I took a long time to get around to the idea of doing the audios – and now I just absolutely love it, I think the character's beautifully written. Everything we're doing at Big Finish is stuff that's already in the character, in the stories, they're just being extended a bit. Having said I don't want to do them, now I think “when's next week's one going to arrive?”. This is proper Doctor Who, they're really carefully written, they're witty and funny, they're highly inventive.

It's been great to at last bring Adric into the monthly range – well, before his tragic death, at least! Andrew Smith wrote the character's introductory story on TV, so I was determined to get Andrew to write his re-introduction. Andrew's The Star Men, full of far-out cosmic science, is the first story of the trilogy, in which an astronomical base at the fringes of Earth's galaxy finds itself on the frontline of a war with an unimaginably alien force...

Adric's quite heroic in this, and a young woman finds him rather hot because she's a bit brainy like he is: there's some genuine, character work going on with a great concept and there's some really nice moments between him and a young woman called Autumn (played by Sophie Wu).

Phil Mulryne's The Contingency Club comes next, in which the TARDIS lands inside the most exclusive gentlemen's club in all of Victorian London – a club where all the waiters are identical clones! The final instalment of the trilogy is Zaltys by Matthew J Elliott, which brings the TARDIS to a world just hours from catastrophe, while Tegan is stranded in space... where she comes face to face with a very particular sort of horror, one she thought existed only in nightmares...

The double-bills in April to June came about because, er... well, we all quite liked the idea of double-bills, really! Each consists of two two-part adventures, each by a different author, one on each of the two discs; each, hopefully, has a very different style and tone to its companion piece – there should be a nice contrast between the two. Alien Heart is about a species of weird spider-like monsters linked to the systematic destruction of planets, and Dalek Soul is a particularly bleak piece set on the Dalek-occupied world of Mojoxalli.

May features Lisa Greenwood as Flip – hurrah! – reunited with the sixth Doctor, in two adventures set before her (apparent) exit in Scavenger. Vortex Ice is a brain-scrambling conundrum of a story set in a diamond mine; then Cortex Fire, like its title sort-of suggests, is about an epidemic of spontaneous human combustion on a distant planet. Finally, in June, there's the return of the seventh Doctor and Ace in Shadow Planet/World Apart. The first has them at a far-out therapy centre, getting some very alternative medicine; then the second the TARDIS travellers are found marooned somewhere very inhospitable indeed...

I've been asked to stay on and I haven't made my mind up about that yet, mainly because I don't want to have to make that decision. I'm trying to avoid it!

Doctor Who does take a lot of time, but it's a wonderful use of it. It's special. I'm lucky enough to be in touch with other Doctors, and we all agree how extraordinary it is to be in this position. To decide to leave is a tough decision for everybody. [It was] very tough for Steven, so I'm just putting it off for as long as possible.

I never saw enough of David Bowie. And the last time he played in London, I had to give up my ticket as I had a job in Eastern Europe. My wife called me from the concert, held her phone up and let me hear the entirety of Heroes. It cost around 40 quid to hear that one song.

(The Beatles) were the soundtrack to our lives, growing up in the 1960s. I remember hearing She Loves You everywhere. That song is like a time machine. ... It came out in 1963 when I was five. Also in 1963, Doctor Who started on the BBC, and the Beatles appeared on it in 1965...

I always like to see Doctor Who on Christmas night, if possible, and a nice Agatha Christie to curl up with. David Suchet was a great Poirot – he got him to a T.

It’s all come down to this, the epic conclusion to the Eleventh Doctor’s second year! With a trail of temporal devastation in his wake, and casualties mounting among his companions, can the Doctor find the truth at last about his Time War crime? And will that truth, once won, prove to have been worth the cost?!

DOCTOR WHO VENDER TILBAGE TIL CINEMAXX!

BBC Worldwide og CinemaxX er stolte over at kunne præsentere biografpremieren på det nye Doctor Who Juleafsnit: The Return of Doctor Myterio.

