Production
The working title for this story was "Captain Jax". In the DVD commentary for this episode, writer Steven Moffat reveals that up until a very late stage, the nanogenes in this story were called "nanites". However, script editor Helen Raynor decided this name sounded too much like similar nanotechnological devices in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Moffat had first used the line "Life is just nature's way of keeping meat fresh" in the second series of his 1990s sitcom Joking Apart. He reused it here as he thought it was a good line, but laments that people quote lines from this episode instead of that one. The Chula ships are named after Chula, an Indian/Bangladeshi fusion restaurant in Hammersmith, London where the writers celebrated and discussed their briefs on the scripts they were to write for the season after being commissioned by Russell T Davies.
The climactic scene of the episode at the alien crash site was filmed on Barry Island, Wales. Several scenes of this story were filmed at the Vale of Glamorgan Railway sites at Plymouth Road on Barry Island.
Anachronistically, Jamie's voice is recorded on tape. While compact magnetic tape recorders were developed in Germany in the 1930s, the technology did not make its way to the rest of the world until after World War II. Wire recording was used by the BBC during this period, but recording gramophones, using wax discs as a medium, were more common. Steven Moffat acknowledges this mistake in the DVD commentary for "The Doctor Dances", but jokingly suggests that an ancestor of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart stole the machine from Germany to help with the war effort.
Both songs heard in the episode are by Glenn Miller. They are "In the Mood" and "Moonlight Serenade". In a reference to Dr. Strangelove, Jack Harkness rides the bomb while it is held in stasis.
Read more about this topic: The Doctor Dances
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