Andrew Trowbridge

The Broad Street pump, as investigated by John Snow: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1854_Broad_Street_cholera_outbreak Top medical bloke!

Yes, plus he`d done a minor appearance in the BBC website story 'Scream Of The Shalka'. But this documentary was done by the 'Doctor Who Confidential' team and thus signed off by Russell T Davies and co, which seems more than a little coincidental... The last day of filming for Chris was 5th March, 'Rose' and the documentary were shown on 26th March (but obviously David had to record the narration before that!),.. There was speculation on 30th March that Chris would not do Series Two and this was confirmed on 31st March. The reports from 30th March linked David's name with the role and David was officially announced as the next Doctor on 15th April. But there's also the production of 'The Quatermass Experiment' shown on 2nd April in which Jason Fleming deliberately changed a line so that he could call David's character 'Doctor' - it was clearly a done deal by then. (David actually recorded his part of the regeneration sequence on 21st April)

Just finished listening to #91 - great stuff, as usual! One detail that people seemed to miss at the time in the "Eccleston Quits!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" stuff, is this... On BBC1, 'Rose' was broadcast at 7pm, but on the same day there was a half-hour documentary called 'Doctor Who: A New Dimension' shown at 5.25pm, that was a general overview of the series' history. This documentary was narrated by a certain David Tennant! So, David was associated with a 'Doctor Who'-based project, before any of Chris' episodes had actually been shown... Interesting...

If it had gone to series, there's an amusing detail on the TARDIS console destination panel (the design drawings for which are printed in Gary Russell's book), which means the show might have been somewhat restricted in the times and places it could visit. The wooden destination tumbler has a choice of six options: 'Argolis' , 'Calufrax', 'Gallifrey', 'Earth', 'Manussa' and 'Sarn'... Similarly, the only years available are '5725.1', '5725.2', '5725.3', '1998', '1999' and '2000'. The only dates available are from December 29th to January 3 inclusive. So if you wanted to visit Tara (and why not, it's a lovely planet!) on 15th March 2008, you'd be buggered!

Regarding the half-human thing... Although you can dismiss McGann's "I'm half-human... on my mother's side!" as a flippant off-the-cuff one-liner, the Master`s statement: "The Doctor's half-human!" is trickier to explain... However, he says it with obvious surprise and given their long history together it is extremely unlikely that he would have not come across this before. Also the Eye Of Harmony can only be opened by a human eye, which is clearly bonkers for Time Lord technology. So, it seems to be hinting that the 8th Doctor IS indeed half-human... but that previous Doctors weren't! Now, the Master clearly changes species to become the CGI Snake Thing. And much later, in 'Human Nature' we are shown a Chameleon Arch device which turns the 10th Doctor into a human. Before it is used, Martha asks: "Does it hurt?" and the Doctor replies: "Oh yeah. It hurt!"... using the past tense... i.e. he has used it before... The 7th Doctor dies having heart surgery, being operated on by Grace and the 8th Doctor says that the anaesthetic hindered the regeneration process. So how about this: when the 7th Doctor dies, a trace of Grace's DNA contaminates his heart. He regenerates (eventually) and becomes half-human (his flip comment about 'my mother's side' actually refers to Grace!). The TARDIS then reconfigures to the half-human 8th Doctor, so the Eye will open for him, but not a pure Time Lord. After the adventure is over the 8th Doctor uses the Chameleon Arch (which hurts!) to become a pure Time Lord again... It`s the best I can do with such unpromising material!

That's certainly true! Gary Russell's book 'Regeneration' goes into detail about the earlier proposed scripts and storylines and they sound pretty dreadful. And as for the 'series bible' they produced, words fail me... To quote: "I am Cardinal Barusa*... Time Lord Of Gallifrey" (* They couldn't even spell 'Borusa' correctly!) ""This is my official insignia, and my personal glyph... ... I have decreed that my adventures with the Doctor and his flying ship, the TARDIS, in our quest to find his father Ulysses the Explorer, be written down by a scribe... ...Ulysses the Explorer was my son. And, in turn, Ulysses had a son... who, in later lives, was called the Master." (Riiight...) "BARUSA: We have a quest... to find your father. Shall we get on with it? DOCTOR: (nodding): So... what are we waiting for? Power up the Crystals, Cardinal... let's go exploring..." (Please, make it stop!)

Good man! My most enthusiastic contrafibularities to you! ;-)

A question for Dan, after hearing his comments about enjoying Rowan Atkinson's portrayal of the Doctor in 'The Curse Of Fatal Death'... Have you seen any episodes of the various series of 'Blackadder', and particularly the special episode 'Blackadder: Back And Forth' which involves a home-made time machine? If you don't know this show, maybe I ought to mention that the first series also stars BRIAN BLESSED, an episode of series 2 features Tom Baker and that every episode was co-written by Richard ('Vincent And The Doctor') Curtis...

Thanks Dan. Nice to be here! Angela says that she had a great time making it, enjoyed working with the other actors and got to eat a lot of sweets. So from her point of view it's a great story! Ben's Twitter is @Ben_Aaronovitch and he's replied to us when time allows. He's currently writing the third book in his 'Rivers Of London' series, but might welcome a distraction...

Although the 1990s were obviously a bad decade for the show itself, it was a very good one for fandom. The lack of 'Doctor Who' on the telly seemed to give everyone space to become a bit more creative : loads of wonderful fanzines were written and some great conventions were organised. Quite a few people from fandom ultimately became professional writers and it's remarkable how many people from that period have ended up working on the 21st century version of the show in one capacity or another.

Hello chaps, Ben Aaronovitch and Andrew Cartmel seem to spend a fair bit of the DVD commentary on 'Battlefield' being critical of what they regard as production failings - has Dan had a chance to listen to this yet? It's a great moment when Angela Bruce basically tells them to stop moaning! Ben's on Twitter, by the way - would you be brave enough to send him the link for your coverage of it? He's busy writing books at the moment, but might enjoy hearing what you think of it.