Cardiff in the Frame

It's strange to see the streets where you live and work appearing on TV, but it's a regular occurrence now that so many cult series are being filmed around the Cardiff area. It's become quite normal to run into film crews and to find buildings that you know well appearing on the small screen. I've had aliens landing in the middle of the night, yards from my bedroom windows, and murder being done in the docks behind the house. Not to mention the zombies on the roof of the place where I work.

Anyone who doesn't know about Dr Who and Torchwood will be puzzled by all that. Fans will understand what I'm talking about. For anyone who follows the series, the picture above will be very familiar.

Cardiff is a city of contrasts. It rose to prominence in the late 1880s and 1890s purely through the export of coal. Most of the city's magnificent public buildings date from that time. Now the coal trade is over and the docks have a new life as Cardiff Bay - setting for trendy shops and restaurants, the new Welsh Parliament and the spectacular Millennium Centre, opened in 2004, home to the Welsh National Opera. That's it above. and on the left.

Fans of Dr Who and Torchwood will recognise the site of the Rift, which is meant to run through Cardiff, as well as the site of the Torchwood bunker.

And below is the 'Water Tower' Fountain - the invisible lift that gives entrance to the Torchwood hub. Such is its fame that it is guaranteed to have at least six different people taking photographs of it at any given time.

I remember when the water was turned on for the first time for a test run- it was a very hot day in high summer and I was working across the street. We couldn't understand how it appeared to be raining, just over this one patch of Roald Dhal Plas.

The other modern building in the area houses the Senedd - the Welsh parliament, opened in 2006.

Alongside the Senedd is the beautiful Pierhead Building - built in 1897 as the HQ of the Cardiff Railway Company. French-Gothic Renaissance style, apparently, and constructed of brick and terracotta. That's on the left below.

Both of these buildings appear regularly in background shots in Dr Who and Torchwood. If you're trying to place them, The Senedd was featured particularly in The Lazarus Experiment, the Pierhead in Last of the Time Lords.

The building on the right is an example of the Victorian architecture of the area that used to be the docks. It's going to be in the third series of Torchwood, which is currently filming. I know this, because I came round the corner one morning on the way to work and almost fell over the film crew. I don't know what it's meant to be in the series, but there were a lot of heavily armed actors running around and looking menacing.

Away from the Bay much of Cardiff shows up it's Victorian heritage in ironwork and glass and Portland stone.

The Museum, built in 1907, houses a famous collection of Impressionist paintings, and the restaurant is good for food sourced from Welsh ingredients. Oh - and it was also the location for filming The Lazarus Experiment and Random Shoes, which included the museum's dinosaur in the shots.

One of the distinctive characteristics of the city is the network of Victorian arcades which cris-cross the shopping areas, glass roofed and lined with small specialist shops.

The Market, dating from 1891 is in a similar style. (And you might recognise it from The Doctor episode Small Worlds.)

That's the Title Magic whistle stop tour of Cardiff.

Old, new, and on a TV near you.

Dr Who ... Undressed

That got your attention, didn't it? Of course I mean set dressing, although I have seen David Tennant …. But that is a completely different story.

Regulars on the blog will know that I live in the area of South Wales where Doctor Who and Torchwood are filmed. I walk past some of the locations every day. The idea of sharing my view of some of them on Title Magic came to me when I was watching a DVD of Doctor Who with a friend. One shot came up and we both turned to each other. 'Isn't that --'

The picture changed to an exterior shot, and it was -- the National Museum of Wales, where we regularly have lunch together when she comes over to Cardiff. When I thought about it, I remembered seeing the film company trucks outside the building one evening, but there was nothing happening at the time. On the screen it didn’t look quite like it usually does. Part of the fun of watching the show is spotting places you recognize, like the main shopping street or the Victorian Market. It’s even more of a challenge when you recognize somewhere but you can’t quite place it.

The whole thing got me thinking about the locations around the city and the way they look in real life. I've been passing the site of the Torchwood hub every day for weeks now, on my way to work. I've never seen Captain Jack. I could have done on the first morning, if I'd investigated what was going on down by the water in Cardiff Bay, because they were filming for the next series, and apparently John Barrowman was much in evidence. But it was a new job and I didn't want to be late on my first day.

Residents of Cardiff have got quite used to seeing the convoys of vehicles that accompany filming, as there is so much of it going on in the city these days. What appears on the screen is a triumph of the filmmaker’s art. In the case of Torchwood in particular, Cardiff comes across as dark and glamorous and cool. It can be all three, but in daylight, the reality is sometimes a little different. So -- next time I blog, it will be the Title Magic tour of a few places that might look a little bit familiar. If you’re into Dr Who and Torchwood, I hope it will be fun. If you don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, I hope you’ll still enjoy a tour of the landmarks of Cardiff – Europe’s youngest capital city.

