Doctor Who legend Mark Gatiss reveals key problem for writing episodes: "Nostalgia is a dangerous thing"

Gatiss also appeared on the show a number of times, playing four different characters across five episodes.

In spite of his love for the series, Gatiss stressed that he had to think of working on the show as "a job", and not get distracted by his own awe for its history, which he described as "the icing on the cake".

"The actual process of trying to make it a modern show for a new audience is not about nostalgia, and I think that's the great difference," he said.

"You have to go, ‘Right, why is this going to work now? It doesn't really matter what worked for Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker, it’s about now. So if we're trying to get an audience now, this show is the same, but different’. So, to me, it was always a combination of those things."

He continued: "It's a strange thing, because I've revived so many things, but I think nostalgia is a great enemy, and we have to all be careful of it. It's part of the reason we're in the mess we are, I think - weaponised nostalgia. ‘Nothing's as good as it used to be,’ and yet people can't see that people have always thought that, even when it used to be better. It's a dangerous thing.

"Weirdly, the first thing I did for Doctor Who was a novel for Virgin Books in the interregnum, the dark times, the times of chaos, and that's what it's about.

"It's about nostalgia as an alien entity that feeds off memory. Because it's funny, I keep coming back to that, because as much as I love old stuff, the job of the show constantly is to regenerate itself.

"And sometimes when I meet grumpy old Doctor Who fans, you think, ‘You've just fallen into the same space time trap, that it's not as good as it used to be, because it's not for you anymore. If you still like it, that's great. It's great, but it's not for you.’

"The principal one I remember was Robot of Sherwood, the Peter Capaldi episode, in which the Doctor and Robin Hood have a fight with a spoon. The Doctor fights him with a spoon. And my friend got married the week after, and we were at the reception, and another friend of mine's two little boys were spoon fighting. And I thought, 'That's job done.'"

Across his episodes on the show, Gatiss primarily introduced new monsters and antagonists for the Doctor to face off against, including the Gelth and the Wire.

Read more:

• Doctor Who writer reveals how Jon Pertwee helped shape his Bookish detective
• Bookish season 2 confirms Bridgerton star and more returning cast for new episodes

However, he did write an episode which utilised the Daleks, titled Victory of the Daleks, and was the first and so far only writer to bring back the Ice Warriors.

When asked whether he ever considered bringing any other monsters back, he said that he didn't, once again relaying that it was always important to be forward-looking and creating something new.

"You're wanting to be the person who can come up with something as brilliant as the Krynoids or the Zygons, and God, that would be a wonderful thing to be able to do," he said.

"That's the ambition, of course it is. And then obviously there's the joy of trying to have your go at the Daleks or bring back the Ice Warriors, of whom I was always very fond.

"But again, we tried to do something different with it. And Steven [Moffat] took a lot of persuading, because they were traditionally very lumbering and slow. And I said, ‘Well, what about if there's something inside it that's very fast,’ and then his eyes lit up and I got away with it."

He continued: "But not really, no. I always look back, as everyone does, to Tom Baker's first three years and Philip Hinchcliffe, and the fact that the Daleks and the Cybermen were an inheritance, those scripts and the Daleks, they did something extraordinary with. It became Genesis the Daleks, one of the greatest stories in the show.

"But after that, it was like – new. New stuff, right. And one after another, we're in the Zygons, Morbius, the Krynoids. And apart from the Zygons, who only came back initially for the 50th anniversary, they were left untouched, because you go, ‘Well, they don't need a sequel.’

"So I would say, again, the desire is always to create new. The problem is trying to think of anything anywhere near as good. And also, I suppose, the nostalgia."

Elsewhere in the conversation for The Radio Times Writers' Room, Gatiss spoke about his work on The League of Gentlemen, Sherlock and his latest work, Bookish, which he both writes and stars in.

Mark Gatiss's interview for The Radio Times Writers' Room is available to watch in full on RadioTimes.com and on YouTube.

Doctor Who is available to stream on BBC iPlayer. Bookish airs weekly on Wednesdays on U&Alibi. The series is available to stream in full on demand on Sky, Virgin, BT and TalkTalk.

Check out more of our Sci-Fi and Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on.

Dive into our Doctor Who story guide: reviews of every episode since 1963, plus cast & crew listings, production trivia, and exclusive material from the Radio Times archive. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.