Aboard a derelict spaceship generating vast quantities of energy, the Doctor, Rose and Mickey are surprised to come across an ornate fireplace. More astonishingly, the fireplace provides access to a bedroom in 1727 Paris. There the Doctor meets a girl named Reinette who is being stalked by sinister clockwork robots. Each visit propels the Doctor further along Reinette's timestream, and he soon discovers that she grows up to become Madame de Pompadour, mistress of King Louis XV. The Doctor is determined to uncover the mystery which links Reinette to the clockwork robots and the spaceship -- but at what cost to himself?

During 2004, Doctor Who executive producer Russell T Davies was also responsible for Casanova, a three-part serial which would later inspire him to cast its star, David Tennant, as the Tenth Doctor. While carrying out research for Casanova, Davies became enraptured by the real historical figure of Madame de Pompadour. Born Jeanne Antoinette Poisson in 1721, as a child she was nicknamed “Reinette” (that is, “Little Queen”) when a fortune teller predicted that she would become mistress to the king of France. The premonition came true in 1745 when Louis XV moved Reinette into his palace at Versailles. Since only titled women could be presented at court, the King arranged the purchase of the Pompadour estate, after which Reinette was known as Madame de Pompadour. She became renowned as a beautiful, intelligent and multi-talented woman. Madame de Pompadour remained Louis' mistress through 1750, and she continued to enjoy his friendship until her death from tuberculosis in 1764.

Davies wanted to include Madame de Pompadour in a story which also involved another noteworthy element of authentic eighteenth-century history: the Turk, a clockwork man invented by Wolfgang von Kempelen of Hungary. The Turk made its debut in 1770, and became a popular attraction because it appeared capable of playing chess against a human opponent. The Turk remained fashionable well into the nineteenth century, when it was destroyed in the Philadelphia fire of 1854. It was subsequently revealed that its chess-playing ability had been a hoax, and the Turk was actually operated from concealment by a human controller. Davies thought that the robot could be revealed to have a more sinister purpose, especially given that it had made numerous appearances in the royal courts of Europe.

Steven Moffat wanted to write what was effectively a love story involving the Doctor

In early 2005, Steven Moffat was assigned to write what was provisionally entitled “Madame de Pompadour”. He had previously scripted The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances for Season Twenty-Seven, and had been discussing an idea for another two-part story in which angelic statues attacked a library in space, aspects of which would later appear in 2007's Blink and 2008's Silence In The Library / Forest Of The Dead. For “Madame de Pompadour”, Moffat was inspired by the emotional content which Davies had brought to Doctor Who; although the showrunner had anticipated a traditional pseudo-historical tale, Moffat wanted to write what was effectively a love story involving the Doctor. At the same time, he was keen to include elements which would appeal to those viewers with little interest in romance, and so the clockwork men became robots from a spaceship in the future. He liked the idea of writing a scene in which a clockwork robot was found hiding under a bed, evoking a common childhood fear that had yet to be exploited in Doctor Who.

The rotating fireplace was suggested by an anecdote in Madame de Pompadour, a 1954 biography by Nancy Mitford, who related the discovery by one of Louis' courtiers, the tax collector Alexandre le Riche de la Poupelinière, that his wife was employing just such a device to facilitate an extramarital affair. In a Doctor Who context, Moffat thought that the fireplace could work like the back door in the 1958 Philippa Pearce novel Tom's Midnight Garden, through which a modern-day boy encountered a Victorian girl at various stages of her life. He also drew upon an element of his space library idea, which would have been connected via window-like portals to all the libraries of the past. Another inspiration was the non-linear romance at the heart of Audrey Niffenegger's 2003 novel The Time Traveler's Wife; ironically, Moffat would subsequently script its 2022 television adaptation.

Moffat began working on “Madame de Pompadour” around the end of March. He struggled for a time to find the right title, briefly dubbing the adventure “Every Tick Of My Heart”, “Reinette And The Lonely Angel” and “Loose Connection” before he finally settled on The Girl In The Fireplace. Moffat's adventure had initially been pegged as the second story of the 2006 season but, when Davies realised how experimental it had become, he decided to shift it back to fourth in the running order between School Reunion and Rise Of The Cybermen. As a result, Mickey Smith would be added to the narrative, since School Reunion culminated in his decision to join the Doctor and Rose in their travels. Moffat also wanted to show that it was not only the clockwork robots and the TARDIS crew who could cross from eighteenth-century France to the spaceship, and he developed a scene in which the Doctor encountered a bewildered serving girl. She was later replaced by the horse, Arthur.

An out-of-order meeting between the Doctor and Reinette was discarded

Late in the scripting process, Moffat revised The Girl In The Fireplace to include several new elements. These included an out-of-order meeting between the Doctor and Reinette: she recalled seeing him at her convent school, which he only later visited. It was also revealed that Reinette's “mind meld” with the Doctor was the event which altered her brain chemistry and attracted the clockwork robots. Rose then offered Reinette a gem which could erase all signs of contact with the Doctor from her mind, but she refused because she did not want to forget him. It was eventually decided that neither of these ideas worked well and they were discarded, although the amnesia plot device would resurface in Moffat's 2015 season finale, Hell Bent.

