Charles Cecil: Remember that we came together to write Broken Sword 4 and, on the basis of that, I had to be very careful during the selection process. I like Sumo and I've worked with Sumo before, so I made it quite clear that while I should contribute to the process, I shouldn't be part of the decision-making, because it was absolutely vital that everyone should have an equal chance.
As Iain Tweedale said, what happened was that several companies who are very, very good came up with amazing demos. And there were several overseas companies as well, and some of them were very, very good.
But what happened was when they showed the Daleks coming out of the sky and then you actually went through the portal - like a crack in the sky - and you went in and you could actually see this enormous area behind (and Steven Moffat - current lead writer on Doctor Who - was very much a part of that), and Piers Wenger [head of drama at BBC Wales]) and through this group of people there was just a sigh that went through the room. At that point they'd won it.
But Sumo, because of the relationship that they've had with me, certainly, were very strong contenders. But it was the BBC who decided, not me, and they did it absolutely on merit.
Charles Cecil: I think that's a question best asked of the BBC commissioners, because they felt very passionately that people got it or didn't get it, and I was less critical, but then I'm not a guardian of the brand.
SPOnG: Fair enough. One thing that you said that I thought was quite very interesting - in the Doctor Who Confidential episode we were shown, actually - was that it was like a computer game, but different. Do you see this as something that is not necessarily a traditional game?
Charles Cecil: I see it very much as a video game and we should be very proud of that. I think the years when we said 'we don't do video games, we do something else', thankfully have long gone. It is a video game through and through.
What I probably should have said - and I haven't actually seen the Confidential, so I don't know - is that ultimately what we don't want it to be is a hardcore video game, but we do want it to appeal to the core audience.
It's intended to be a two hour experience and it's intended to move fairly fast. And the nice thing is that, because there isn't a £40 price tag, we're liberated in many ways. We don't have to just supply 12 hours of gameplay so each hour is worth £2 or whatever. We designed, very specifically, to add challenge, but then to be able to move [forwards quite fast], so that it feels like a game, but if feels very dynamic. So, in that way it's more like a television episode.
SPOnG: One of the Doctor Who comics spin-offs that really stands out is one drawn by an artist called Ben Templesmith. His style gives it quite an unorthodox feel - it's very dark. With the game you're talking about it feeling very much like a television episode. Was there a temptation to deviate from the format of the shows, or perhaps in style?
Charles Cecil: Well, I think the fact that we're working with the production people meant that that would probably never happen. But also I don't think that there was any great need for that to happen. The format is very strong, and I think that we could build on it. I don't see any benefit from turning it around and turning it on its head.
I thought that you were going to say that... because Dave Gibbons, of course, who I've worked very closely with - he started off doing a lot of work on Doctor Who comics, as well. So, we seem to have come around in a very strange circle.
But what we wanted to do, was we wanted to create our own style, obviously, but we had no axe to grind. We wanted to be true to the canon. We wanted it to feel like it was part of the series and fitted in with the series, rather than to do things that stylistically changed [anything].