By now, Chris Chibnall will be neck-deep in preparing his first series of Doctor Who. He takes over the show from series 11, which thus far has cast Jodie Whittaker in the role of the Doctor.

But had fate taken a different turn, he might have been doing Star Wars instead. Or at least as well as.

Chibnall was one of a bunch of writers hired by George Lucas to work on his mammoth live action Star Wars TV show. This was before he sold his company, and the Star Wars brand, to Disney.

Fellow Doctor Who writer Matthew Graham was also one of the British writers hired by Lucas, and he told Den Of Geek last year that “Chris and I flew to Skywalker Ranch every two or three months or so, for two weeks at a time, for two years”.

“We had Australian writers, a couple of American writers. Sometimes people came and went. A couple of the American guys didn’t work out so well, so they left. Then Ronald D Moore [of Battlestar Galactica fame] came in about six months into the process, and he did time with us”.

“Towards the end we had a wonderful Irish writer called Terry Cafolla. He came in and joined us for the last three or four sessions that we did. We’d be with George from nine until five in the afternoon, and we’d break Star Wars stories”.

The show eventually hit the skids when Lucas handed over the keys to Disney. But somewhere in a Disney vault/on a secure hard drive, lie the approximately 50 scripts that were produced…