Don't Tell Me

I don’t read my reviews. It’s a matter of policy, the policy being this; reviews aren’t for the creators, they’re for the punters. As a creator – if it’s one of my works of art or lit that’s being crit – the review is going to be of very little use to me. It is, after all, far too late to act upon any criticisms. And, well, I don’t know about other writers, but there isn’t a single flaw in my work that I am not already painfully aware of. I am inordinately alert to all the shortcomings of everything I’ve ever written. “Well, why didn’t you do something about them then?”, you may ask. “You should have seen it before,” I might reply. Or, “I tried, but it made things worse” or “There wasn’t room”. Or even “That was part of the brief, so I was stuck with it!”

So, yes, reviews, too late in the day and they don’t tell me anything I don’t already know. The only reviews that are any use are the ones that come from script editors, directors, producers and so on during the writing process. And I’ve long since adopted a policy of acting on every note – not necessarily in the way suggested, but trying to solve the problem. Because people pointing out flaws is good, you want to know what marred someone’s enjoyment – and what didn’t, what you have managed to get away with. Because no story, no work of fiction is perfect. There will always be plot holes or coincidences or bits where it was more important for the exposition to be clear than it was for it to be subtle. 

But I love to review stuff. On the bluesky, I post reviews all the time, of albums, films, books, plays. I like to bring a bit of original Morris content to the table, and for that content to be generally positive, most of the time. Share the joy. But these reviews are meant for my fellow punters, they are not meant for the creators. Which is why I never tag them, even if they’re people I know and the review is gushingly positive. If they want to see reviews of their work, they can search for them, it should be their active choice. And if I started ‘tagging’ people in reviews, other people might look at that and think they should start tagging me in reviews of my stuff, and I’d have no grounds to protest. Because it does happen sometimes; someone thinks it would be kind to let me know they’ve reviewed something I’ve written, and sometimes that’s because they’ve enjoyed it and want me to know, which is lovely, but sometimes it’s just because they’ve given it 3/10 and they blithely think that news might brighten my day (if they have given it any thought at all).

It’s a form of etiquette; if reviews are for punters not creators it means they can be honest, written without fear or favour of what the creator might think, and if the creator wants to seek out their reviews, that is their prerogative. And if they want to respond, well, that’s up to them too. It’s happened to me on occasion; I reviewed a series about twenty years ago called The Lost Room and, although I enjoyed it, as is my wont I also took the piss, and then one of the creators replied saying that maybe I would like to considering going forth and multiplying. I hadn’t tagged them in the review, of course. I certainly hadn’t mentioned their name. They’d been ‘ego-surfing’ for reviews. And do you know what? After they’d told me to fuck off, I went back and rewatched that series and realised that actually it was much better than I first thought and I had been wrong to take the piss. No. That didn’t happen. Why would I do that? I didn’t do that.

So, yes, anyway. I don’t read my reviews, and I don’t want them brought to my attention, and I work on the basis that everyone else feels the same way. If they don’t, that’s fine, but for god’s sake, if you’re a creator who wants to seek out and read your bad reviews, rule one, for god’s sake never ever reply.

For A Friend

I thought I’d write a quick blog on my friend Justin Richards, who died on 28 June, following a decade living with early-onset fronto-temporal dementia. Just to get my feelings and memories down while I have a gap between projects.

I would’ve first become aware of his work through his Doctor Who novels. Because they were amongst the best. I remember System Shock taking place at a country mansion that was now being used as a computer research centre, almost entirely unlike IBM Hursley where Justin worked. And I particularly enjoyed – and I’m not sure enjoyed is a big enough word for it – The Sands of Time. You know all the ‘timey-wimey’ stuff in Blink and the Matt Smith era of Doctor Who? The Sands of Time did it all first.

And it was books like The Sands of Time that inspired me to have a go at submitting my own idea for a Doctor Who book – when they were published by BBC Books Justin was the editor of The Past Doctor Adventures. This was around the time that the initial wave of novel writers were going off to work on television soap operas and so Justin was on the look out for new writers to take over. My submission was a story called The Beautiful Death, which was timey-wimey to the nth degree, to the point of being a farce, and a few weeks after I sent it in, I got a letter back from Justin, who had been passed my submission from the ‘slush pile’ by Jac Rayner. This letter began with “Many thanks for your proposal The Beautiful Death which I very much enjoyed reading”, continued with two pages of notes, mentioned in passing that “Your sample prose is fine” and ended with the paragraph “You can probably guess from the level of comment that revised version of this proposal, accommodating as many of the points I’ve made as you think are merited”.

