Production

The shooting script for Listen was issued on Wednesday 12 February.

Recording for Block 2 then commenced on Monday 17 February; the Block 1 team under director Ben Wheatley was still at work at Roath Lock and required Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman for some of their sequences on Deep Breath and Into the Dalek. Meanwhile, Douglas Mackinnon’s team set up to record from 10.00am to 9.00pm at The Rest, a derelict Grade II-listed property and former convalescence hotel in Porthcawl, a coastal town to the west of Cardiff. This would become the West Country Children’s Home for much of the shoot, but the team began by blacking out the windows of various rooms which would feature in the montage illustrating the Doctor’s theory. The old lady in the modern bedroom was recorded first, followed by the little boy seen in the wartime setting and finally the little girl in the Roman chamber. Concurrent with this, a second camera recorded shots of various children saying “just a dream” and also recording wild tracks for scenes in the children’s home.

Having fi nished with the main unit, Capaldi and Coleman arrived on location at 4.30pm. The stars had a rehearsal of the Rupert scenes with Remi Gooding and then recorded Gooding’s material for the scenes of Rupert talking to Clara from his bedroom window and then meeting Clara when she entered his bedroom. As the weather was fair, the standby sequences of the Doctor talking to Reg did not need to be pressed into use as cover and so Robert Goodman was on standby only for the day.