New Earth - Production

Production

Russell T Davies said of the episode "I promised Billie an episode in which she'd be funny. So episode one of the new series is very much based around comedy for Billie."

The exterior scenes on New Earth were shot at Worm's Head on the Gower Peninsula on 26 September 2005. The hospital basement scenes were recorded at Tredegar House in Newport. The location for the pods containing the human specimens was a disused paper mill previously used as the base of the Nestene Consciousness in "Rose". The hospital scenes were filmed inside the Wales Millennium Centre. When the Doctor asks about the shop and points to where he would put it, he points to the location of the centre's own Portmeirion shop. The nightclub the Doctor and Rose take Cassandra (as Chip) to at the end was filmed at the restaurant Ba Orient in Cardiff Bay. As it was filmed during the day, the building was covered with black drapes. The exterior shots of the lift car as Rose descends to the basement are reused footage from "Rose". Cassandra's face and body was put in during post-production by The Mill.

The producer's and director's credits have been amended slightly since "The Christmas Invasion", so that now the credit is in lower case and the name of the crewmember is in capitals. This was the result of a suggestion from Doctor Who Magazine editor Clayton Hickman, who felt the previous arrangement had made the job seem more important than the crewmember.