"Doctor!" "SHE BREATHES HEAVILY" "Come on, I've found us a spaceship." "It's into deep space and deep trouble as the Doctor makes a splash in his latest adventure." "And right in the thick of it is his new companion, Amy Pond." "SHE SCREAMS" "Karen brings so much of herself to the role as Amy." "All that sort of mad, kooky energy that she has in her life." "I'm really very fond of her, actually, I have to say." "Battling sinister Smilers and solving the mystery of the Starship UK, she proves she's no ordinary girl." "Just stop." "Whatever you're doing, stop it now." "Karen just knocked it out the park." "She was brilliant." "Wait, no." "No!" "So, join Doctor Who Confidential, as we follow actress Karen Gillan to find out what it's really like to take on this challenging role." "Doctor Who always provides its cast and crew with a universe of challenges, and for new companion Amy Pond, it's an episode packed full of firsts." "Now do you believe me?" "OK, you're box is a spaceship." "It's really, really a spaceship." "We are in space." "Woo!" "SHE LAUGHS" "Walking onto the TARDIS for the first time was just... it was just crazy." "I mean, it's massive and beautiful and there's so many fiddly things and gadgets and so much going on." "That's interesting." "So we're like a wildlife documentary?" "If they see a wounded little cub, they can't just save it, they've got to keep filming and let it die..." "It's got to be hard." "When I first walked on, I actually saw Matt who was just finding his way round everything, and I just thought, "Wow, he looks like this mad professor in his haven." It was really cool." "I think Amy's going to have a great time in the TARDIS." "She's going to have fun, you'll see." "Doctor?" "Oh!" "'Welcome to London Market." "You are being monitored.'" "Episode two is our first journey into outer space and it's Amy's first time away from her own world." "351, take seven." "B Cam only." "And action!" "Oh!" "Well, close the door." "I'm in the future." "Like, hundreds of years in the future." "When I first walked on the set, I was in a bit of wonder and awe." "I was like, "Wow, this is amazing!" ""It's huge and really cool", so I just channelled a bit of that into how I played Amy's first reaction when she walks onto the set of just, like, wonder." "And this is her first experience on a spaceship and her first adventure with the Doctor, so it's all brand new to her and really exciting and fresh, so I just kind of beared that in mind." "Look, isn't it wrong?" "What's wrong?" "Use your eyes." "Notice everything." "What's wrong with this picture?" "Is it...the bicycle?" "Bit unusual on a spaceship." "There's a girl in a nightie." "Oh, my God." "I'm in my nightie." "Everything is slightly surreal, because it's set on a spaceship or in a strange world or something." "Now, come on, look around you." "Actually look." "'London Market is a crime-free zone.'" "Life on a giant starship, back to basics, bicycles, washing lines, wind-up street lamps, but look closer." "Secrets in shadows, lives lead in fear, society bent out of shape on the brink of collapse, a police state." "Excuse me." "We wanted a brand-new adventure with a different adversary, where you didn't really get it and something you hadn't seen before." "Something utterly strange." "But at the same time, connected to Amy." "And the way it's connected to Amy is it's her country out in space." "It's the whole of Britain, but it's been bolted together and it's floating in the sky." "HE LAUGHS" "A police state, do you see it yet?" "Where?" "There." "The Doctor sort of discovers more and more about this very strange place that he's in." "One little girl crying, so?" "Crying silently." "I mean, children cry, cos they want attention, cos they're hurt or afraid." "When they cry silently, it's cos they just can't stop." "Any parent knows that." "Are you a parent?" "Hundreds of parents walking past and not one is asking her what's wrong, which means they already know and it's something they don't talk about." "Secrets, they're not helping her, so it's something they're afraid of." "Shadows, whatever they're afraid of, it's nowhere to be seen." "Which means it's everywhere." "It's Amy that is at the centre of it, in a sense, because it's Amy finding her feet, understanding who the Doctor is and this amazing roller-coaster ride that she's about to go on." "She's like Wendy in Peter Pan, wearing a big, silly nightie and a dressing gown and slippers, so it really underlines the idea that she's gone back to her childhood, on the night before her wedding, before she's supposed to grow up," "she's flown off with Peter Pan to have an amazing, mad adventure on a fairytale spaceship." "So is this how it works, Doctor?" "You never interfere in the affairs of other peoples or planets unless there's children crying?" "Yes." "And roll, please." "'The first priority' was to find a location that obviously worked as a Starship UK." "That's a challenge in itself, but, fortunately, Steven's description of that particular set was so