The new issue of Doctor Who Magazine has a lovely feature about the upcoming book, Now We Are Six Hundred: A Collection Of Time Lord Verse. James Goss has written the words, and Russell T Davies has illustrated it. And the pair are both interviewed about the project. It’s a feature well worth reading.

At the end of it, fittingly in a nice blue box, Davies is quizzed about the casting of Jodie Whittaker in Doctor Who, and whether he envisioned a female Doctor in the TARDIS. “Yes, absolutely”, he said. “But I simply didn’t think of it. We did a very, very good job in 2005, but it was a different world back then”.

“What Chris Chibnall is brilliantly doing is making me and Steven Moffat look old fashioned. We look like the past. And that’s exactly what we are – we are the past”.

“This isn’t some big political strategy by the BBC”, he added, with a nod to some of the responses that Whittaker’s casting has received. “This is one man, Chris, moving into the big chair and deciding that’s what he wants to do”.

Davies is a very big fan of the casting of Whittaker, in case you hadn’t guessed.

Doctor Who Magazine issue 516 is on sale now.