You cannot imagine my excitement at reading that. I felt like Charlie Bucket getting the ticket to the chocolate factory. I was on my way to getting to write a Doctor Who book! And his notes were all helpful – he suggested doing a flow-chart to keep track of the time-travel, just as he had done with The Sands of Time, so I duly worked one out over five stapled together sheets of paper (it was that complicated). But looking at it now, I’m struck by those final words. “As many of the points I’ve made as you think are merited”. He wasn’t telling me what to do, making a commission conditional on following his suggestions. He was, if anything, inviting me to disagree if I had a better idea.

And that, I think, was very typical of him. Anyway, I went off and wrote the book that became Festival of Death, and because it was my first one I found it terribly difficult and fell behind the deadlines, which Justin seemed to tolerate because I was sending him each chapter as I wrote it (so he knew the book was being written) and because I think he realised that I wasn’t sending him first drafts, I was sending him the fifth or sixth drafts, so he wouldn’t have much work to do on it. Looking at his emails now (I still have them), he’s keen to reassure me that it’s “going very well indeed” and his notes are all to do with tips on avoiding pitfalls rather than the plot.

I got the chance to thank him a while later, when I met him for the first time at the Big Finish launch party (to celebrate the release of The Sirens of Time – I was there because I was on the list to write one in the next year). I remember that evening very well, mostly because I didn’t know anyone there apart from Gary Russell and was far too intimidated to try to join the conversations of the great and the good. But Justin, bless him, sought me out and chatted to me, and because I was literally Jonny No-Mates he let me look through the script of Red Dawn, covered with Gary’s red-pen notes, which I found fascinating and useful.

Of course, I later became friends with all of the great and the good, because writing a Doctor Who book turned out to be the passport to a new social life, going to the Tavern and whatnot. It is no understatement to say that it changed my life, very much for the better. And getting that commission also gave me confidence in my ability as a writer – of which I had previously had very little – which led to it becoming my career. It all started with Justin, so if you want someone to blame...

Anyway, let’s fast-forward. He commissioned me to write two more Doctor Who books, both for the Eighth Doctor in what was generally regarded as the ‘more important’ range. Justin had recently taken it over and relaunched with a fantastic novel called The Burning which I used as the basis for the structure for Anachrophobia; completely different plot but with the highs and lows at the same points. And after Festival of Death, I made a point of handing it on time. And then, in 2003, I received this email from Justin:

“I have a need for a startlingly good EDA proposal starring the Doctor, Fitz and Trix in a standalone adventure of incredible excitement and awe-inspiring novelty told with the use of the best prose to be had in this part of the galaxy.

So naturally, I thought of you.

No, this isn't a competition where you later discover, like with Readers Digest, that 27 other people were told the same thing and we're looking for a 'winner.'

I am looking for a winner, but I'm asking you if you have any ideas and inclination.  If so, let's try and make it happen.  If not, then that's fine, I'll move on down the list (and yes, you were top of it).”

How could I refuse an email like that? Even though I had, for a brief shining moment, television production companies badgering me to hand in the scripts they had paid me for, I couldn’t turn down the chance to write one last Doctor Who book. And I did think it would be the last; not just my last Doctor Who story but the last one of all, as the book range was on the brink of cancellation. That one was The Tomorrow Windows. Justin:

“Thanks for all the hard work - I know it's been a slog, to say the least, but I think it's paid off.  A well-constructed, amusing and perceptive novel that I reckon the punters will really enjoy.  (Well, all except those who have already decided they won't enjoy anything no matter what...)”

Looking through my emails, the next time I met Justin would’ve been at Dave Owen’s stag do. I’m pretty sure I was there but I remember nothing about it. But, like the 1960s, if you remember Dave Owen’s stag do, you weren’t there. Justin:

“For those who missed it, thanks for the warnings and apologies and be assured that I passed on your regards/sympathies/congratulations etc as appropriate.  Just to make you feel even better about it, we had a terrific time with topics of conversation ranging from marriage, fatherhood and babies, an interesting and appropriate description of the size of Katy Manning's mouth, where there are bus stops near Crystal Palace Park, who actually ordered what food, wine or beer decisions, strips clubs around the world, Day of Armageddon (a Doctor Who episode, not next Saturday), and other topics too numerous and rude to mention.”

