As David Tennant returns to Doctor Who for a new set of Big Finish audio adventures, he has weighed in with his hopes for the show's future on screen.
Currently out to tender, meaning production companies can offer their proposals to make the series in future, the sci-fi favourite is in a considerable state of flux.
When asked if he could offer some hope for fans of the series, Tennant, who played the Tenth and Fourteenth Doctors, told Doctor Who Magazine: "Well, only that there's nothing to indicate that it's gone away. It's just going to have a breath and come back in a different form and that's probably quite exciting, I'd have thought.
"It might mean a bit of waiting, but luckily Big Finish exists! There will be plenty of Doctor Who stories."
Tennant noted that, even in the gap between the end of the TV series's original run in 1989 and its return in 2005, "the fire may have been dimmed slightly, but it certainly never went out".
"It was always burning fiercely somewhere," he said. "I think this will provide a new energy, a new direction. Until you have evidence to the contrary, you should regard it as a positive."
Tennant was also asked if he had a clear sense of what the series should be going forward, and whether he thought it should follow the model and format his version of the show had.
"I think it probably needs people not to think that way, doesn't it?" he responded. "Whoever the new team are, need to be able to think fresh and think new and not be too hidebound by expectations of what came before. I guess you need to be inspired by the source material, and then you have your own take on it, just like Russell did back in 2005. The same show, but different."
The last time we saw Doctor Who on screen, Ncuti Gatwa's Doctor was seen regenerating into Billie Piper, who previously played the Ninth and Tenth Doctor companion, Rose. It is unclear whether the series will follow up on this when it returns, or chart a new path.
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Opinions on the tender process and what its outcome is likely to be have been varied. While former showrunners Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat have expressed their optimism, Mark Gatiss, who wrote nine episodes for the Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors, has said he is "very doomy" and thinks "maybe it's just time for a break".
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