specific that we were able to find that quite early." "The canvas we had for that in terms of the space was already very good, but it needed to come alive with design and art direction and lighting." "That's always a challenge." "And more than ready for the challenge are the Doctor Who art department team." "But it's no easy task converting a disused factory into the Starship UK." "Today, we're in Mamhilad, which is a location we use quite a lot in Doctor Who, it's our fail-safe industrial space." "# You found a sweater on the ocean floor" "# They're going to find it if you didn't close the door." "# You and this model sit outside at the side" "# In a house on a street they wouldn't park on the night. #" "We've got our scenic artists here who are doing all the painting you can see on the walls." "We've got our set decorators here, who are putting in the decorations, hanging the bunting, dressing the market stalls." "We've got our practical electricians who're wiring up all the practical lighting, the street lights." "The spaceship is it's London - Oxford Street, basically." "But it's imagining that if you had left Britain or the world in hurry, what would you take with you?" "So we've got an exterior pub, which is the Queen Vic straight off Albert Square." "We've got all the traffic lights and a hairdressers, we've got a barber's shop, a zebra crossing." "A lift shaft that looks like a London Underground tube station, we've got taxi ranks." "It really is trying to create London everyday life, but on a spaceship." "We've been here two weeks and now the dressers have come in and they've got two days to fill in the detail which is quite a tight schedule, but those are the sorts of schedules we work to." "After all the hard work of the art department, the crew finally have a fully convincing starship street to shoot in." "I did want to shoot that scene in a big space." "I wanted the Doctor and Amy to make a real journey physically walking through and for the audience to go with them and that needs a lot of space, it needs a lot of dressing and a lot of people to populate it and create the society they're in." "And the task of ensuring that the Starship UK looks fully populated falls to the Third Assistant Director." "Copy that." "We've got 60 crowd in and a few kids." "It's quite a big space to fill." "In terms of the people, this is definitely the biggest set-up so far." "We give you your cue to go through." "And you'd just be going in a nice banana around the benches and down into that bottom corner." "Poor Heddi, who's the Third, she's got quite a tricky job." "She's got to get them all moving across each other at different points so me and Amy can fleet round." "You're just helping them, showing them your lovely tomatoes and carrots." "Because there's plenty of stalls, we've been getting vegetable stalls, so we've got a vegetable stall holder and people just generally shopping from him." "We've got lots of rickshaws, so there's been a bit of taxi action up and down, trying to make it look like a busy London street." "We've had people cycling around, a lovely bric-a-brac stall, so a real Del Boy market trader." "We've got a lovely chicken stall, so we had an allocated chicken lady." "We had a load of the eggs and some real chickens so it's generally trying to replicate a busy London street and market scene." "It's thrilling, it looks like they've walked into a vintage clothes shop and come out and everyone looks very cool." "You realise what's very iconically British, they've really got that." "It felt like you really were in it, because there's so much going on around you, it was great." "CREAKING" "But Amy wasn't expecting the Starship UK to be quite as mad as this." "Say what?" "!" "Say whee!" "AMY SCREAMS" "# Splish-splash, I was taking a bath" "# Long about a Saturday night" "# A rub dub just relaxing in the tub" "# Thinking everything was all right" "# Well, I stepped out the tub put my feet on the floor" "# I wrapped the towel around me and I opened the door" "# And then splish, splash!" "# I jumped back in the bath" "# Well, how was I to know there was a party going on?" "# They was a-splishing and a-splashing" "# Reelin' with the feelin'" "# Moving and a-grooving Rocking and a-rolling. #" "Swallow reflex!" "We were on the tongue of a giant whale." "It was really fun, we were just messing around the whole time throwing cabbage at each other and things." "What I'm doing is providing 2,000 litres of slime, which is just really horrible goo mixed up with a food additive which is completely safe and it's coloured a sort of white colour and what I'm going to do is dress that over the set" "so both Karen and Matt will fall into the slime and get covered in it unfortunately." "In addition, I'm going to doing lots of steam." "Just to hide the fact that it's a set and it's only 12 metres wide." "Just to create a sort of atmos effect in there." "Where are we?" "About 600ft down, 20 miles laterally, puts us at the heart of the ship, I'd say..." "Lancashire." "Keep doing