Location Reports

In one scene outside the pub Rose runs to the horse drawn hearse shouting "Oi what are you doing". When she gets to the herse she looks inside to see ???? (dead body ?). The Victorian owner ? of the herse runs around the herse and comes and grabs her from behind and suffocates her. Then with another girl they lift Rose into the hearse. The girl screams "What did you do".

The following scene (presumably) has the Doctor run out of the theatre shouting "ROSE", he calls/confronts the driver of the hearse (I think) and then climbes inside a carriage shouting "follow tat herse". During the scene Charles Dickens runs after the Doctor demanding to know "what that hobgoblin was".

Another scene has a mass exit of terrified patrons from the cinema with The Doctor and Rose in pursuit ?

There were carols being sung in another scene. There was also a lot of fog on set - is this the gaseous enemy ?

Mark Gatiss said hello to us as well ! We asked him for the title of the episode and I think he said (jokingly) The Monsters !

BTW I have been told that one episode feature 9 blue child aliens.
--Steven Morgan

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I arrived at the Marine Quarter of Swansea at 9pm, where the technical crew were busy giving the mid September streets a dusting of artificial snow. Given a keen wind from the marina, it seemed cold enough for the real thing. A reasonable sized crowd had build up outside the Swansea Museum to watch the filming. A half a dozen different horse drawn vehicles were parked by the museum, including a stunning Victorian hearse, drawn by a pair of black stallions with black feather plumes in their mains.

At 9:p.m., both Julie Gardner and Russell T. Davies arrived, followed by a gaggle of press photographers, Mark Gatiss was somewhere in the vicinity, unfortunately I did not spot him tonight. I noticed that RTD was talking animatedly to a camera at this point, and as I think it is unlikely to be another Wales Today feature, then this must be for Making Of feature for the inevitable DVD release of the new series.

Shortly afterwards, at 9:m car dropped Simon Callow off by the Swansea Museum, and a host of costumed extras came trailing after him, ready to take up their places. The first scene shot was a short establishing scene featuring Callow as Dickens being wished a "Merry Christmas" by a passer-by as Dickens walked past along a crowded street, in a flurry of acrid fake snow. There were two brief rehearsals of this shot, and then straight to a take. After a short break, the scene was filmed again from the opposite camera angle. With this shot in the can, the action moved a few yards down Gloucester Place to a scene featuring Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper.

Piper was wearing a period evening dress, consisting of a full red skirt and black basque top with a grey coat an hair up decorated with a red feather. Eccleston was in his standard brown leather jacket, black shirt and black trousers, thus ending speculation that his Doctor would appear in a more traditional doctorish outfit in this story. In this seen, the Doctor and Rose are walking towards the Queens Hotel, deep in conversation, the stop to let a horse drawn vehicle pass, when the Doctor spots a newspaper seller, and switches direction, leaving Rose to hitch up her skirts and go charging after him. During the first take, Billie tripped on the hem of her skirts and almost went flying, proving that she, like Peri in Mark of the Rani is not used to "flouncing around in skirts". On the next two takes, all went smoothly, and the actors disappeared whilst the cameras and lighting was re-arranged. When filming was due to start again, almost as soon as the director had shouted "action", a very modern burglar alarm in a nearby building filled the street with an anachronistic squeal, delaying filming for a costly ten minutes. It must have been a false alarm, as it would have been a very foolish criminal who would try anything given the large number of uniformed police officers in the vicinity.

At this point I had to make my way home, however, I was impressed by what I saw. My feeling is that this is quite early in the story. My friend Tim Farr told me that the Lee Electrical vans and a van belonging to Any Effects Limited had been seen parked outside Cardiff's New Theatre on Sunday, 19th September, and it is likely that filming inside that Edwardian building, which could easily pass as Victorian took place on that day. Given the way that Rose is dressed, and the brisk pace Callow's Dickens adopted in his scene, I speculate that the Doctor is taking Rose to see one of Dickens' famed readings, and this was filmed at the weekend.
--John Campbell Rees

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As I said, not much too see. I went down at about 7pm, which is the time they asked the pub to close in order to start adding the snow effect to the buildings. As expected, the area was closed off, but if was quite surprising how close to the "action" you could get.

If you look closely, you can make out the addition of some street furniture such as carts, crates and barrels etc. The street lamps are original for this area.
--Steven Howlett

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I'm from Swansea so I couldnt' wait to get down to the marina last night for the filming. I left work at 9pm, picked up my mate and off we went. As we entered Swansea we passed a guy dressed like Tom Baker (very funny) and proceeded to the marina filming area, trying to ask police to let us in to no avail. We witnessed a scene with Simon Callow, but I'm sorry to say that it was my mate who caused the scene to be filmed twice as his dig camera's flash was not on night mode. Oh dear. I was very impressed between takes; they looked like they were getting on graet with Chris at one point warming Billie up by hugging her closely, and at one point they were both doing funny walk impressions. All in all a very good night... if only we'd seen the TARDIS!
--Richard Hancock