I do remember Dave Owen’s wedding, though, and spending a lot of time chatting with Justin. I remember his sons had brought along a load of books and seemed to read about three each during the course of the dinner. He was clearly bringing them up correctly.

After that... I saw Justin a few times, at other parties and weddings – including my own – and I’d let him know what I thought of the latest The Invisible Detective book. The Invisible Detective was a range of books for the Young Adult market set in the 1930s which somehow, and I don’t know how this happened, managed to include lots of Doctor Who in-jokes; you know, there’d be an Egyptian mummy in the London sewers, that sort of thing. Sadly Justin never finished the series but that’s publishing for you.

I knew he still had me on the list to write Doctor Who books, cos he told me so - “I think the right opportunity will present itself before too long. You are certainly on my list :-)” and because roughly once a year I’d get an email from him checking my availability for something that was purely hypothetical but which needed to be written over the next six weeks. That’s also publishing for you.

But it turned out the next thing we’d work on would be Jago & Litefoot. He asked me to write an episode for nearly all the seasons – I skipped three, four and eight and retired due to creative exhaustion after series ten. It sort of settled into a pattern, with me writing either the first or third story of each box set – the easy ones, because it would be either introducing stuff or going-on-a-self-contained-detour – while Justin did the hard work of tying things together and paying them off in all the episode fours.

What I remember mostly about the process, though, would be that for each series Justin would put together these incredibly detailed Writers’ Guides, with suggested settings, information about all the characters and what should happen in each episode – for instance:

5.1 – Get Jago!

In which we find Litefoot and Jago have settled into 1968, with help from Ellie, and are about to meet the descendent of an old colleague...

Writer: Jonathan Morris

Main Cast: Jago, Litefoot, Ellie, Sacker

Guest Cast: 2 others

Brief Appearance by:  Guinevere Godiva

Date:  May 1968

After the opening scenes of Episode 1, we rejoin Jago and Litefoot several months later... Maybe we enter their world through the experiences of DS Sacker, who is investigating Ellie as part of the Kray Tiwns case...  This leads him to Litefoot and then – to his surprise – to the rising star of TV Jago.

Sacker finds the pair of them (and to a point Ellie) rather odd.  He is intrigued to discover that Ellie has bought an antiquarian bookshop and set up Litefoot as manager.  Does the man have some hold over her – and where did he come from?  When he questions Litefoot, he is amazed to find he is also a friend of Jago: how unlikely is that?  Digging deeper, he is astonished to realise that the two of them seem to him, and bluster about his grandfather…

At some point, Sacker will dig out and check his grandfather’s diaries… then things get really weird. 

Our first encounter with Guinevere Godiva is in this episode, when Jago features Guinevere Godiva’s magic act on his show. In a brief discussion with her afterwards, there is mention of her fascination with the stage magicians of the Victorian era, and Jago’s equivocal reaction intrigues her…

The main story could involve the notorious Kray Twins (perhaps they have discovered Ellie’s secret?) or not.  But it needs to establish our general set-up, and Litefoot’s research into possible ways back to 1893. Perhaps Litefoot might suggest to Sacker how the Kray Twins could be brought down – they were arrested on 8th May 1968 in the hope that once in custody previously silent witnesses would feel safe to testify against them.  This proved to be the case...

The Crystal: During the episode, Jago will reveal to Litefoot that he pocketed a crystal from the cave on Venus when they were planting the explosives.  It’s about the size of an egg and looks like a huge diamond.  If he concentrates, Jago can make it glow faintly.  Litefoot points out that the crystals in the cave stored the mental energy – the minds, indeed – of the ancient Cythereans. It must act like a recording device for the mind...

...which would then be mostly ignored as the writers pitched entirely different stories – in this case, The Age Of Revolution, a thinly-veiled take on the Festival of Light movement. Indeed, I was always amused when the final box set would come out and how wildly different they were to the initial plans – with Justin having to bear the brunt of maintaining continuity and bringing things together. I was also very amused by the Writers’ Guide for Series 9, the one where Jago and Litefoot are on a cruise, which had a list of eight fellow-travellers, which was way more than could possibly be included on the budget, followed by the section on ‘keeping it simple’.