that, particularly this joint here, Chris." "This one over here." "Danny, keep thickening it up." "I will." "That set was..." "It was quite, um, demanding for the artists." "They had to slide down a tube, and land six ft below on a very slippery surface, but we made sure we had our stunt co-ordinator there." "So it's feet..." "Slanting." "So you've landed in that position, as soon as you land, roll out." "Did you just give yourself a bruise?" "For you, if you're going first..." "I'm clear for the right, I'll try my right." "It was like a fairground ride, they'd built a thing where you walked up, like an old helter-skelter, so you'd walk up the back." "Yeah, it's like a fairground ride, I love it." "You normally pay to do this." "I know." "This is when Doctor Who's brilliant." "And at the top of the stairs, there was just this hole, and it was basically a slide leading down on to loads of crash mats." "I'm scared." "So really, it's a six ft drop." "Honestly, by the time you're thinking, "Oh, my God..."" "So the drop's all right?" "Yes." "Yes." "Can't wait." "We both looked at each other as we do on a lot of occasions with this job and go, "This is our job, this is what we do, right?"" "If you naturally go the other way, then go the other way." "Head-first?" "No, if you land..." "Head first?" "What?" "I was thinking about it." "Tell you what, let's go head-first backwards." "I want to see this." "So basically, we had to get our whole body in and then hold on to this pole thing." "Wish me luck!" "And then it was pitch black, so you were just plunging into nothingness, it was so scary." "219, take one." "A Camera, mark." "Close on that set." "OK, here we go, everybody." "You get on the ride and then you'd hang on the back and go..." "Woom!" "'Into all the goo.'" "Aaaargh!" "Let me know when Karen's set." "OK, that's Karen set." "And, three, two, one." "Karen." "Action." "Then basically they said, "Action"" "and I was like, "I can't let go, oh God," and I just did it." "Karen." "Arrrgh!" "Oh, God, it was like being on a ride at a funfair or something." "And then, on the crash mats, there was loads of gloopy stuff, it was basically a pool of horrible gloop, full of cabbage and tomatoes and everything and we spent the whole day in this pool of gloop." "The normal entrance is..." "You were so preoccupied with trying to stand up that actually I found that the acting was coming out quite naturally and realistically without having to think about it, because my mind was preoccupied, cos we were sliding all over the place." "The normal entrance is... ..closed for business." "We could try though." "Don't move." "Too late." "It's started, swallow reflex." "What are you doing?" "Vibrating the chemoreceptors, please have chemoreceptors." "Chemo what?" "The eject button." "Why would a tongue have an eject button?" "Think about it." "And that was great for the first hour and then after about, well, the first three hours, and then come hour four or five, when we were literally covered in slime, cabbage and sand and everything, it was getting quite cold." "Could it be quicker or is it quite nice to just enjoy it?" "No, no, it's great." "Let's take it from..." "So get in position, let's take it from high-speed air channel." "All the way through." "They had a lot of fun, but I think, by the end of it, they were a bit tired and really wanted to get a shower." "Great fun, I want to do one of the stage dives at the end." "I think probably going up and down a slide for most of the day and jumping up and down what in effect was like a bouncy castle, they probably did enjoy it, I think I'd enjoy it." "Right then." "This isn't going to be big on dignity." "Geronimo!" "Amy Pond is, I don't know, I've sort of fallen in love with Amy Pond." "# Fell in love with a girl I fell in love once... #" "You're the little girl?" "# She's in love with the world" "# But sometimes these feelings can be so misleading. #" "She's kind of got this inner confidence and she can really just handle herself in situations." "Amy, no, no." "What are you doing?" "Who are you?" "She's sassy and she's sexy and she's funny." "She likes to go out there, have a good time and grab an adventure by the scruff of the neck." "# Can't think of anything to do, yeah" "# My left brain knows that all love is fleeting" "# She's just looking for something new" "# Well, I said it once before but it bears repeating now. #" "It's minging." "She's pretty, she's sassy." "Watch and learn." "She's got boundless energy and she's not frightened to speak her mind." "Why did you say six months?" "Why did you say five minutes?" "She's as bonkers as the Doctor in many ways." "What are you going to do?" "What I always do." "Stay out of trouble." "She's a redhead, feisty seductress... ball of wit!" "What's so brilliant about it is he met her as a little girl, so he's so endeared by her and has such affection for her." "Are you're a policeman?" "Why?" "Did you call a policeman?" "Did you come about the crack in my wall?" "'When the Doctor regenerates,' he normally