Doctor Who director Graeme Harper has reflected on filming one of the show's most memorable scenes – Rose Tyler and the Doctor's heartbreaking farewell in 2006 episode Doomsday.
Harper, who helmed the season 2 finale, was speaking at BFI Southbank's Doctor Who: 20 Years On – The Tenth Doctor event following a screening of the episode, which famously saw Rose (Billie Piper) trapped in a parallel universe and separated from David Tennant's Tenth Doctor.
The episode ends with the Doctor managing to project an image of himself onto Bad Wolf Bay in Norway, giving Rose the chance to say goodbye – and to finally tell him that she loves him.
Looking back on shooting the emotional sequence, Harper explained that Tennant and Piper were actually filming the climactic scenes surprisingly early in their time working together.
"Billie and David actually still had another five months' worth of work to do on other episodes," he explained, with episode The Satan Pit actually marking their final scene shot together.
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"They still hadn't gone through those other five or six stories of emotion that they were playing that built up to this moment. And yet, in the short time they'd worked together, they had such a fantastic bond as actors."
Harper recalled discussing with Piper and Tennant how best to approach filming the scene, with Piper suggesting that they prioritise her close-ups while the emotion was still fresh.
According to the director, Piper told him: "[She said], 'Graeme, David, if you don't mind, do me first. Do the wide shots and then do [my close-ups] first, because I'm going to [cry] within the first take, if not the second, and you may never get it again.' So that's what we did."
The sequence was filmed at Southerndown beach in Wales, with windy weather conditions ultimately contributing to the finished scene.
"So, as you saw, her hair was all over the place, and I thought, 'It doesn't matter. It's part of it,'" Harper said. "I just thought it would be fantastic just to let it all [happen]. It was raw, and so that's what we did. It was just brilliant. Bless her, she managed to get it in the two takes."
Doomsday originally aired in July 2006 and marked Piper's departure as a regular cast member, bringing Rose's two-season journey with the Doctor to an emotional close.
Of course, it wouldn't be the last time Tennant and Piper shared the screen in Doctor Who, with Rose later returning for 2008's season 4 – but the image of the pair on Bad Wolf Bay remains one of the defining moments of the modern series.
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