I loved doing Jago & Litefoot, but if I had to name one Doctor Who story that was a labour of love, it would be my Eleventh Doctor novel, Touched by an Angel. Which started with an email from Justin – the subject was an unassuming “Busy?”:

"So, are you up for writing a Who novel, then?   

I can't brief you properly till we've had our Series 6 briefing meeting next month, but we can certainly get thinking. Just need to make sure we don't tread on any 2011-TV-Who toes - once I know where they are wriggling.

Basically, I'd be looking for a Doctor, Amy and Rory story - not sure yet if I want it present day or future / off-Earth (though not in a space station)..."

I pitched several ideas and Justin phoned me up, suggesting I combine two of them and add the Weeping Angels. I’ve blogged about this already here. 

The process was much easier this time – I handed in the book early – and got this response:

“I've finally got round to reading your lovely book, and have a few comments and suggestions, which I've attached.  I hope it all makes sense. As usual, everything I haven't mentioned (ie, almost all of it) is absolutely gob-droppingly brilliant :-)”

I’ve only just noticed the smiley at the end there. I think that was just a happy smiley, not a ‘this is a joke’ smiley. Probably best not to dwell on it.

Anyway, around this time I’d had an idea of writing a book about Shakespeare, where I’d treat his plays in the same way that a science-fiction series episode guide book would treat them. It didn’t go anywhere, and thank god I didn’t waste too much time on it, but I’d sent it to Justin for his thoughts, as he was a fellow Shakespeare buff, which meant he kept me in mind for The Lost Notebooks of William Shakespeare, as it was originally called. Another fun gig.

But what was more significant for my bank balance was that he also got BBC Books to reprint Festival of Death – I’m still getting royalties from it today – and that he asked me to write another Doctor Who novel in 2016. This was a very quick job – I wrote it in January 2017, handing it in on the 31st – and Justin wrote back to say “I’ll get to it as soon as I can”.

And that’s the last email I have from him. I was told to send the book to someone else, and the book was copy-edited by Steve Tribe, who must’ve taken over the project. I didn’t think anything of it; that’s publishing for you.

I did email Justin a few times after that, asking for his help with things, but never heard anything back. I later learned from a mutual friend that Justin had been diagnosed with early-onset dementia and had been forced to stop work. I’ve had a family member with dementia, and it can be a cruel disease, not just for the sufferer but for their carers, and it seemed particularly unfair that Justin should have it, because he had such a fabulous memory, and because he still had so many more stories to tell. That was what was taken from us. It’s not unlike to what happened to Terry Pratchett. And I missed seeing him at events in the years since, just to catch up in person, but the other cruelty of dementia is that sufferers can lose the ability to socialise, to recognise their friends and to express themselves.

I thought a lot of him over the past ten years. Particularly during lockdown, which was bad enough for the rest of us, but to go through that with dementia could only have been even harder. And I thought of his family. I always felt that I should let Justin know how much he meant to me, while I still could. And so I sent them this message.

"My wife and I were very sad to hear of Justin’s illness. It is no overstatement to say that I owe my entire writing career, and all of the ensuing friendships, and meeting my wife, to Justin, and his decision to commission me to write Festival of Death all those years ago. The entire course of my life changed when he sent that letter. In terms of moments of sheer joy, reading that letter is up there with getting married and the birth of my son. And he has always been a very good friend to me since, tolerating some late deliveries, and getting me back to write Touched By An Angel, Plague City and all those episodes of Jago & Litefoot. I remain in awe of his patience and kindness. And, needless to say, I have always been a massive admirer of his work, which continues to inspire me.

If you could pass that onto him, it would be much appreciated."

For Justin Richards, 1961-2026

(Just Like) Starting Over

Paul Magrs is wrong!

A few weeks ago my friend, the marvellous writer Paul Magrs, did a video blog proposing that when (If? No! When!) Doctor Who returns, it should be as a reboot. You can watch it here.

But, of course, I disagree. Apologies in advance to Paul if I mischaracterise any of his arguments. I’ve watched his video once, I’m not going to watch it again. But basically, the idea is that Doctor Who needs a fresh start. A clean sweep, a new slate. The Etch-a-Sketch requires a vigorous shake. Why? Because it’s got bogged down in what we fans like to call ‘continuity’ but which others might call ‘lore’ or ‘baggage’. It’s a combination of ‘stories which are just about bringing back stuff’ and ‘all the stuff you need to know in order to understand them’. Or, indeed, ‘playing to the gallery’, with the gallery being the existing fanbase. In much the same way that you are expected to have watched other films and TV series in order to fully comprehend the latest superhero films or Star Wars instalments. It kind of turns a hobby into homework and is the sort of thing that means you’re not going to be getting new, young fans jumping on board because, quite frankly, they have better things to do.

