Can the Doctor escape from this one? Earlier this year we asked who you would like to see the Doctor meet in a future adventure. We were delighted by the huge number of responses and the enormous breadth of your suggestions.

The most popular ‘nominees’ ranged from Florence Nightingale to Nikola Tesla with writers, scientists and soldiers all having their champions. We were forced to discount characters who were fictional, so Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson had to be left in Baker Street and similarly, people we’ve already seen the Doctor encounter were eliminated, which meant figures like Shakespeare were barred.

In the end, Doctor Who’s Executive Producer Caro Skinner sifted through the most popular suggestions and picked the person from history whom the Time Lord would meet in our seasonal short story… It’s the master escapologist, Harry Houdini!

And so in the 2012 Adventure Calendar’s festive tale the Doctor will encounter Houdini… The short story was written by Joseph Lidster and is called Doctor Who: Houdini and The Space Cuckoos. It’s available to download and read, exclusively from this site, starting tomorrow!