Doctor Who's showrunner gives us a comprehensive update on where things stand in every corner of the Whoniverse.

Hello, faithful reader!

Let’s have an update. This is the current state of play for the Whoniverse in the year ahead. I’m writing this on Thursday 12 September, so this is where we are…

THE WAR BETWEEN THE LAND AND THE SEA In the office, this show is generally shortened to TWB, which makes me think it stands for Torchwood: Birmingham. We’re in the third week of filming. Very exciting! The shoot will go on until just before Christmas, and it’s a mammoth task, all wrangled by one director, Dylan Holmes Williams. I wrote Eps 1 and 5, Pete McTighe wrote Eps 2 and 3, and Ep 4 is by both of us. Shooting a mini-series as one block brings its own challenges. Normally, five episodes would be broken down into two or three blocks, filmed roughly in order. But this is all one big block, so an actor could appear for the first time in the very last scene of the very last episode (and indeed, someone does) but we could need them to shoot tomorrow. Equally, someone could be needed in Ep 1 Sc 1, but maybe we won’t shoot that until December. Logistics galore. When you see all those names listed in the credits, that’s people hammering this into shape, with smoke and steam hissing from the joints as they batter the schedule with big hammers! Production! It’s brutal!

MAESTRO ENCORE Our mini-adventure with the Doctor, the Vlinx and the return of Maestro, specially shot for the BBC Proms, but also being shown on TV in the UK at Christmas, fingers crossed. As we said in the last DWM, Phil Collinson shot Jinkx’s material in New York - but that’s not all he was out there for! More to come.

JOY TO THE WORLD Steven Moffat’s Christmas Special! You’ll have seen the pre-titles for this online, released for San Diego Comic-Con, but there’s tons more to come. We had the final mix on August 29, and that’s it! 100% ready. And absolutely beautiful.

EPISODE 201 That’s what the documentation says, 2-0-1, the first of Season 2, it’s not episode two hundred and one. This is, I’d say, um… 80% ready. I’ve just changed the title. And it’s the most wonderful showcase for Varada Sethu, as Belinda Chandra arrives in the Doctor’s world with a massive SLAM! Plus, some of the most beautiful FX I’ve ever seen. As Phil says, we keep learning how to make this show, and this one really shows that off.

EPISODE 202 I’d say 70% ready, though the FX vendors might say we have mountains to climb. And they’re producing FX that the show has never tried before. Enormous fun and weird chills, with a lovely guest star as poor old Reginald Pye.

EPISODE 203 Brrr. I’m just saying… brrr. Scary!

EPISODE 204 This was one of the first to be shot, along with 201, so I’d say it’s 95% ready (though none of these has a music score yet, so Murray would say this stands at 0.7%). A brand new slant on a Doctor Who story, I’m very excited for this to be seen.

EPISODE 205 About 70% ready. I had the great delight, the other day, of sitting on Zoom, screen-sharing a sequence from this, and then saying to the writer, “Can you believe you wrote that?” And oh boy, they were grinning, grinning, grinning.

EPISODE 206 We’ve already had a massive shoot and tons of edits and FX and yet I suspect this is about 8% ready. What an epic! We might finish it by, ooh, 2029. But wait till you see Sabine, and Cora, and Kid, and… argh, spoilers!

EPISODE 207 First of a two-part finale. Still at an early stage, it’s only just had the edit signed off and locked. Lots of work to come, with a brilliant guest star and revelations galore! But this is an epic…

EPISODE 208 …and this is an epic continued! The edit is still wide open, we’re still finessing key sequences, but it’s all been planned, we have time to spare.

So that’s eight episodes, plus Christmas, plus five TWB, so we’re at work on 14 episodes. Just like the old days! And beyond that…

SECRET PROJECT Oh, you’ll see!

FUTURE SCRIPTS Three of them sitting there, three different writers. One script already on draft six! I’ll work with them for a few more weeks, and then we’ll park them until needed, because…

The decision to commission Season 3 won’t be made until after Season 2 has transmitted. And that’s always been the deal since the start. Hey, we might even have a day off! Although maybe not, with the whole of TWB to complete and the rest of Season 2 to hammer into shape. So the Great Work goes on. I always think: every episode of Doctor Who is someone’s first episode. Imaginations will be sparking across the world, as these 14 episodes boil and bristle and burst on to the screen.

Here comes the future! And it’s shaped like a little blue box. Vworp vworp!