And, yes, Doctor Who has got itself bogged down. It’s mostly an age thing. Star Trek is similarly enmired. But it’s more of a symptom than a cause. A symptom of creative exhaustion. You can certainly look at Strange New Worlds, or the Ncuti Gatwa years of Doctor Who, and get a sense that the people making it want to get away from telling stories in the existing format. Rather than telling Star Trek stories or Doctor Who stories, you get stories based around gimmicks, combined with the ‘action figure’ approach of bringing characters and monsters back as a quick and cheap way to score fan points – but as Doctor Who has already used all the good action figures, it’s now having to resort to the Dapol playset.

But, of course, it doesn’t have to be that way. About a third of the Gatwa episodes did really cool and original and interesting things, you know, 73 Yards and Dot and Bubble (the episode with least Gatwa presence, which may or may not be a correlation). Just because a show is old, it doesn’t have to be bogged down in ‘continuity’, it doesn’t have to rely on past knowledge or be a roll-call of familiar faces. And you may have spotted that these episodes were by Russell T Davies, which brings me to another point. The fan writer paradox.

The paradox is this; that, actually, it is usually the writers that are most familiar with Doctor Who that are the least beholden to ‘continuity’. They are, usually, and yes there are exceptions to this rule, more interested in doing new stuff precisely because they know what’s been done before and don’t wish to repeat it. While, paradoxically, it’s writers that aren’t ‘fans’ that tend to draw upon continuity the most; mentioning past Doctors, referring to previous stories. I’m not sure why this is, but I think it might be that they are trying to demonstrate that they have done their homework and think it is the sort of thing that makes fans happy. When, of course, we all know that nothing will make fans happy.

At which point I’m sure some readers will go, 'hang on Jonny, you great steaming hypocrite, half the stories you write for Big Finish are full of continuity! Like insane amounts. Didn’t you write a sequel to The Keys Of Marinus? Didn’t you write a prequel to The Invisible Enemy? Didn’t you write a three-hour story just to explain why the Abbot of Amboise in The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve looks like the First Doctor?' And so on and so on, the list of my glories is extensive. So, yes, it’s a fair cop, I’m banged to rights, but firstly, that’s writing specifically for the fan market, where the more familiar faces there are on the cover – whether they be the faces of Doctors, companions, monsters or foes – the more reasons you are giving someone has to buy it. They are selling points. You know, River Song, Nyssa and the return of Pangol from The Leisure Hive, who could resist a line-up like that. Take my money, as they say. But that’s a product which is catering to pre-existing fans – not what the television series should do. And secondly, I’d point out the other half of my stories don’t do that, they might feature an old Doctor and companion or two but that’s it, the rest of the story is all-new, freshly forged from my all-too-fevered imagination. So there’s nothing about being a fan writer that means you have to – or even desire to – tell stories steeped in continuity.

But, to go back to the paradox, it is the case that if you look at all the stories that fans love – and which were most popular with the general audience – you’re looking at a list of stories mainly written by die-hard fans like Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat, people who knew the show inside-out and knew how to make the format sing, and if you look at the bottom of the list you’re looking at a load of stories by writers who had little previous interest in the programme and who were trying to blag it. It does tend to be the case that writers who love Doctor Who create the best Doctor Who stories. It feels like that should be a statement of the obvious but it’s not.

Anyway, I have wandered far away from doing what I set out to do, which was to rebut Paul Magrs’ foolish notions, so let’s get back to that. So, yes, I can understand the appeal of wanting to reboot Doctor Who. After all, imagine all the stories you could tell! The Doctor’s first meeting with the Daleks. The Doctor’s first meeting with the Cybermen. The Doctor’s first meeting with the Ice Warriors. And so on. But... that’s about it. Apart from that, there aren’t really any stories you can tell that you couldn’t tell without it being a reboot.

And there are two problems with doing ‘the Doctor’s first meeting with the Daleks’ again. Firstly, once you’ve told that story, you’re back to where you were with the Daleks being familiar foes with a whole load of new continuity building up – back to square one, basically. And secondly, that story is still going to be defined by continuity because it’ll be informed by what it does the same or differently from the original first Dalek story; it’ll still be playing the ‘fan service’ game, and if anything it’ll be even more steeped in continuity because it’ll be reprising (to some extent) what has gone before. Like a cover version, it becomes an exercise in reproduction and reinterpretation.

