Live Q & A: Neil Gaiman

The live Q&A is now over. Read Neil's answers below

Neil Gaiman's amazing Doctor Who episode on Saturday left many of you struggling for superlatives. Today he'll be discussing the episode live this afternoon. We asked for your questions over the weekend, and you gave them in their hundreds. You can read them all in full over here.

However, to make things easier to follow, we've started a new blog for the session. Do feel free to add your questions here if you haven't already asked them - but don't worry that we're ignoring your questions if you posted them on the old blog. Not at all. They've all been read - although, of course, it would be almost impossible for them all to be answered – and you'll find Neil in the comments field from 4pm, where he'll be replying to some of them.

Among the most popular queries have been those asking if Neil will do another Doctor Who episode in the future, which doctor is his favourite, and whether the script will be released either in a print or audiobook form. There was a great question from @slrome114 about where or when Neil would go if he stole a Tardis, and an interesting thought about which medium Neil would most like to write Doctor Who in, from @cameronkieffer. Lots of you are wondering who Idris was previously, and whether or what her name means – as well as asking what it was like to write the Tardis' first ever dialogue.

Join us from 4pm as Neil takes to the comments and answers some of those questions for you.

You asked, Neil answered

Click on the link to go to the full answer. We've shortened some questions, just to make things a bit easier to follow

@SPT777: Why did you use the Tennant-era TARDIS as the alternate control room? I would have loved to have seen an earlier version?
So would I. But I was not able to reach any of the earlier producers in time and ask them to keep their sets up …

@inconsistentlysane @megamisswho @Sphinx24 @JosieLondon @AndrewFB @AJCunningham @Nancelarrikin @DManning18 @Pphotography @Vamp61616 and others: Will you write another episode? If so, do you know what it might be about? Would you consider becoming a regular DW writer?
I don't know. I'd love to write another episode: this is DOCTOR WHO we're talking about …

@emlynmb: Was this the one great Who story you've always wanted to tell or are there many which have been brewing since childhood?
I've always wanted to go deeper into the TARDIS. Don't we all? …

@CameronYJ: Which Doctor Who episodes have you watched and wished you'd written them?
I love being a member of the audience …

@cameronkieffer: If you could write Doctor Who in any medium (tv, comics, limericks in grungy bathroom stalls) what would be your preference and why?
TV. Doctor Who is a TV show …

@DanVine: Is Doctor Who more difficult or easy to write than the average script?
I think it's harder. Most scripts have a consistency of tone, and standing sets, and you know what's in there.

@nacarrell, @HowardShum, @Sphinx24 @hayheyley: Did you have total creative control? Or a storyarc to work to - and did that change when this episode became part of season six? Anything you wanted to do but couldn't?
Nobody has total creative control. You're always up against the practicalities

@Willwebbful @Valamist @llincathryn @SarahR89: Who was Idris before? How did she get to the asteroid
You know, in early drafts we learned a lot more about Idris …

@thorngirl: Didn't the Doctor once regenerate from just a hand? Auntie had the Corsair's hand attached to her, can the doctor regrow the Corsair from this?
The Corsair's arm (kidneys, spleen etc) is on a bubble universe

@dholiday: Was it made clear exactly what happened to House? I feel his fate was left a little ambiguous, I imagine his essence still floating around out there....starving maybe...but still alive...waiting for food.
In almost all the drafts of the script until we reached shooting, they buried Idris's body.

@Acey90: If there are dozens of new control rooms that the doctor hadn't even seen, does this mean that the plan is to just keep going with the regenerations and ignore the rule of 13 bodies?
It's interesting, that rule. It was obviously bendable to begin with

@A1batross: Am I being petty if I ask how the TARDIS was translating language if it had been removed and stuffed into a pretty lady? Or was the asteroid-demon politely speaking English?
For the same reason the doors opened and closed, and the whole of the inside of the TARDIS hadn't become the same size as it was on the outside …

@NevarAnoi: What happened to the souls of other TARDISes?
They were put into the heads of people who had wound up being sucked through the Rift-Plughole and were not expecting what happened to them …