Production
Russell T Davies said that in order to inspire the design of the Beast, he sent the visual designers at The Mill images of paintings by Simon Bisley, a comics artist known for muscular grotesqueries. In the episode commentary, Davies said that an early draft of the script called for the role of the Ood to be filled by the same species as the Slitheen. Their race would have been enslaved and they wished to awaken the Beast, whom they believed to be a god that could free them. Davies claims credit for naming the Ood as a play on the word "odd".
The scenes with the Beast and the Doctor were filmed at Clearwell Caves, last seen as the Sycorax ship in "The Christmas Invasion". The Sanctuary Base 6 corridor set was recycled to become the entrance to the set for Totally Doctor Who. According to the DVD commentary, the final scene in the TARDIS where the Doctor says "the stuff of legend" was the last major scene shot for the 2006 series, and the last to feature Billie Piper (whose actual final episode had been filmed weeks earlier). It was not, however, the very last scene filmed for the season, which was the "cliffhanger" scene at the very end of "Doomsday".
Davies also mentioned that one of many unused ideas for a creature in this episode would be used in series three, this turned out to be the Toclafane from "The Sound of Drums"/"Last of the Time Lords" as revealed via Davies comments in Doctor Who Magazine Series Three Companion.
Read more about this topic: The Satan Pit
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“Perestroika basically is creating material incentives for the individual. Some of the comrades deny that, but I can’t see it any other way. In that sense human nature kinda goes backwards. It’s a step backwards. You have to realize the people weren’t quite ready for a socialist production system.”
—Gus Hall (b. 1910)
“The growing of food and the growing of children are both vital to the family’s survival.... Who would dare make the judgment that holding your youngest baby on your lap is less important than weeding a few more yards in the maize field? Yet this is the judgment our society makes constantly. Production of autos, canned soup, advertising copy is important. Housework—cleaning, feeding, and caring—is unimportant.”
—Debbie Taylor (20th century)
“Constant revolutionizing of production ... distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)