10,000 word novella written for BBC Audio production. Read by Steven Pacey with the voice of John Leeson as K9.

I argued for years that if people wanted to see a female Doctor, the answer was right there all along; a problem-solving Time Lord with a Tharil companion and her own robot sidekick, with the Gateway providing the means to travel to any point in time and space. It could take the form of the occasional ‘Romana special’ in the course of a series, or be a full-blown spinoff with crossovers. She wasn’t my creation, so I’d no particular stake in the proposal. Although a line of Tharil action figures would have been nice. Maybe throw in a Gundan and a couple of Vanir at some stage. Not that I was thinking of the merch.

Could it have worked? I had the chance to find out when I took up an invitation from BBC Audio to create a novella exploring that very theme. I couldn’t use K9 because we didn’t have those rights, but I had a way to deal with that. The Kairos Ring isn’t a pitch for the show. But it so easily could have been.

Stephen Gallagher