P.S. You might like to take a trip over to Sylvia Day's site today, where I'm talking about Never Coming Home, my entry for American Title V. Then on Thursday I'll be talking to Suzanne, my heroine's mother, about her past as a model in London the Swinging Sixties. Sylvia has a prize draw for those who comment. As Suzanne would say - It's Fab!

Time Travel - Do I really want to go there?

Time travel. I've been thinking about this lately-- as you do. (You can tell I've been hanging out with some sci-fi practitioners.)

It occurred to me that time travel in print and film isn't just time travel. It’s 'Take me back/forward in time -- and to somewhere more exciting.'

Logically, unless you choose somewhere with potential to start from, like Stonehenge or the Tower of London, time travel might be pretty boring. If your starting point is your own front room and all you do is move forward or backwards, how much fun would that be? The future might be interesting, provided your house isn’t destined to be under a shopping mall or an office block sometime in the future, but back in time would probably only land you in whatever field, forest or swamp was there before the house was built. Think about it.

So, most time travel seems to have time and space built in. Dr Who never knows when or where he might land, although I believe the TARDIS is meant to be programmed to take him to where there's some trouble that needs to be sorted out. If you were going back, you'd probably want to specify where, as well as when-- ancient Egypt, the coronation of Henry VIII, the first airplane flight.

And how would you do it? There are innumerable time machines, torpedoes, glass coffins, chariots pulled by geese, magic potions and fairy portals that will allegedly get you there – though getting back again seems to be more of a problem.

Apparently, C. S. Lewis and J.R. Tolkien dabbled in what we would now call science-fiction at one time -- in Lewis's case, the result was Out of the Silent Planet. Tolkien's efforts are a tantalising series of incomplete notes and drafts, but his take on time travel seems to be that it was all in the mind, and that it would be achieved through dreams and tapping into collective memory. I have to say that idea appeals to me much more than the 'Step into my time machine.' approach.


So, that's today's question. If you could travel in time:
1. Would you?
2. If you would, how would you like to go?
3. Where/when would you like to go?

Or would you rather do it through the pages of a book?

Kept Awake by Aliens

It started with the strange lights in the sky...

Actually no - it started at the local railway station, which is just down the hill from where I live. At the back of the regular station is the headquarters of the Steam Railway Society, which has a large collection of locomotives and other vintage equipment. I was crossing the bridge to the station proper one morning when I noticed there was building work going on. A fence had been erected part of the way across the track and some of the old cranes had been moved down close to it. Plus there was a large, mysterious looking hump, under a tarpaulin. The fence was puzzling. Placed as it was, it didn't seem substantial enough to keep out intruders. It looked a bit like -- well something from a film set.


I didn't think any more of it until I was coming home from work a few nights later. The bus turned on to the Island, under the bridge, and the whole world seemed to be lit up. There were enormous lights towering over - you've guessed it - the railway station.

It didn't take the locals long to find out that the filming that was going on was for the TV series Doctor Who, or that the whole set was to be blown up on the following Wednesday. This was the first series of the new Doctor Who, starring Christopher Eccleston, a lot of which was filmed in and around Cardiff.


The filming went on for almost a week of very cold February nights and it was light enough to read in the garden at 2 a.m. Neighbours at the bottom of the hill had a grandstand view. I had to go and stand at the end of the street to watch murky shapes creeping about the eerie looking station. It didn't make a lot of sense and it was too darn cold to hang around for long, but it added a little excitement to life and I was quite sad when Wednesday arrived. There was no window shattering explosion but the lights were gone the following evening.

Then there was a long wait until ‘our’ episode was screened. We knew by then that it was the double part one set in World War Two - The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances. The station had been transformed …..

Many of the scenes take place on the bridge that users of the station cross every day. And the hump under the tarpaulin was the alien space craft. The rather ropey looking fence was changed on the screen to something solid and sinister.
The power of illusion ….

As a foot note to this - the current Doctor Who is, of course, David Tennant, an actor whose career I've followed since his early days at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford on Avon. He’s back there this year, playing Hamlet, with another favourite, Patrick Stewart, aka Jean Luc Picard, as Claudius – rumours that swords are to be replaced in this production with light sabres have yet to be confirmed …

Yes, I do have my tickets, but I’m waiting until November when I can also see Mr Tennant in Loves Labours Lost as well as Hamlet. I’m sure you’ll be hearing more about it then …