Jodie Whittaker Doctor Who episode almost brought Autons back

As he revisits his season 11 episode Kerblam! for a new novelisation, he told RadioTimes.com about the inspiration for his stories, saying: "With Praxeus, I really wanted to do a plastics story, a story about the impact of plastic on the planet. And I also wanted to do an Auton story.

"Originally, that was going to be an Auton story, that will not surprise you to know. It didn't become that, which is a shame, but I'm pleased – it was weirdly kind of prescient because it was about a pandemic two years before it happened, so that was kind of scary."

McTighe added: "What did happen with the Auton side of it? I think at that time, we were looking at the series as a whole and Chris [Chibnall] was deciding whether there were too many old elements so it went out the window quite early on.

"And I think the things we wanted to do with it, we wouldn't have been able to achieve on the budget, which was also a problem I had... I think you need a bigger budget to do that."

The Autons, which first appeared on Doctor Who as part of Jon Pertwee's era, last featured in Matt Smith's season 5 two-parter story The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang.

As for Kerblam!? McTighe recalls that Chibnall was keen to take on a "space Amazon" idea, with the pair of them being inspired by The Force Awakens, which had recently been released – "just the energy of that film, the fun of it."

Speaking about returning to the episode for his new novelisation, McTighe went on: "It was a really fascinating process actually. I'd never, ever considered writing a novel but it was also so much easier than writing a novel [from scratch], really, because I had the script as a starting point obviously.

"So, for me, it was really about adding more meat to the story, a lot more backstory, fleshing out the characters a lot more, the set pieces, being able to scale those up was really good because in 45 minutes of fast-paced television on a restricted budget, there's just things you can't achieve.

"But in the novel, I was able to do everything I wanted to do so I kind of see this as the definitive version of the story, it's how I want it to be told."

Kerblam! by Peter McTighe (BBC Books, £9.99) publishes on 13th July – pre-order your copy here.

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