Blink is, in many ways, the most Steven Moffat script imaginable.

Scholars attempting to trace precisely the cataclysm that is known variously as “the Time War”, “the War in Heaven” and “the Wilderness Years” have placed the events of July 2000 at the centre of the mystery surrounding that most ambiguous of events.

Dead Romance is one of the best novels I’ve ever read, and it’s a novel that will never, ever, reach the readership it deserves.

The problem is this — Dead Romance is a novel that was originally published in the New Adventures series.

Over the course of our history we’ve seen that there have been a handful of creative figures who have dominated particular periods of Doctor Who. When those figures have fit with what one might call the spirit of the show — people like David Whitaker, David Maloney, Robert Holmes, or Christopher Bidmead — the results have occasionally been stunning.

Here, with Alien Bodies, we see the introduction of Lawrence Miles as the latest in the line of dominant figures in the series, the heir to Whitaker and Holmes.