does it in front of somebody - his regular companion, his best friend." "The job is for him to convince that person, and therefore us, that he's the Doctor." "This time, we had a new companion and new Doctor, that couldn't happen." "So I came up with the idea of this girl who meets him briefly when she's seven and again 12 years later, so that for her, he's been the Doctor for ever." "She's always known him as the Doctor, she knows him as the Doctor better than he does." "The Raggedy Doctor, all those cartoons you did when you were little." "The Raggedy Doctor, it's him!" "She's the girl who was left on her own by the Doctor aged nine and who has built up a lot of inner strength." "We meet her when she's a little girl and there's something mysterious about her, something slightly "other-worldly"." "You all right, mister?" "No, I'm fine, it's OK." "Who are you?" "I don't know yet." "I'm still cooking." "Does it scare you?" "No, it just looks a bit weird. 'She's a real challenge for the Doctor, I think,'" "Amy Pond." "One of the biggest he's had so far in a companion." "Clap, clap, scoop and dive, back flick, double click." "Portraying Amy Pond falls to actress Karen Gillan, who works hard to bring new qualities to the role of the companion." "Karen, I believe, has really brought a lot to this role." "I think she's brilliant." "She's fantastic." "It doesn't seem to matter what we throw at her." "She lights up the screen whether we ask her to be covered in Star Whale vomit, or try and save the world wearing only her nightie." "She's equally fantastic." "I'm about to do a bit of a scary fall and I've got a board up my back." "So should be fun!" "God, I think Karen brings so much of herself to the role as Amy." "All that sort of mad, cooky energy that she has in her life." "Just "Karen-ness", Karen madness, and that feisty, Scottish, Inverness, "don't mess with me"." "There's all that in there as well." "We become closer every day." "I'm very fond of her." "Karen can kind of do everything." "I think the thing that we probably enjoy most about her is how funny she can be." "She's a natural, natural comic, while looking completely stunning all the time." "There was almost as much speculation about who we were going to cast as the companion as there had been about the Doctor." "As ever, we were led by our nose and when Andy Pryor, Doctor Who's brilliant casting director, showed us tapes, we were just led by the person who kind of nailed the part, basically." "Steven had some fairly clear ideas about who Amy was and where she was from, but in terms of the development of her character, a lot of that is influenced by the actress playing the part." "So I was interested in bringing in people who could grab the part and run with it and do something interesting with it." "The first thing you do is go to Andy Pryor and say, "Who do you think it should be?"" "And he did turn up with a list of just brilliant actresses." "We did not see one single bad audition for Amy Pond." "They were all superb." "Really, really brilliant." "All actresses I would want to work with at some point." "Just perfect." "It's difficult because there's no one thing that qualifies anybody for the part." "It's more about somebody doing something surprising with it, and the people that we saw were all able to do that, but" "Karen clearly was way ahead of the pack in terms of her inventiveness." "My agent called me up and said, "They want to audition you for the companion role, the new companion."" "I was like, "Ooh"." "It was very exciting." "I didn't think I would get it, so I just thought, "I'll go for it and see what happens."" "We watched person after person after person and, halfway through the day, Piers took me aside and he said," ""I'm really worried cos we've seen all these brilliant people," ""but I just don't think we've found her."" "Piers always laughs at me about this because I said, "It's fine," ""it's absolutely fine." "She's coming up last, she's called Karen Gillan," ""I just know she's the one."" "He said, "How do you know?" "You've only seen her for two minutes on tape." I said, "She's the one."" "The very last person we physically saw for the part and the very first person I saw on tape for the part was Karen Gillan." "On tape, she first of all did it in an English accent, then in a Scottish accent, her own accent, and I thought, "She's really good," ""it's just a shame that she's so wee and dumpy."" "Then I got a recall to come in and read it with Matt." "That was quite funny, because I wasn't allowed to tell anyone what I was auditioning for, not even the people in the reception of the place that I was going to, so I had to give them a code name of "Panic Moon"." "It's actually an anagram for "companion", which is quite clever." "Then when she was about to come into the audition, I nipped out for a minute, and I saw Karen walking along the corridor towards me - she's 5'11", slim and gorgeous." "I thought, "That will probably work."" "And then she gave an absolutely stunning, hilarious