Shaun (Russell, head of publishing) brought the story to me during the early days of the series, but it took me a while to get to it. I was impressed by the core story, and realised that an almost page-one rewrite would be needed, but there were enough key elements contained in the original story for me to see how it would fit Lethbridge-Stewart. The hardest part to work out was the time travel aspect.

When I was asked to adapt my unpublished book, how could I resist the challenge? It was an honour to add to the continuing adventures of Lethbridge-Stewart. Of course, I couldn’t resist setting the adventure in my home town of Keynsham.

When I first saw the wonderful artwork, I was over the moon. The cover sums up the story perfectly. It was almost as if Martin had read my mind.

I really wanted to do justice to such imaginative story. The mixture of voodoo and time travel, plus zombie animals makes this a story a gift for a cover artist. Coming from an advertising background I usually draw cute dogs and cats, so I found that the main focal point of the cover was a real test for me having to make them as horrific as possible.

I’ve known Ben for thirty-two years, after a chance meeting at a Bristol sci-fi shop. Alongside Doctor Who, Ben has always had an interest in all things zombie. He has even made his own zombie puppet. It seems quite natural for him to combine his two loves in this book.

When Candy Jar asked me to compile The Lethbridge-Stewart Quiz Book I couldn’t wait to get started. The Brigadier is a character that meant a great deal to me and it gave me the chance to watch the UNIT stories over again.

I remember a trip to Lyme Regis as a boy where I found a copy of the first Doctor Who Quiz Book. For some reason my local WHSmith did not have this book, which made the discovery even more exciting. I don’t think my sister appreciated it though. Asking me questions on the beach about Doctor Who was not her idea of fun.

There’s something for everyone and it’s a book that will provide hours of entertainment and a challenge to the old grey matter. It’s a book for dipping into whenever you feel like challenging yourself or your friends – hopefully without too many arguments.

It’s been wonderful seeing the resurgence of respect for my grandfather’s creations in the last few years, and celebrating two of his greatest characters is a moment of pride for me. Grandad would adore what’s happening now, and especially the way Andy (Frankham-Allen) has tied his characters’ histories together. It’s a wonderful time to be a fan of the Great Intelligence and Professor Travers!

We’re very proud to work alongside some great people during the celebration year, and look forward to sharing further titles and information with you as the year goes on. Great things are coming!

The relationship between Lethbridge-Stewart and Sally has been simmering away in the background of the series since the beginning, eleven novels in total. The Daughters of Earth has been set up very deliberately to put Sally in a position that makes her look at her position in the Corps in a very different way.

I wanted to explore the reasons for why she signed up, her ideals of duty in the face of the adventures they all share. Her relationship with the Brigadier, especially now they work together. Then there’s her interest in a newly emerging women’s lib movement arguing for peaceful solutions to mankind’s many problems – the Daughters of Earth.

I had terrific fun creating a late-’60s peace movement led and run solely by women. While their politics are very much rooted in the start of women’s lib – the generation before the women of Greenham Common, and the grand-generation of the women now running the resistance against current right-wing authoritarianism – there are echoes of what’s happening now and how women organise. The intersections of class, race, outsiders versus those within the establishment – how prone they are to infiltration. I wrote the book during the US presidential elections, which kept being a touchstone to how far women have come to be treated as human beings with agency and a reminder as to how quickly reactionary politics can assert itself.

Representation matters. Sarah knows this, but, more importantly, she lives this. In her professional life, her commitment to equality and diversity has earned her recognition from her peers, and a ‘gong’ (a BEM, no less – yes, Sydney Newman would be horrified). In her writing, fiction and non-fiction, and her involvement with fandom, she has voiced and made visible lives and experiences that are too often ignored or denied: women who game, dykes who dig Time Lords. Doctor Who (let’s face it) hasn’t always been great at representation (where is our female Doctor?).

My initial idea was to confine all the various visual ideas within the overall shape of the Daughters of Earth’ house. However after submitting my rough it was brought to my attention that the ‘house style’ for the Lethbridge-Stewart main range is a circular motif, which I had inadvertently created with my cover for Mutually Assured Domination in 2015. How ironic! I dropped the house shape into a circle allowing parts to break out for visual punch.

I love the cover that Adrian Salmon has painted for my book. So striking and bold, but yet it gets the central conflict for Sally: has she chosen her military career wisely? Or is there another path?

Oxygen

Writer: Jamie Mathieson
Director: Charles Palmer

The Doctor, Bill and Nardole answer a distress call in deep space, and find themselves trapped on board space station Chasm Forge. All but four of the crew have been murdered - and the dead are still walking!
In a future where oxygen is sold by the breath, and space suits are valued more highly than their occupants, the TARDIS crew battle for survival against the darkest evil of all…

One of favourite TV shows was the ITV programme Shillingbury Tales, a series also filmed in Aldbury. As a location it has always been presented as an idyllic English village, but what if dark forces were at work behind the scenes? My story combines this rural peace with an underbelly of violence.

I remember reading about Starwatch in Doctor Who Magazine a few years back. So when Mark started working with Candy Jar on a new project, we grilled him about this. During these conversations he pitched an idea for a short story: Shillingbury Tales meets The Tomorrow People, with a hint of Children of the Stones. I told him to go away and write it.

I wanted the story to feel as much like the early 1970s as possible. I’m old enough to remember how grim it was. In particular I remember how frightening football violence could be. This story transfers the fears of the terraces to a rural village and throws Lethbridge-Stewart into the mix.

I’ve really enjoyed the detailed work on the novellas, especially as the schedule has been slightly more relaxed. However, I have missed the fun of a tight schedule. And this one was certainly tight! Anyway, nothing brings out creativity better than a tight deadline. I put the artwork together in record time and I am rather pleased with it. It’s like A Clockwork Orange meets Jossey’s Giants.

People who have ordered the bundle already will automatically get the free story, but I would advise those readers who plan to buy all three to do it as soon possible. We only have fifty bundles left and a handful of copies of the individual titles.