Production Notes for Doctor Who Magazine #523: Chris Chibnall, Doctor Who's showrunner, takes a sentimental journey... [New logo spoilers]

What's this?: Each month in Doctor Who Magazine they have 'production notes' - a column by someone involved in the production of Doctor Who, and normally in the form of either the showrunner answering reader-submitted questions, or the showrunner writing pieces about writing Doctor Who. Because these questions have often been used as a source for blogs to write misleading stories, u/samueldlockhart started typing them up for r/gallifrey.

Hey thanks for doing this! Now I don't have to buy it: Yes you do, otherwise you'll be missing out on: an in-depth interview with Michelle Gomez about her time playing Missy; a Q and A session with Dan Starkey (who played Strax); a history and guide to past Doctor Who logos, with contributions from past designers; an interview with Jake Dudman - whose impersonations have led him to work with Big Finish; a tribute to David Fisher, who wrote The Stones of Blood and The Leisure Hive; a guide from Christel Dee about making a Time-Lord Collar; a deconstruction of 'The Doctor's Wife'; the final part of DWM's Twelfth Doctor comic-strip "The Phantom Piper"; reviews for all of this month's DVD/CD/Book releases and EVEN MORE.

u/samueldlockhart and myself do these previews.

Want an archive of the previous Production Notes that have been posted on r/gallifrey?: Follow this link.

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Hey, new logo! Don't say we never reveal anything. Look at it, fizzing and glowing with energy and warmth - with a TARDIS bursting through the central line in the animated version (tinyurl.com/NewWhoLogo).

Clever people came up with that. I mostly grinned and enthused and encouraged. All those brilliant people, working on all these different components of our favourite show right now. Not just the production, but the whole way it'll roll out, the support structure, the holistic world of Doctor Who.

(And remind me to tell you the story of the silhouette photo of the Doctor that you'll find elsewhere in this issue. There's a nice fact behind that. One for later in the year. Promise.)

I'm more conscious than ever about the broader Doctor Who team this month. I've been in Liverpool, along with other members of that team and the Thirteenth Doctor herself. For 72 hours at least, all roads lead to Liverpool - for Doctor Who and the global television industry.

We come here to talk, to tell people a little bit about what we're doing and what this new series of the show will feel like. We come to meet with treasured commercial partners, like Big Finish and Penguin Random House, with broadcasters from all the territories, with iTunes and Amazon and Netflix, all of whom are massively important to taking Doctor Who as far around the world, and to as many people, as it can go.

As the new person coming in to the show, it's an incredible luxury to inherit this set-up and these relationships. It's testament to the achievements of the past few years, under Steven's watch, that the show went from being a domestic blockbuster to a global success. The global appeal of the series is so evident at Showcase.

But amidst all the scale and internationalism, this feels very personal and weird. Liverpool and Doctor Who are inextricably linked for me. As a teenager, living in Formby, I first joined the Doctor Who Appreciation Society. I found details of a local group of fans who would meet every month. And... do what? Sit and watch old episodes. In a small hotel function room, on a Saturday. This, in a time when there was no streaming of DVDs, a handful at best of official VHS releases, vastly expensive. But a few people had copies of Doctor Who episodes - that had at that time never been repeated in this country. So we would sit, in the dark, watching these blurry fifth-generation copies made from recordings of Australian repeats. It's where I first saw so many episodes of this show. And occasionally there was a real live guest, who had worked on the programme - Philip Martin, Stephen Gallagher... real writers, in the flesh. That's what they look like!

There, in those dark function rooms with beer-stained carpets, I found people for the first time who loved it as much as I did. (We were a rare breed in the 1980s.) I looked forward to that once-a-month Saturday in Liverpool city centre. And my mum and dad did not understand what I was doing. ("You sit and watch TV, all day?!")

In 1988 I moved away from Merseyside, to go to university in London. My family moved home around the same time. I didn't go back to Liverpool for 25 years. Not deliberately. Just life. And I've never been there for work (not even when Broadchurch secretly filmed there). Until this month.

Where at the Liverpool Echo Arena, BBC Worldwide have organised an intimate Doctor Who dinner for 700 people. With a TARDIS. And a huge moving backdrop evoking the image that revealed the Thirteenth Doctor's costume to the world. Across the evening, it changes from sunrise to sunset and back again. There are Doctor Who-themed table decorations with red crystals in the middle, reflecting the logo animation we're about to reveal for the first time.

And there is music. Haçienda Classiçal brilliantly play some of Jodie's favourite songs. Doctor Who herself (I know, deep breaths, you'll get used to it) introduces the evening, and beguiles 700 complete strangers.

Later, as the night draws to a close, I look around this arena. Global partners and television buyers are up dancing and grabbing selfies. There's the TARDIS. Crystals are glowing. The sun is rising in the huge backdrop. Doctor Who is stood next to me, applauding Peter Hook who's come on to play and sing Blue Monday.

And somewhere not very far across the city, but very far across time, a 15-year-old boy is sat at the back of a curtain-drawn function room, watching a scratchy wobbly VHS copy of The Abominable Snowman Episode Two for the very first time.

As I walk back at the end of the night, some people are outside the hotel in the freezing cold. They ask for autographs and photos. That feels odd and wrong. I'm the one who does that. Just look at my Twin Dilemma hardback.

Mind you, as we finish up with a photo with one of them, she turns to me with a keen look in her eyes and reveals the true agenda behind why she's standing here.

"You don't know if Karl Pilkington's still around, do you?"

"I don't. Sorry."

I love this city. I love this job.