audition." "Steven Moffat was there and the execs and Matt and casting director, so it was quite daunting walking in." "We'd seen seven or eight people and then Karen walked in and we went, "Yes, got her!"" "And we all just flustered around the room after, thinking, "That's easy, that's it, that's her."" "I actually found out that day, which was very nice." "That evening, I got the call saying, "You've got it."" "I started screaming like an idiot, but it was really nice because it wasn't an agonising wait." "It was so lovely having this process to share with her and doing it together, both being new." "It's such a mad thing, Doctor Who." "It's such a tricky and brilliant show to make." "It's lovely to share that journey with someone." "We went through all these milestones together." "The first read-through, and then we did our first day on set then we got our first block finished." "You know, we have all these really huge things in life that we share." "It makes you quite close." "Yeah, she's a funny soul." "Hey-hey!" "Result!" "Coming?" "No!" "Suit yourself." "Stop!" "You mustn't do that!" "I was looking for something a bit more Roald Dahl in a way, something madder and more fairy-tale." "Fairy tale is a very important tone for Doctor Who." "When we talk about dark fairy tales, it is probably the darkest and most fairy-tale-like episode that we've done." "It is a vision of Britain far in the future where children mysteriously disappear down through the floors of lifts." "Fairy tales are the way we tell our children that there are people out there who might want to eat them." "They are warnings in fantasy form of the reality and the dangers of the world." "I don't mean Doctor Who is like a fairy tale." "I mean it literally is." "Far more than it's a science fiction show, it's a fairy tale." "The smiling fellows in the booths, they're everywhere." "But they're just things." "They're clean." "Everything else here is all battered and filthy." "But no-one's laid a finger on those booths, look." "Ask Mandy, "Why are people scared of the things in the booths?"" "The first time Steven delivered the script and Piers and I read it, his first description of the Smilers, we just thought," ""These are going to be good, these are going to be scary."" "# Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag" "# And smile, smile, smile" "# While you've a Lucifer to light your fag" "# Smile, boys, that's the style" "# What's the use of worrying?" "# It never was worthwhile" "# So pack up your troubles in your old kit bag" "# And smile, smile, smile. #" "The Smilers are terrifying." "They are these horrible things." "If you do something that's wrong or forbidden, their head twists round and then they turn into this horrible, frowning, dummy thing." "And when they're demonic, you're in trouble." "You're about to get arrested and something's awful's going to happen." "So they're bad." "I imagined it like a fortune teller's booth." "I didn't want a sort of mechanical, obvious robot." "I wanted something that was like something you find in a fairground." "One of those things that you think was meant to look friendly and pretty but ends up looking horribly sinister cos it's a bit old, a bit decayed and a little bit too bright." "I've always found that terribly scary." "A painted-on smile is pretty much as bad as a painted-on snarl." "It's a horrible, sinister thing." "You wanted the idea that this spaceship is attempting to be reasonable, attempting to treat you kindly." "Here's a smile, here's a frown." "But actually, it's all pretty frightening." "And it fell to the monster-makers to ensure the scripted Smilers turned out just as scary on screen." "So the first stage is the design process." "This comes from descriptions that are given in scripts." "Then, out of clay, we'll sculpt a Smiler face." "Then comes the moulding stage, and it's from this mould that all of the master masks are then produced." "So we took the Smiler head as a basis and then adapted each one, so we would then get our frowner and then our demonic face." "This is the face of the happy version of the Smiler, which has been made of fibreglass." "This is the mould." "So we'll just take it out of here." "I'm just going to basically trim that off and tidy it all up." "After they've been cast out, they get cleaned up and primed, then we move on to the next stage, the art working stage." "They then go through a process called crackula, which is basically a glaze which is painted on and you get this fine, kind of aged, paint-crack texture which would take absolutely ages to paint in by hand." "From there, then we go on to the shoot, and that's when all the hard work gets shown on camera." "DEEP VOICE:" "Well done, Mandy." "Bad boy, Timmy." "Zero." "And...action!" "And working alongside the sinister Smilers are the mysterious Winders." "What happens is one of the coolest bits of CGI in history, and it starts off with me." "I don't want to give it away, but my head kind of turns round to reveal another Smiler." "How can there be