will also be the last Doctor Who story written by Russell T Davies, who shepherded the series' return to British television in 2005 and has been the series' executive producer and chief writer since. Davies will be succeeded as executive producer and showrunner by Steven Moffat.

Bernard Cribbins, who appeared in the story "Voyage of the Damned" and throughout Series 4 as Wilfred Mott, grandfather of Donna Noble, will act as the Doctor's companion in this two-part story.Catherine Tate, who played Donna, will also appear, as will Jacqueline King, who played Sylvia Noble, Donna's mother. Other cast members seen during filming include John Simm,John Barrowman,Jessica Hynes,Elisabeth Sladen,Tommy Knight,David Harewood,Billie Piper, Camille Coduri,June Whitfield, Barry Howard and Karl Collins.

Precise dates for the broadcast have not been announced, but the second part may be broadcast in early 2010.

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Davies described the story as "huge and epic, but also intimate." Davies had been planning the story for some time, indicating that it continued the trend of series finales being progressively more dramatic:The Christmas specials constitute Davies' last script for Doctor Who and Julie Gardner's last job producing the series. It also is the last episode Tennant is appearing in, having elected to leave with Davies and Gardner to allow Davies' successor Steven Moffat to start with a clean slate. In Doctor Who Magazine 407, Davies wrote about the night he finished the script:When asked about the emotional impact of writing his last Doctor Who script, he said, "I would have thought that when I handed in the last script I might have burst into tears or got drunk or partied with 20 naked men, but when these great moments happen you find that real life just carries on. The emotion goes into the scripts." Tennant and Julie Gardner separately said that they cried when they read the script.

The last three specials of 2009 were foreshadowed in the episode "Planet of the Dead", when the low-level psychic character Carmen gave the Doctor the prophecy:The prophecy was designed by Davies to be a classical science fiction prophecy which evoked memories of the Ood prophecy to the Doctor and Donna in "Planet of the Ood" and foreshadowed the remaining specials. Tennant explained the prophecy meant that the Doctor's "card [had become] marked" and the three specials would thus be darker—characterising "Planet of the Dead" as the "last time the Doctor gets to have any fun"—and that the subject of the prophecy was not the obvious answer:http://

The first location filming for this story 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. Hynes previously played Joan Redfern in the 2007 Doctor Who story "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood", in which the Doctor, transformed into a human with no conscious memory of his past adventures, wrote elements of his life as fiction in his "Journal of Impossible Things". The name "Verity Newman" is derived from Doctor Who creator Sydney Newman and the show's first producer, Verity Lambert; there was a similar homage to Newman and Lambert in "Human Nature." A pocket watch featured prominently in the plot of "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood", and a pocket watch is featured on the cover of Newman's book.

Filming also took place at Tredegar House in Newport, which had previously been used for the filming of the 2008 Christmas special "The Next Doctor".John Simm, who played the Master in the 2007 series finale episodes "Utopia", "The Sound of Drums" and "Last of the Time Lords", was spotted on location during the Tredegar House filming. When asked about Simm's appearance, Davies said:Filming that took place during the Easter Bank Holiday was widely covered by the British press: Catherine Tate filmed several scenes in the episode in Swansea, including one filmed in the Kardomah Café and another depicting her character getting a parking ticket. Other filming locations included Nant Fawr Road in Cyncoed, Cardiff — the previously regular location used for the Noble household — where filming on 12 April showed Cribbins wearing reindeer antlers and boarding a minibus. Filming took place in the following week on Victoria Road, Penarth, in an area which is regularly used for a location for Sarah Jane Smith's neighbourhood in The Sarah Jane Adventures. Elisabeth Sladen, who plays Sarah Jane Smith, and Tommy Knight, who plays her son Luke, were filmed on location with David Tennant.

On the night of 20–21 April, Cribbins filmed a Christmas scene on Wharton Street in Cardiff's city centre, with a large Christmas tree and brass band.

The science fiction website io9 published a photograph showing Tennant alongside Simm and Timothy Dalton, with Dalton apparently dressed in Time Lord robes. Rumors of Dalton's involvement in the specials had previously appeared in British tabloids.

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