Production
The concert was conducted by Ben Foster and Stephen Bell, featuring the BBC Philharmonic and the London Philharmonic Choir, with solo performances by Tim Phillips and Melanie Pappenheim. Foster also arranged Gold's compositions for the performance. Freema Agyeman, who played Martha Jones in the third and fourth series of Doctor Who, presented the programme with guests Noel Clarke and Camille Coduri, who respectively played Mickey Smith and Jackie Tyler in the first, second and fourth series of the television programme. Catherine Tate, who played the Doctor's companion Donna Noble in the 2006 Doctor Who Christmas special and the fourth series of the programme, made a surprise guest appearance to introduce "Donna's Theme", not having been listed as being a presenter in the lineup. Sarah Walker presented BBC Radio 3's coverage of the concert.
The full concert was rehearsed on Saturday, 26 July, the day before the performance. (At the 2006 Children in Need concert in Cardiff, a dress rehearsal had been attempted on the day of the performance, but there was only time to run half of the show.) The staging included the TARDIS prop centre stage, next to the bust of Henry Wood; a wall bearing the graffiti "Bad Wolf" was placed behind the police box and the bust.
The monsters and aliens who appeared on stage and in the audience were played by artists who had portrayed them on television, including Dan Starkey as the Sontaran Commander Skorr (a role he had played in the 2008 episodes "The Sontaran Strategem" and "The Poison Sky"). In the plot of the mini-episode "Music of the Spheres", a space-time portal opened from the interior of the Doctor's TARDIS to the Royal Albert Hall. During the episode, both the alien Graske and the Doctor's musical composition "fell" through the portal. Actor Jimmy Vee appeared on stage as the Graske, and sheets of music manuscript paper dropped onto the orchestra from the flyloft above the stage. Prior to the piece "Davros and the Daleks", a Dalek (operated by Barnaby Edwards, voiced by Nicholas Briggs) appeared on stage, and Davros appeared in the audience, announcing that the Royal Albert Hall would become his new palace, and the audience his "obedient slaves". Julian Bleach, who had played Davros in the 2008 television episodes "The Stolen Earth" and "Journey's End", reprised his role under Davros' heavy makeup for the concert.
Read more about this topic: Doctor Who Prom (2008)
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