Smilers?" "Half-Smiler, half-human." "And they've got the demonic smiles on the back of their face." "It was like he had two heads, basically." "It was a seamless kind of prosthetic." "He had to act with his back to us with the Smiler face on the back of his head." "He did really well, I think." "Very spooky seeing a man walking round set with two faces." "He basically had to spend large portions of the take doing this, because the Smiler head is facing this way, so his head is on the back of it." "The reason we did that is that we shot the live-action element with him with his normal face, and then we took him to one side and put him on a turntable, clamped him into a little wooden pedestal to keep his head still," "and we literally swivelled him around against a green screen." "The finished result will be that his head will just spin in the hood to the demonic Peter." "Why do the Winders become Smilers?" "Because I think, if I'm watching Doctor Who," "I'm aching for that to happen." "I want that head-revolve to happen at an unexpected moment and for you to realise that someone who just looked human is actually sinister and terrible." "That must happen in Doctor Who." "It's an absolute rule." "Whatever you creatures are, I am still your queen." "Liz Ten is quite a mysterious character at the beginning of the episode." "# I was five and he was six We rode on horses made of sticks" "# He wore black and I wore white" "# He would always win the fight Bang bang, he shot me down" "# Bang bang, I hit the ground Bang bang, that awful sound" "# Bang bang, my baby shot me down Down, down, down... #" "The character of Liz Ten is a sort of gun-toting," "Lara Croft-style queen." "Gold guns, great big cape." "Can't mess around with her." "COCKNEY ACCENT: 'A bit of London in there'." "I'm the queen, mate." "Basically, I rule. 'She's actually the queen of Starship UK,' hence Liz Tenth." "I am the highest authority." "She's a fiery, lively, sci-fi heroine-type character." "I said now!" "# I shot you down Bang bang, that awful sound" "# Bang bang I used to shoot you down. #" "Playing a mysterious stranger is always pretty tricky cos it's just different shades of enigma, isn't it?" "But Sophie made it so cheeky and so funny and almost saucy." "A lovely performance." "Sophie Okonedo's been on my list for being in the show for a long time now, but she's always incredibly busy, understandably, and I thought we'd never get her." "Then this part came along and we thought, you need someone with real kind of status, someone with real impact, someone with a very strong will, so that narrowed the list down fairly hugely, and also we were quite keen in episode two to have somebody" "who would bring a little bit of kudos to that episode, who had the status to play the queen." "That was a treat working with her." "She's very cool, brilliant actress." "I learnt a lot off Sophie." "Placing her in this modern world but then great authority, regalness, you know." "This ship is travelling through space." "The impossible truth, Doctor." "We're travelling among the stars in a spaceship that can never fly." "How?" "I don't know." "At first, she just thinks she's on this mission to discover what her government are up to." "There's the darkness at the heart of this nation." "It threatens every one of us." "Help us, Doctor." "You're our only hope." "Liz Ten wears a mask because, as she says, she's the queen - everyone knows her." "So if she's going to go out and investigate crimes and stuff, she has to wear a disguise." "I'm sure Elizabeth II does that all the time." "Although I always found it kind of curious that she's the only one that seems to be wearing a mask, and you really kind of stand out if you wear a mask!" "But anyway, she does it to be kind of undercover." "That's her way of being discreet, which says a lot about Liz Ten." "In the course of this episode, Liz goes on a rather terrifying journey, cos it ends with her realising she's been on this journey many, many times before, and it will always end at this choice between abdicating" "and forgetting, and in the past, she's always chosen to forget." "She's made the choice to forget how the ship is flying and what's keeping the ship afloat." "Towards the end, it gets revealed what the truth of the situation is." "She's been living a kind of Groundhog Day, where she's been living the same... she's been doing the same thing over and over again for 300 years." "She think she's 50, but she's actually over 300, so that was a bit of a shock." "No, it's ten years." "I've been on this throne ten years." "Ten years." "The same ten years over and over again, always leading you...here." "'She sort of falls apart a bit.'" "She has a sort of crisis, I think, in the middle of it all, especially when she sees the video image of herself talking to her now, 300 years ago." "And, in that clip, she's much posher and much more queen-like, and, obviously, she's got more common as the years have gone past." "'If you wish our voyage to continue, 'then you must press the forget