"I just never suspected it would be you, Shan. You of all people…"

Why not more with both? You've got to think outside the box here.

Steven Moffat managed an intricate plan spread across several episodes involving the Doctor at different points in his life looping back on himself, Weeping Angels, Anglican space marines and fezzes. I'm sure he has this all totally sorted in the show's bible even if it never was explicitly spelled out on screen. It's…

I'm going to play this straight for a moment and just point out that Star Trek actually first used the slingshot manoeuvre in the episode from the original series "Tomorrow is Yesterday" which is why in Star Trek IV, Spock says "We've done it before."

"the UNIT dating controversy for example"

No problem, Paul McGann is always an excellent interview subject and if he's ever tired of talking about Doctor Who, you'll never see it.

The change into the Master from the amnesiac human he was disguised at and the way Jacobi conveyed it just by the change in his demeanour and body language was extraordinary. That was a masterclass in acting if I ever saw one.

To think she could have married Lucifer too. Seriously, that was a most unfortunate ending.

Martha Jones had an excellent start with her first episode (Smith and Jones) and then The Shakespeare Code. Then over time it got increasingly unstable. The Human Nature/Family of Blood episodes stablised it for a bit but ultimately, it unfortunately spun right off its axis.

It could have been … but it wasn't.

We get the name Sam Tyler from Rose Tyler. Otherwise it would have just been Sam Williams (which it actually still is but then he changes his name to Sam Tyler to go undercover and that really is where they got it from).

Orson Pink was presumably the descendant of one of Danny Pink's relatives. He needed to exist to provide the soldier that ended up with the Doctor at the very beginning of his life, so some still unspecified chain of events was always set in motion to make sure he always existed for the Doctor to meet him when he did.…

Well, Tom Baker was the classic holdout for a very long time (still slightly annoyed he wasn't present for The Five Doctors as it was the last chance to have been on screen with Troughton and Pertwee but The Day of the Doctor made up for that as much as possible) and even he came back eventually, so there's always a…

In the first ever of the audio adventures (The Sirens of Time), I found it quite funny how he was knocking the Fifth Doctor's propensity for big sacrificial gestures (they started off with a multi-Doctor one). His sarcastic turn of phrase is a highlight of the audios for sure.

Well, take it from me, the old show was really good at it too. There were a lot of serendipitous choices and events that led to what we ended up with. Tom Baker may well be the best example, he was working on a construction site when he landed the role but there's so many others.

In retrospect, we did. We just didn't know it at the time because he was given such a terrible story and so many handicaps right from the start. Thank goodness for Big Finish.

I hadn't heard anything beforehand but I was hoping the entire time and the moment you heard that distinct, unmistakable voice, it's like punch the sky and a big "Yes!"

I look at it that the characters mentioned became canon but just not every specific adventure they had in the audio and books.

When I got the 20 anniversary special book by Peter Haining in 1983, there were about 134 missing, I think. From memory, that number's down to 97, I think.

It also gave us that great gag "Will it hurt?"