While discussing his short story contribution to the Doctor Who: Annual 2026, Night of the Shreek to The Whoniverse Show, Pete McTighe described a Doctor Who read-through which became quite rowdy.

“It was kind of a gift really, being asked to write Lucky Day and to… to kind of come up with the Conrad character because that twist is such a kind of great moment and, you know, the whole time I’m writing the first half of the episode I obviously know that twist is coming. So it’s kind of delicious to have that little secret and to be to be writing and to… give tiny little clues to the audience that… if they go back and watch it a second time they can kind of pick up that, you know, he’s not all he seems.”

“I think my favourite thing was the read through where just the gasps that went around the table for, you know, people that hadn’t read the whole script yet. Um, particularly Ncuti [Gatwa], just his face and his shock was kind of audible in that moment. And that was yeah, so much fun. It was the most kind of rowdy Doctor Who read through I’ve ever been to.”

On his short story in the Doctor Who: Annual 2026, McTighe fully endorsed host Tyrell Charles’ description of it as a “shreekquel” and explained that the story expands on the past mini adventure that the Doctor and Ruby had while Conrad was secretly observing them.

“You know, very rarely do you get to revisit a TV episode when you’ve … after you’ve written it. But it was great to kind of dip back in and expand that little bit of the adventure because… I’d always thought that you could do a much bigger story about, you know, Ruby and the Doctor versus the Shreek.”

“We needed to focus on Conrad and Ruby and their relationship [in Lucky Day] and the Doctor was, you know, for obvious reasons, quite sidelined for most of that story. So, you could have done a lot more with it. So doing the short story was just a really great opportunity to do that — and to just spend more time with the doctor and Ruby whom you know are such a great team.”

Pete McTighe’s Night of the Shreek can be found in the Doctor Who: Annual 2026. An excerpt from it can be found on the official Doctor Who website.