Rose confronts the stranger who claims to be the Doctor. But even as the man tries to convince her of his true identity, something appears to have gone badly wrong with the incredible change he's just experienced.

During the twentieth century, Doctor Who had twice contributed material to the BBC's annual Children In Need charity telethon, which had been running since 1980. In 1983, the twentieth-anniversary special The Five Doctors had formed part of the appeal while, a decade later, the EastEnders crossover Dimensions In Time had celebrated thirty years of Doctor Who while raising money for disadvantaged youths. Given the enormous popularity of the programme's resurrection in 2005, it was perhaps inevitable that Doctor Who executive producer Russell T Davies would soon receive an invitation to participate in that year's edition of Children In Need, which spanned November 18th and 19th.

Initially, Davies was reluctant to take part, recalling that Dimensions In Time had effectively presented a pantomime version of the programme. He had a change of heart when his fellow executive producer, Julie Gardner, instead touted the model of The Five Doctors, which had served as a bridge between Doctor Who's twentieth and twenty-first seasons. At Gardner's instigation, Davies fashioned a short script which picked up from the end of the Season Twenty-Seven finale, The Parting Of The Ways, in which Christopher Eccleston's Ninth Doctor had regenerated into a new incarnation played by David Tennant. It would serve to remind viewers where the programme had left off back in June, and provide an exciting cliffhanger into the forthcoming festive special, The Christmas Invasion.

Russell T Davies facetiously referred to the Children In Need sequence as “Pudsey Cutaway”

The mini-episode would therefore be the first broadcast Doctor Who material headlined by Tennant; in production terms, however, the actor would have already filmed one-third of his inaugural season by the time it went before the cameras. The segment was intentionally untitled, with Davies facetiously referring to it as “Pudsey Cutaway” (after Pudsey, the Children In Need mascot introduced in 1985, and the alternative “Dalek Cutaway” title for the 1965 single-episode story Mission To The Unknown). The BBC formally announced its existence on October 25th.

The mini-episode was recorded in its entirety on November 3rd, 2005. Only Tennant and Billie Piper (Rose Tyler) appeared in the segment, which was recorded on the TARDIS set in the usual Doctor Who studio space at Unit Q2 in Newport. Location filming for Season Twenty-Eight's third production block -- consisting of Rise Of The Cybermen / The Age Of Steel and Army Of Ghosts / Doomsday -- had already begun at this point. However, the Children In Need segment was directed by Euros Lyn, who had just completed work on Block Two (Tooth And Claw and The Girl In The Fireplace). Two weeks later, on November 18th, the Doctor Who sequence helped Children In Need raise 17.2 million pounds.

• Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition #14, 9th November 2006, “Children In Need” by Andrew Pixley, Panini Publishing Ltd.