Russell T Davies gives us a progress report on this year's episodes... and 2025's!

Happy 600, DWM. But let’s not look back! We’re all dying for the new series, so let’s look ahead and see what state the episodes are in. Cos there’s still a lot of work to do. Tons and tons. In an ideal world, we might have followed The Church on Ruby Road with a full series of Ncuti and Millie in January, and believe me, we tried. Way back in 2022, we juggled schedules and budgets and capacity, but… nope. We’d have ended up spending money on the rush, rather than on the programme itself. It’s the FX, really; people keep telling me how fast and easy FX are, and I hear the distant sobs of our FX teams. This stuff takes ages! Look at that gorgeous UNIT Tower. The No-things. The Meep! It’s months and months of hard work, and well worth the wait.

So, right now, if you pressed play on the forthcoming episodes of Doctor Who, you’d see…

Episode 1 - almost ready. Kind of… 95% there. Still finessing FX shots, and it doesn’t have a finished score yet (and Murray’s score is so vital, you could argue this still stands at 0%).

Episode 2 - The Devil’s Chord. I’d say 75% there. (My percentages are reached by the invaluable scientific method of me sitting here, looking out at the rain over Swansea Bay, having a gulp of tea, and guessing.) All the FX have been blocked and approved, awaiting a full render, but no score yet.

Episode 3 - 90% complete. God, this is gorgeous. We saw the final FX just before Christmas - wow! - and it was an incredible session. Normally, we just stare beadily at the FX and say, move that forcefield a bit to the left, and can it be green, not blue? (Followed by a weary voice on Zoom saying, “When you saw it last month, you asked for the forcefield to be more to the right and blue, not green.”) But in this session, we just let it play. We hadn’t watched it as a drama for a while. And my God, the emotion. The depth. The performances. Beautiful.

Episode 4 - complete! Done! If a gap suddenly appeared on BBC One, we could transmit.

Episode 5 - 99% there. Still fiddling with luminosity and opaqueness and things. This has taken so long, I think it might have more FX shots than… well, anything ever. And my opinion changes daily, but is this Murray’s greatest score?

Episode 6 - about 80% complete, with no score yet. It has comparatively few FX shots, and as a result, it’s ticked over while bigger-FX episodes have been worked on. But it already looks gorgeous without a single pixel being tweaked.

Episodes 7 and 8 are the great big two-part season finale and oh MY! These are big! I’d say, right now (I’m typing this out on January 2) they’re about 60% there. But we’ve seen rough compositions for that missing 40% and ooh, I’m so excited.

And that’s the end of Season One. Except! Wait! Look! Time marches on…

Christmas 2024 - all shot, and the edit is almost finished, except for some tiny little notes which will be finished this week, and then the picture locks. And the FX begin. Merry Christmas!

And then we hit Season Two, in 2025…

Episode 1 - 99% shot! One final scene - literally, Scene One, featuring none of the regular cast - will be shot within the next fortnight. The rest of the material is now entering the edit, so the picture should be locked by the end of the month.

Episode 2 - the script is on Draft 4, but not a single speck of footage has been shot. Although some camera tests look… oh, wonderful! I’m particularly excited about this episode because it does things we could never have done in the old days. And there’s a great guest star who’s been in in Doctor Who before, in a different role.

Episode 3 - only camera tests exist. Script on Draft 3. Starts shooting alongside Episode 2 above, in six days’ time.

Episode 4 - all shot! This’ll be edited after Episode 1, so it’ll wait in line for a bit, although FX teams are sizing up certain shots right now.

Episode 5 - now on Draft 5. We haven’t had an official tone meeting for this yet, but there have already been various methodologies meetings, with the director already on board, working out how the hell we shoot this.

Episode 6 - about to enter Draft 9. Getting this script ready has been epic, for reasons that will fill many pages of DWM one day. But all worth it, what a story!

Episode 7 sits waiting, while…

Episode 8 will be written soon, honest guv!

The show that never sleeps! Because as you can see, when FX need to be planned so far in advance, the writing needs to be even further ahead, so we’re planning way into the future. Like a sort of time travel. Onwards onwards, and thank you, DWM, for being there every step of the way. Happy times and places!