Paul Mount

It's a balmy Monday night in August in Cardiff, current home of Dr Who and the Hayes area of the city centre is undergoing an amusing transformation as filming continues on the sixty-minute Christmas special "The Christmas Invasion". Afternoon preparations continue into the early evening and by around 7.30pm Howell's store has once again been transformed into Henrik's (location of 'Rose') courtesy of a well-placed banner covering the Howell's sign and with posters advertising the Henrik's Christmas sale. Out on the pedestrianised area outside the store a huge Christmas tree - thirty feet or more high - is being carefully adorned with coloured lights and tinsel. Clustered around the tree are a number of market stalls selling Christmas paraphernalia and, curiously, a newspaper hoarding for the Evening Standard proclaims "Soccer Star's Divorce Shock" or words to that effect. Christmas lights stretch between the buildings, a congestion charge sign has been erected in the adjoining Wharton Street where an illuminated 'Merry Christmas' sign hangs between Howell's and its neighbouring building. For a while not a lot is happening - production crew are hurrying to and fro and there are security guards and Police aplenty. There's a noticably large crowd gathering - dozens of people, many clearly hardcore fans, others families with young children, others just new fans drawn to the first new series. They're all happily hanging on to security barriers (again more numerous this year) slyly taking photos of the set and the props. As the night draws in there are signs of increased activity. Filming is due to start around 10.30pm, I overhear - and I also hear that our hero, Mr Tennant, won't be here tonight although he was present - in civvies - watching filming and happily signing autographs earlier in the evevning at another nearby location.

The action moves to Wharton Street. Several scary burly men in Santa costumes take position outside the door to Henrik's. A red London bus is manoeuvred into position in the perilously-narrow street and a coach disgorges what seems like a hundred extras dressed in their best winter clothes. Some of them are laden with Christmas parcels. Billie Piper and Noel Clarke, who were apparently on set earlier rehearing an action scene (see an earlier post in this thread) are back, getting on brilliantly as they repeatedly rehearse a scene where the bus crawls along Wharton Street and Billie and Noel walk hand-in-hand through the throng of shoppers. It's midnight and the scene is repeated until director James Hawes is satisfied. Billie is delighted to spot an old friend at the edge of the set and she spends a few minutes animatedly chatting to him. Producer Phil Collinson watches the action from a nearby monitor. Over-enthusiastic photographers are distracted by a huge arc light shone in their direction and one photographer with a particularly long lens balanced on a tripod is thwarted by two production members who block his view by holding up two huge white boards!

That's it for tonight, I'm afraid.

Chronic Hysteresis

Ok, here's what I saw [on August 8]. I got there at 8pm and the crew were setting up still. Around 9.30ish Billie and Noel turned up and went into rehearsal mode later on. There was a coach-load of extras too who were all dressed into winter coats and they were givn shopping bags full of prop-presents. Filming started after 11pm. The group of santas stood outside the Dept store pretended to play trombone (sound to be dubbed later). Billie and Noel walked up the street and Billie and Noel walked up the street through the xmas shoppers. Although I didn't see this next bit being filmed, I did see Billie and Noel running through, as though chased, through the market stalls in rehearsal. The only other bit of action I saw was on the monitor which was of the boom-arm coming down fast to one of the santas...whether that was an arty shot or whether it could be some kind of aerial threat I'm not sure. I stayed til 2pm as Billie and Noel were sat down whilst most of the equipment was taken down prior to a final bit of filming that they were to be in (perhaps the running around the stalls bit?).

So, you see, a bit light on the story itself. At a guess I would say they got about 5 minutes in the can...and believe me, watching 6 or more takes for a 20 second section of film is not nice when it's cold, you're tired and there are the Cardiff chavs shouting exterminate. Which reminds me...there were a few police there which was quite a good idea I thought. A tthe start there were about 40 fans but as the action didn't start til about 11pm, it was a big ask to expect people to hang around. There were approx 3 press photographers there, one from Starburst mag. They had HUUUUUGE lenses and probably got some good shots as the filiming was near enough but maybe a little too far for pocket-digitals cameras. I have to say, they were well behaved....although their shutters were lots louder than my digital, whilst filming was taking place. Fan-wise, people kept to those they knew mainly but there was a wide range of ages from a baby to about 60ish.

John Williams:
As luck would have it, filming was taking place today (and has been since the early hours apparently - we were there just after 3pm) right opposite an ice-cream parlour, in the former bistro bar/restaurant under Signor Valentinos Italian Restaurant.

We approached the bay from the direction of the Millennium Centre. My suspicions and excitement were first roused when to the left, in front of the Pierhead building (Red church), we spyed an open-backed rental van containing all sorts of standard furniture, lighting equipment, and two large police-box sized colour prints of the TARDIS interior (presumably interior rear wall prints for the TARDIS prop).

As we made our way round towards the bistro area and Terra Nova bar where Boomtown was filmed last year, huge blackout screens had been hung from the railings around Signor Valentinos, obscuring everything in the building beneath. Despite our best efforts, we were unable to glimpse anything within. However when we arrived, there was quite a scary looking character wearing a black hooded cloak with a whitened face and dark eye sockets outside the screen waiting for his queue. We were then rewarded further when both Billie and David came out at that moment to take a break. David was wearing his new crumpled brown pin-stripped suit (no coat) and cool shades, Billie in tight black trousers, a purple silk short sleeved blouse and in full make-up with her hair tied up. There were also a couple of kids wearing modern clothing who Billie and David spoke with and also some guys wearing DJ's and black bow ties.

A couple of minutes later they all disappeared back inside. We chatted up the guy closest to us, who happened to be the location manager. We spoke about the Duffryn High School shoot, and he confirmed it for us as being for Doctor Who. He was then called away to choose a TARDIS landing spot, just as Billie and David broke out from the screens again (David this time wearing his coat). A red Volvo estate had already reversed up, and they both dashed over to it and jumped in the back, apparently off to a late lunch.

David certainly looks great in his new costume, and I think he likes it too. There was a very noticable and accentuated degree of coat flapping going on as he made his way to the car! My daughter was chuffed as she managed to catch a wave from Billie before she fastened her seat belt. The car then drove off, and the location manager told us that they would be returning to Newport later for some filming in one of the squares (didn't catch the name, regrettably).