‘While Matthew was initially quite cautious about reuniting with his on-screen TARDIS crew, we were delighted when he finally decided that he wanted to come back,’ says executive producer Nicholas Briggs. ‘He's such a significant figure in the history of Doctor Who, it was becoming more and more obvious that there was an Adric-shaped hole in our range.’

‘I am delighted to be playing again that amazing, inexplicable, wayward boy,’ says Matthew. ‘In many ways John Nathan-Turner was Doctor Who's most adventurous and exciting producer. His entire period has worn outstandingly well and it is wonderful that his brilliant, idiosyncratic Doctors and companions are still living in new stories thirty-plus years after they were created. I'm happy to be one of them and I think he would have been pleased.”

More details will be released later in the year, but the four-part stories are written by John Dorney and Jonathan Morris, and take place during the course of Season 19.