Daleks in Manhattan - Production

Production

• All of the scenes with Martha and the Doctor in front of the Statue of Liberty were actually filmed in Wales. The production team found a wall that matched the base of the statue. This was mentioned in the accompanying Doctor Who Confidential.
• Helen Raynor is the first woman to write a televised Dalek story, and the first woman to write a story for the revived series.
• Steven Moffat was initially assigned to the two-parter but pulled out from the episodes, offering to write the series' "Doctor-lite" episode instead to make up for the inconvenience to the production team.
• Some filming for this story was done in New York for plates of the city, including images of Central Park, the Empire State Building, and the Statue of Liberty. However, on the online episode commentary for "Gridlock", David Tennant, when asked if he filmed in New York, replied, "I didn't, everybody else did!" The Confidential episode shows that The Mill also used the shoot for elements of the Majestic Theater.
• A shot supposedly in the Hooverville shows the Empire State Building, incomplete, looming over trees in the background. In fact the building is about 2 km (1.2 mi) from Central Park, much further than might be inferred from the shot. Similarly the view of the southern tip of Manhattan from Liberty Island is exaggerated to make the building seem part of southern Manhattan and close to Liberty Island. The true distance is about 8 km (5.0 mi) from the island to the building. The closest point on Manhattan is 2.6 km (1.6 mi) from the island.
• This episode includes the first location filming outside of the United Kingdom since Doctor Who's return in 2005. Several original Doctor Who stories included location filming outside of the UK: City of Death (1979) included filming in Paris, Arc of Infinity (1983) included filming in Amsterdam, Planet of Fire (1984) included filming in Lanzarote, and The Two Doctors (1985) included filming in and near Seville. Also, the entirety of the 1996 Doctor Who TV movie was filmed in Vancouver, apart from some stock footage of San Francisco and world capitals.
• Scenes set at the Hooverville shanty town were filmed at Bute Park, Cardiff.
• The dance scene was rehearsed in London but shot in the Parc and Dare Hall, in Treorchy, South Wales.
• The presence of the Daleks in this story was reported by the News of the World on November 12, 2006 and confirmed by the BBC in late December. An interview with David Tennant in TV Times indicated there would also be 'Art Deco Daleks'. However, they did not appear in either this episode or the second part, "Evolution of the Daleks".
• This episode along with "Evolution of the Daleks", "The Lazarus Experiment", and "42" was released as a 'vanilla' DVD (i.e. with no special features).