Moffat also toned down the extent to which the clockwork robots made use of harvested human organs; originally, they incorporated some of the body parts into themselves, but there was concern that this hewed too closely to the updated Cybermen who would be seen later in the season. Meanwhile, for the dialogue between the Doctor and the seven-year-old Reinette, Moffat drew upon Father's Day writer Paul Cornell's 1992 Doctor Who: The New Adventures novel Love And War. It was the original source of the Doctor's claim that he was what monsters have nightmares about.

The Girl In The Fireplace was assigned to director Euros Lyn as part of the year's second production block, alongside Tooth And Claw. As Reinette, he cast Sophia Myles, who had appeared in movies such as Mansfield Park, From Hell and Underworld; she and Tennant had both had supporting roles in a 2002 episode of Foyle's War. Moffat was delighted by Lyn's decision, because he had written the part with Myles in mind after seeing her play Lady Penelope in 2004's live-action Thunderbirds film.

Moffat had conceived the clockwork robots as wearing long wigs which completely hid their faces in shadow. However, producer Phil Collinson was concerned that this would limit camera angles too severely and risked appearing comical, so the creatures were given sinister carnival masks to wear instead. The actual clockwork apparatus was a working prop, designed by Neill Gorton of Millennium Effects and constructed by Richard Darwen and Gustav Hoegan.

As production on The Girl In The Fireplace began, Lyn's first order of business was the rain element for the scene in which Reinette's body was borne away from the Palace of Versailles. It was filmed on October 6th, at HTV Wales Studios in Cardiff. The other components of the shot were completed on the 12th, outside Tredegar House in Newport; this was also the location for Reinette's sitting room. Several studio days followed at Unit Q2, the main Doctor Who facilities in Newport. Spanning October 13th and 14th, and then the 17th to the 19th, Lyn dealt with material on the spaceship throughout, plus scenes in Reinette's childhood bedroom on the first two days and then its adult counterpart on the last day. The two bedrooms were redressed versions of the same set, and it was built adjacent to the spaceship set to avoid the need for complicated camera moves when the action passed back and forth between time periods.

October 20th saw cast and crew head back out on location, to Dyffryn Gardens at St Nicholas, where the outdoor sequence involving the Doctor, Reinette and Katherine was taped alongside material set within Versailles. The 21st and 22nd were spent at Ragley Hall in Alcester, Warwickshire, for scenes in the ballroom. The mansion's owners, the Marquess and Marchioness of Hertford, had forbidden the Doctor Who team from bringing a horse onto the premises, for fear of damaging the room's floor tiles, and it appeared that it would be prohibitively expensive to substitute a computer-generated animal instead. Moffat was therefore asked to rewrite the story's climax, and he came up with two alternatives. In one, the Doctor was thrown from the horse's back through the mirror; this was felt to be too farcical. In the other, the Doctor simply smashed through the glass himself -- while the horse retreated to the TARDIS, where it proceeded to void its bowels, and subsequently found a stable deep within the time machine. Ultimately, however, Lyn and Collinson collaborated to find a way to record the original version of the scene within the episode's budget.

While recording the ballroom climax, David Tennant was tormented by his allergy to horses

October 24th brought the cast and crew back to Dyffryn Gardens, where Lyn focussed on Versailles interiors. The 25th marked a return to Unit Q2 for scenes on the spaceship and in the palace hallway, as well as various pick-up shots. On October 26th, the footage of the Doctor on horseback needed for the climactic ballroom sequence was recorded at the David Broome Event Centre, situated at Mount Ballan Manor in Crick. While there, Tennant was tormented by his allergy to horses. The 26th and 27th also saw work at Unit Q2 on a number of inserts, plus the concluding TARDIS scene. This sequence had originally been written for the spaceship, and the change averted the need to re-erect the sets.

One character dropped from The Girl In The Fireplace in editing was Arthur's owner, a “choleric man” played by Phylip Harries who threatened to whip the horse for running off. Moffat was also dismayed to discover that Lyn had severely trimmed the key exchange between Rose and Reinette, in which they discussed the Doctor and the monsters. He subsequently convinced the director to reinsert the remainder of the dialogue. Meanwhile, the production of The Girl In The Fireplace had sparked romance between Tennant and Myles: the pair subsequently dated for two years until Myles moved to Los Angeles in 2007.

The fifty-three-second TARDISode for The Girl In The Fireplace was recorded at Enfys Television Studios in Cardiff on January 31st, 2006. It depicted the crippling of the SS Madame de Pompadour in an ion storm, with the clockwork robots subsequently turning on the crew. Writer Gareth Roberts intended it to be reminiscent of Doctor Who's Seventies-era space operas, as well as Blake's 7. The TARDISode premiered on April 29th, a week before The Girl In The Fireplace was transmitted on May 6th. Although Doctor Who was still sandwiched between Strictly Dance Fever and The National Lottery: Jet Set, it had its earliest timeslot of the season so far, beginning at 7.00pm sharp. This would be Doctor Who's standard start time for the remainder of the year.

• Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition #14, 9th November 2006, “Episode 4: The Girl In The Fireplace” by Andrew Pixley, Panini Publishing Ltd.
• Doctor Who: The Complete History #52, 2016, “Story 171: The Girl In The Fireplace”, edited by John Ainsworth, Hachette Partworks Ltd.
• Doctor Who: The Inside Story by Gary Russell (2006), BBC Books.