The Girl in the Fireplace (TV story)

Summary
The Doctor, Rose and Mickey arrive on a spaceship in the 51st Century and find that the Clockwork Robots who run the ship are fixated on Madame de Pompadour a girl from the 17th Century and have been opening up temporal windows so they can interact with her. The Doctor travels back to France through the time windows to save her falling in love during to process

Cast & Characters

 * The Doctor — David Tennant
 * Rose Tyler — Billie Piper
 * Mickey Smith — Noel Clarke
 * Reinette, Madame de Pompadour — Sophia Myles
 * King Louis — Ben Turner
 * Young Reinette — Jessica Atkins
 * Katherine — Angel Coulby
 * Manservant — Gareth Wyn Griffiths
 * Clockwork man — Paul Casey
 * Clockwork woman — Ellen Thomas
 * Alien Voice - Jonathan Hart
 * Alien Voice - Emily Joyce

Crew
To be added

Influences

 * Writer Steven Moffat states on Doctor Who Confidential that the clockwork people were inspired by The Turk, a clockwork man who played chess around the same period (and which was later revealed to be a hoax).
 * Casanova, with David Tennant in a French ballroom falling in love the whole episode had a similar feel to the Russel T Davies version of Cassanova.
 * The Doctor Who Novels Love and War and The Witch Hunters. Love and War is referenced several times (see continuity) while the whole romance with the Doctor changing time zones has a similar feel to the Doctors relationship with Rebecca Nurse
 * Audrey Niffenegger's novel The Time Traveler's Wife, which describes a romance between a man who randomly jumps in and out of a woman's life at various points along her timeline (including her childhood), while she has to live her life linearly.
 * The plot element involving Arthur bears a resemblance to an incident in the novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, written by former Doctor Who script editor Douglas Adams. In it, a horse ends up in 20th century Cambridge after accidentally wandering into a time machine belonging to Professor Chronotis.

Ratings
The Girl in the Fireplace - 7.4m viewers

Myths
To be added

Location Filming
To be added

Similar stories

 * The Witch Hunters
 * The Aztecs

More Info

 * Story Synopsis
 * Story Transcript
 * Story Novelization
 * Story Statistics
 * Story in the Media

Public Releases
According to Doctor Who Magazine #366, this episode will be released as a "vanilla" DVD along with Tooth and Claw and School Reunion.