In 2012, London is gearing up to host the Olympic Summer Games. But in a neighbourhood along the route of the Olympic torch, children are vanishing in broad daylight. Investigating, the Doctor and Rose come to believe that the person responsible is a young girl named Chloe. But how can a seemingly ordinary child possess power of such magnitude? And who will be her next victim?

For the initial run of the new Doctor Who series, the production team were able to commissioning no more scripts than were necessary to make up the season. This caused difficulties midway through production, when other obligations caused Paul Abbott to abandon the episode he had been working on, and executive producer Russell T Davies was forced to write Boom Town at short notice. For the 2006 season, however, Davies and his team had the latitude to develop more than the requisite number of scripts. That way, they would have an episode ready to be inserted into the schedule should another writer run into difficulties; otherwise, it could simply be held over until the third season.

One writer approached to develop a reserve script was Matthew Graham. Graham had created the time travel series Life On Mars (with Tony Jordan and Ashley Pharoah) and the postapocalyptic drama The Last Train, and had also written for programmes such as Hustle and Spooks. Meeting with Davies and executive producer Julie Gardner in late August 2005, Graham suggested a storyline in which the Doctor and Rose are faced with a man who has discovered how to drain things of their beauty, leaving his planet a sterile grey landscape. Davies, however, preferred his own suggestion: an episode in which the eerie nature of paintings or illustrations plays a major role. Graham agreed to develop this notion further, in a script which would be intentionally low-budget to ensure its versatility. Graham was commissioned on August 31st.

For the Isolus, Graham was inspired by the spore-like realisation of the titular villains in the 1978 version of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. He was also eager to set his story in a normal, believable environment, drawing on the typical young fan's desire to see the TARDIS materialise on their street. Graham initially called his script “Chloe Webber Destroys The Earth” and then “You're A Bad Girl, Chloe Webber”, but both of these were rejected by Davies as being too lengthy. Ultimately, it was decided to call the episode Fear Her, despite the fact that this felt like a deviation from the Doctor Who norm.

Meanwhile, Stephen Fry had been pencilled in to write a story referred to as “The 1920s” for the eleventh slot of Doctor Who's 2006 season. By November, however, it had become clear that Fry's script would be too expensive -- especially late in the production schedule -- and the decision was made to postpone it until 2007, when it could be properly budgeted. (Ultimately, however, it was dropped altogether because Fry was too busy on other projects to carry out the necessary rewrites). With the development of Graham's story already well under way, “The 1920s” was replaced with Fear Her. Although “The 1920s” had originally been intended to be part of the season's sixth recording block, its loss (and difficulties with The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit) had resulted in a rearrangement of the latter part of the production schedule. Fear Her now joined The Idiot's Lantern as Block Four, directed by Euros Lyn.

The principal location for Fear Her was Page Drive, in the Tremorfa area of Cardiff, which posed as Dame Kelly Holmes Close; many scenes in the Webber home were also filmed in a house on the same street. Cast and crew worked on Page Drive from January 24th to 27th and again on the 30th and 31st. Due to the frigid temperatures belying the story's summer setting, dialogue was introduced regarding the Isolus draining heat from the area. Also filmed on the 27th were the Doctor's run up the Olympic Stadium steps and shots of its empty interior (actually Cardiff's Millennium Stadium), as well as footage of the torchbearer running through London streets (recorded near Cardiff City Hall). Originally, Lyn had hoped to cast Olympic gold medallist Kelly Holmes herself as the torchbearer -- taking his cue from Graham's script -- but she was committed at the time to appearing in the reality series Dancing On Ice.

Four days at the regular Doctor Who studio space of Unit Q2 in Newport then followed, from February 1st to 4th. The principal sets were the TARDIS and Chloe's bedroom, as well as the stairs and landing in the Webber house. On February 6th, several locations around Cardiff were visited, including Chapman's Removals & Storage Yard (the area where the TARDIS materialises), St Albans Rugby Club (for the Doctor lighting the Olympic flame) and finally back to Page Drive. This left only various pick-up shots to be completed. These included the pod landing in the Olympic torch, filmed on Blenheim Road in Pen-y-lan, Cardiff on February 10th, and material at Unit Q2: Chloe drawing (actually performed by art student Tinate Bilal) on the 15th, the cat entering the box on the 22nd, and the TARDIS scanner on the 23rd.

For his TARDISode, writer Gareth Roberts envisioned a Crimewatch-style report on the children's disappearances -- but done in a more sensationalistic, American style, to connote Fear Her's 2012 setting. Great difficulty was encountered in actually finding a suitable name for the faux programme which would avoid any trademark problems. Ultimately, Roberts opted for CrimeCrackers because its rights were already owned by the BBC, and permission could be sought for its use. Filming for the TARDISode occurred during production on the episode itself, on January 31st at Page Drive. The 54-second installment concluded with a shot of the drawing of Chloe's father.

• Outpost Gallifrey: New Doctor Who Series News Page, edited by Shaun Lyon.
• Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition #14, 9th November 2006, “Episode 11: Fear Her” by Andrew Pixley, Panini Publishing Ltd.