Doctor Who writer has “loads of ideas” for upcoming spin-offs

Speculation has been rife that they'll focus on various iconic monsters from the series, including the Daleks and Cybermen – although nothing has been confirmed on that front.

However, Pete McTighe, who's written various episodes of Doctor Who including 2018's Kerblam! and 2020's Praxeus, and is revisiting his first episode for a new novelisation, has revealed he's got tons of ideas if he were to return for the spin-offs.

"I haven’t really been paying attention to the rumours about the spin-offs but I think Doctor Who is a show that deserves to be a much, much bigger brand which is obviously what they’re doing now," he exclusively told RadioTimes.com.

"The scope of it is enormous, you can kind of do anything with it. What I’m trying to do with the short films that I write and direct for the classic series box set releases is to make each of those little short films a mini spin-off in its own right…there’s so many great characters and monsters in the show, there’s such a great legacy, there’s 60 years of history to cherry pick through so I think the spin-offs are only limited by what they want to commission and what the budgets are."

As for the rumours about the spin-offs focusing on iconic monsters, he added: "There’s so many monsters you can do properly great spin-offs with. Obviously the Daleks, they’re gonna be – would be a great choice. I had ideas for loads of spin-offs which involve loads of monsters and I don’t want to say because you don’t know what might happen."

McTighe has also made it clear that he's ready to return to Doctor Who in the future, telling us: "I think right now is the most excited I’ve ever been about the show, I think everything is so on point, I think they’re doing an incredible job and there’s just this buzz about it again which is crazy because it’s still six months away.

"I’m not done with Doctor Who, I don’t think I ever will be done with Doctor Who, it’s in my blood 24/7, it’s kind of hardwired into me. I’ve not even scratched the surface with what I want to do. The show kind of taps me on the shoulder every day. I saw Jinkx Monsoon in my street the other day and Millie Gibson in my Co-op! There’s loads of things like that that happen when you live in Cardiff and when you’re a Doctor Who person."

Kerblam!, which saw the Doctor (Jodie Whittaker), Yas (Mandip Gill), Ryan (Tosin Cole) and Graham (Bradley Walsh) encounter a galaxy-wide shopping service with a robotic workforce (with catastrophic consequences), forms one of the new Doctor Who Target novelisations.

Speaking about what it was like to revisit the episode for the new book, McTighe explained: "It was a really fascinating process, actually. I've never, ever considered writing a novel but it was also so much easier than writing a novel really, because I had the script as a starting point.

"For me, it was really about adding more meat to the story, a lot more backstory, fleshing out the characters a lot more, 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 ever wanted to do. I see it as the definitive version of the story, it's how I wanted it to be told."

Kerblam! by Peter McTighe (BBC Books, £9.99) publishes on 13^th July. Doctor Who is available to stream on BBC iPlayer with episodes of the classic series also available on BritBox – you can sign up for a 7-day free trial here.

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