It’s traditional monsters, is a great part of it, Daleks, Cybermen. Not so much the Master, that’s more of a kind of Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty battle of wits. What is scary full stop is the unexpected, and things that carry with them a vast history.

Now, Daleks carry with them a vast history, they look ludicrous but we know what they are, which is upturned pepper pots of implacable hatred and destruction, ditto cyber men, no emotion whatsoever, all they’re interested in is total domination of everything else and everybody else.

Total destruction is all they’re interested in - that’s scary. The whole context of Doctor Who, I still think, is about family viewing, families sitting down together, willingly, to be scared. It’s the willing suspension of unscaryness, if you like, and we love it don’t we?

Kids love to be scared. [That’s] something that Roahl Dahl understood so perfectly. To hit the right level of scariness it’s got to be slightly more than children want to be scared and slightly less than parents will go ‘Oh no you can’t watch that’.

You’ve got to get in that little hinterland between parents stopping them from watching it and children not wanting to watch it and too often it’s either one extreme or the other and Dahl and I believe Doctor Who hit that in the past and still does it just right.