And thirdly – I know I said there were two problems but I have no respect for continuity – a lot of viewers watching it are gonna go, ‘Hang on, why doesn’t the Doctor know who the Daleks are, he’s met them loads of times before, did he get kicked in the head by a Zygon?’ so you have that getting in the way too.

But mainly the problem with reboots is, well, you can see it with Superman, Batman and Spider-Man. Every ten years, they start again, telling the origin story, usually in an even darker and more child-unfriendly way than before. Which is of understandable if you’re a multi-billion-dollar business trying to make a risk-free consumer product but creatively it is death. Why tell new stories when you can tell the old ones again, but with a fresh lick of paint?

I can sort-of see the appeal of going, ‘hey, Genesis of the Daleks was terrific, why don’t we do that story again for a modern audience?’ But, really, what made Genesis of the Daleks great was that it was made in 1975, with Tom Baker, Lis Sladen and Ian Marter, with Michael Wisher as Davros and so on. It could be done again with more expensive sets, better special effects, and maybe slightly less of the giant clam, but it wouldn’t be as good. It would just be an exercise in frustration, at all the things it changed – ‘got wrong’ – and all of the things it accurately recreated but to lesser effect.

(I can also sort-of see the appeal of going ‘Let’s give the Doctor a sense of mystery again’. But... even with a reboot, everyone’s still gonna know he’s a Time Lord from Gallifrey, and has the ability to regenerate. Unless you intend to contradict it, you’re stuck with the baggage, whether you’re starting from scratch or not.)

But the great thing about Doctor Who, and surely a large part of its appeal to audiences and prospective producers, is that it can tell new stories. It is a story-generating machine. A machine that can definitely get gummed up with continuity, it gets into the workings and slows it down and makes it creak and sputter, but that just means you need to keep it well-oiled, well-fuelled with new ideas, and keep the amount of continuity to an absolute minimum.

So, with that pleasingly sustained metaphor, I’ll move on to what I think they should do. Because the baggage is a problem, I agree, it really bloody is. Never mind Gallifrey, we have all the Timeless Child and Fugitive Doctor stuff as well, and bloody UNIT and at least two spare David Tennant Doctors hanging around making the multiverse look untidy.

So what I’d do is – scene 1 – the Doctor wakes up on the floor of the TARDIS. He doesn’t know who he is beyond the fact that he’s called the Doctor. He doesn’t know about Time Lords or Gallifrey or that he’s got two hearts. He can remember the TARDIS and vaguely how to operate it – inaccurately a lot of the time. But that’s it. He doesn’t remember the Daleks or Cybermen or any of his other foes or friends. So if he encounters them again, as far as he’s concerned it’s the first time.

This gives you all the benefits of a clean-slate, while also being a continuation. And, yes, it’s more-or-less exactly what Justin Richards did in the books with the Eighth Doctor, for the same reason. It was a good idea and it worked (okay, it could have been clearer what exactly the Doctor did and didn’t remember, but apart from that). I realise ‘amnesia’ has a bad reputation, because the books did it a lot and it’s been done a lot elsewhere to diminishing effect, but right now, for the television show, it would solve a lot of problems. If the problem is that the Doctor is Mr Know-all... take that away.

And, of course, it gives you a story. The Doctor will want to know more about himself. He has a reason to explore – to find himself, as the cliché goes. And the viewer will want to know what it was that caused the Doctor to lose his memories, what was this terrible cataclysm that befell him, and they will want to see him finally getting them back, in the season finale in four years’ time. So you have something to build towards. But on the way you can have so much fun. Imagine if the Doctor started regenerating and didn’t know what was happening to him! Imagine him meeting the Daleks and thinking they’re the good guys, and they, of course, play along with it. You have new stories you can tell! With the added bonus that you can still tell the old stories too. And you have the sense of mystery back too – if the Doctor doesn’t know who he is, we don’t know who he is either.

So, yes, Doctor wakes up, floor of TARDIS, sees console, lots of tempting buttons, what does this do, it lands somewhere, present day Earth maybe, and he’s out into a brave new world, a new man. He doesn’t know anything apart from one thing. He needs to find a friend.

That’s what I’d do.