button." "'Be again the heart of this nation, untainted." "'If not..." "press the other button." "'Your reign will end, the star whale will be released and our ship will disintegrate." "'I hope I keep the strength to make the right decision.'" "She discovers that she is the architect of the mystery she's trying to uncover." "So does that character develop?" "In a strange way, she does, but develops in circles, always resetting, always faced with this appalling conundrum she can't see a way out of, which even the Doctor really can't see a way out of." "The Doctor may not be able to find an easy way out of this conundrum, but, thankfully, Amy sees things differently." "Today, we are in a lovely old abbey and we are filming the kind of climax scene of episode two, where we discover that the star whale is actually trapped in the torture dungeon of Starship UK." "What's that?" "It's the gas pedal, the accelerator." "Starship UK's go-faster button." "Because they think that it will help the starship go faster and things if they trap it and torture it." "So it's a really sad scene, but also it's quite a heroic scene for Amy." "Three options." "One, I let the star whale continue in unendurable agony for hundreds more years." "Two, I kill everyone on this ship." "Three, I murder a beautiful, innocent creature as painlessly as I can and then I find a new name because I won't be the Doctor any more." "There must be something we can do some other way." "Nobody tortures..." "Nobody HUMAN has anything to say to me today!" "The Doctor nearly makes a dreadful mistake." "He nearly kills the star whale cos he can't see any other way out of it." "It's the only thing he can think of doing." "For him to be saved from doing that is immense for him, because he would remember that for ever." "He'd never forget that scale of failure." "And for Amy to save him from that, by understanding him and the star whale better, it's the biggest gift she could give him." "She spots a similarity between the Doctor and the star whale, and she knows that, in the same way that the Doctor can't let children cry and walk away, nor can that whale." "That whale isn't there as a trapped creature." "That whale is there, because it wants to be and to save those children." "'It won't eat the children." "And then it came, 'like a miracle, the last of the star whales.'" "Doctor, stop." "Whatever you're doing, stop it now." "Sorry, Your Majesty." "Going to need a hand." "Amy, no!" "No!" "WHALE CRIES" "CRASH!" "PEOPLE SHOUT" "She stops the Doctor making one of the most terrible choices of his life to date." "But he's missed a trick, he's missed a beat, which she's kind of spotted, that actually the whale is very old and very kind and has come and is actually flying the ship of its own accord." "The star whale didn't come like a miracle all those years ago." "It volunteered." "You didn't have to trap it or torture it." "That was all just you." "It came because it couldn't stand to watch your children cry." "If you were that old and that kind and the very last of your kind... you couldn't just stand there and watch children cry." "And cut there." "Cut!" "She's privy to one piece of information the Doctor isn't." "She knows what he's like and recognises him in the star whale's behaviour." "So it still makes him a big hero, but she recognises the same qualities of heroism in the star whale as she's always recognised in the Doctor." "He realises she made the right decision." "It's probably the first time in these first two episodes where he begins to look up to her as much as she looks up to him." "I think it's quite a tough one for the Doctor, because he's almost just done what he would never, ever normally do, which is to effectively kill something." "I think that's a very scary place for him to have been taken to." "What it proves is that Amy is a very worthy companion for him." "She actually, bizarrely, knows him really well, certainly this version of the Doctor better than he knows himself." "I could've killed everyone here." "You could've killed a star whale." "And you saved it." "I know, I know." "This episode was always the one about Amy kind of earning her spurs, and I think the Doctor realises that she's going to be more than just a girl Friday." "Amazing, though, don't you think?" "The star whale." "All that pain and misery." "And loneliness." "I think that's when she really seals her place in the TARDIS for good." "And it just made it kind." "But you couldn't have known how it would react." "You couldn't." "But I've seen it before." "Very old and very kind and the very, very last." "Sound a bit familiar?" "I think it inspires him with humility and, you know... makes him feel, you know, very humble and very... he respects her and he's grateful, actually deeply very grateful to her for saving him, in a way." "# Cos the season's change was a conduit" "# And we'd left our love in our summer skin... #" "Hey." "What?" "Gotcha." "HE LAUGHS" "Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd" "E-mail: subtitling@bbc.co.uk"