the doors opened, but this was cut because of budget reasons. Davies requested a scene in which the Doctor takes Rose to the future to see a world filled with walking corpses — the result if they had left before defeating the Gelth — but this was too expensive to film. During the scene in which the Doctor and Dickens are talking in the coach, the driver was supposed to shout down to them (referencing a Dickens work) and the coach was to crash, but this was also too expensive. Casting Simon Callow, who portrayed Dickens, was considered apt since he possessed extensive knowledge of the author and had experience playing the character and recreating his public readings. Callow contended that for him to agree to play Dickens, the script would have to be a sufficiently high quality. When he heard that the author was to feature in Doctor Who his heart "sank" as he felt fiction has a tendency to posit the author as "a kind of all-purpose Victorian literary character and really understand little, if anything, about him, his life or his books". Director Euros Lyn noted that the material being of interest to Callow was key to getting him involved. Promoting his role in Doctor Who, Callow stated that writer Mark Gatiss knew "exactly what Dickens is all about" and "very cleverly connects his idealism... with the Doctor's desire to save the world". Callow was also pleased that the episode portrayed Dickens as he was towards the end of his life: ill and sad rather than energetic. In the 2011 episode "The Wedding of River Song", Callow returned to reprise his role as Dickens briefly. Eve Myles, who played Gwyneth, was initially not supposed to film the episode as she was booked for another role in theatre. However, her agent notified Myles of the role and Myles was keen to audition for the series due to its reputation and Eccleston being "one of my favourite actors of all time". After inadvertently attending the audition in a T-shirt emblazoned with an image of two naked women kissing under the slogan "I support Nudist Colonies", Myles was convinced she had not got the part; her appearance contrasted grossly with Gwyneth's personality. After being notified of her success Myles did not want to prioritise between her theatre commitments and Doctor Who; her agent decided that she would appear in the