Begivenheden inderholder den komplette timelange episode samt to ekslusive bonus-dokumentarer; "The Doctor: A New Kind of Hero", som giver et blik ind i Doctor Who's bud p en moderne superhelt, og "Doctor Who Extra: The Return of Doctor Mysterio", som omhandler tilblivelsen af dette års juleafsnit. Både stjernerne Peter Capaldi og Matt Lucas samt seriens executive producer og hovedforfatter Steven Moffat medvirker.

Følg Doktoren, spillet af Peter Capaldi, når han slår sig sammen med en målrettet journalist, spillet af Charity Wakefield ('Wolf Hall', 'The Player'), og en superhelt, som skal frelse New York fra en dødelig trussel fra rummet.

Juleafsnittet, som er skrevet af Steven Moffat, har også Justin Chatwin ('Orphan Black', 'Shameless') som Grant på rollelisten, sammen med Matt Lucas ('Alice in Wonderland', 'Bridesmaids'), Adetomiwa Edun ('Lucifer', 'Bates Motel'), Aleksander Janovic og Logan Hoffman.

Back in 2004 I was lucky enough to write for the older Brigadier in Big Finish’s UNIT series. That was an absolute joy. It was an older, wiser but always resolute Brig. Passing years hadn’t diminished his sense of duty or his willingness to risk everything to do what needed doing and do what was right. Writing those scripts was as big a buzz for me as writing for the Doctor. Hearing Nick be complimentary about how we had handled the Brig was one of the happiest moments of my career. Writing a younger version of the Brigadier was something I had pondered, but I didn’t see how I could do it… until news of the Lethbridge-Stewart books came along. When I had the chance to pitch I jumped at it, just for the chance to spend some time with a character who feels like an old friend.

I wanted the book to start with a bang – and so we go straight into the Brig being sent to jail. From there… well, life inside Britain’s prison system wasn’t easy. I’d read about Wormwood Scrubs having been used as a military installation during WW2 and that helped me shape the story and plan how it would unfold. Using the Scrubs made me think of TV and films from the ‘60s and ‘70s that had a real edge. McVicar, Get Carter, Target, The Long Good Friday… suddenly the Brig in jail had some edge, and it was the kind of situation we’d never seen him in before. But he’s clever and he’s resourceful… the Brigadier isn’t Colonel Blimp. He’s a damned good soldier, and he’s a dangerous man in the right situation. I hope that’s the Brig you see in this book. As an outline it went through a few revisions, as most books do. But through the writing and the rewriting, the joy at the heart of it is the Brigadier having new adventures. Taking this wonderful character, putting him in situations he needs to resolve and writing dialogue people will read in Nick’s wonderful, rich voice… that’s an honour and a pleasure. Nick and the Brigadier? Splendid fellows, both of them.

This was a fun story to break. The idea of Lethbridge-Stewart serving time in prison came from Shaun; it was of the earlier ideas we discussed. I personally wanted to bring back both Captain Knight and Colonel Pemberton, who have both been mentioned several times in the series. Indeed both have appeared in some of our short stories, so it was nice to bring them into the novels properly. I approached Iain after he was recommended by a friend, although I was aware of his work I had forgotten he’d written for the Brigadier back in 2004. Iain was up for it, and took on board the small ‘shopping list’, building a very solid story from the initial ideas.

I thought it would be great idea putting Lethbridge-Stewart in prison, so it was a lot of fun to finally read the book (by the time I read them, at the formatting stage, these books are fully written). It was just as I hoped it would be. It combines the tough storytelling of The Sweeney, with comedy elements of Porridge. Iain has really done a fantastic job on this book, bringing some much-needed comedy touches to the Brigadier’s time inside.

I really enjoyed bringing Captain Knight to the fore, as I particularly like the performances that actor Ralph Watson brought to both The Web of Fear and Horror of Fang Rock, and he deserves such a homage. Andy knows my strength, and gave me a brief that really brings out the best in me.