Nearly 10 years ago, the Daleks staged their biggest invasion of earth in recent Doctor Who history, with the Doctor teaming up with all his companions to help save the universe from Davros, Dalek Caan and a whole Dalek Empire – but in the course of the adventure there was a significant tragedy.

For any who can’t remember the series 4 finale The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End, after the Earth and 26 other planets are moved in space, a mass Dalek invasion occurs, opposed by the Doctor’s network of companions. But with limited knowledge and communication between them, a leader was needed, to unite them into a team that could beat the new Dalek empire.

The character who stepped up to the plate was none other than Harriet Jones, (Penelope Wilton’s former Prime Minister, for anyone who doesn’t know). She developed the Subwave Network, which linked all The Doctor’s companions and then used every mobile device on earth to contact the then-missing Doctor. As the network was amplified, however, it became visible to The Daleks who, as expected, tracked it to Harriet’s home, and killed her just after she transferred control of the Network to Torchwood.

So basically if it wasn’t for Harriet Jones, The Doctor and his companions may have never beaten The Daleks, simply because The Doctor wouldn’t have been called to Earth in the first place.

A sad story with a tragic yet simple ending, right? Well, maybe not – because it has now emerged that Harriet Jones may not have died after all. After all, we never saw her actual death – her camera just went static as it disconnected from Subwave – and now the episode’s writer Russell T Davies (who also created Harriet and was Doctor Who showrunner when the episode was broadcast) has cast new light on the events of the episode.

You see, Davies’ latest project has been a return to the world of Doctor Who, illustrating new Who-themed poetry book Now We Are Six Hundred (written by James Goss) with cartoons of various Doctors, companions and monsters.

And when one of the poems concerned the unlucky former PM, Davies saw his chance to finally give Harriet Jones a new ending, illustrating her escape from the Daleks’ attack towards the end of the book.

“It had to be done,” Davies told RadioTimes.com. “And there was a poem about Harriet Jones.

“Phil Collinson, who was the producer on Doctor Who when we killed Harriet Jones has nagged me about that ever since. So the first thing I did was send that to him, e-mailed it to him. ‘Alright! There’s your happy ending!’ 

“But of course, you’ll have to buy the book to find out what that [happy ending] is. I couldn’t possibly give that away.”

Now, we can hear all your grumbles about canon. Does it actually count as Doctor Who law if published only by illustration in a book 9 years later? Well, according to Davies, it does! As a message to those skeptics, the former showrunner said “Absolutely.

“She’s my character, that’s my episode, I say that’s true.”

So there we have it. Confirmation that Harriet Jones’ survival of the Dalek attack on her house on 28th June 2008 is officially Doctor Who canon. Harriet Jones is alive, well, and probably still reminding people just who she is. Go Harriet!

Now We Are Six Hundred: A Collection of Time Lord Verse by James Goss and Russell T Davies is available for purchase from Thursday 14th September

When Jodie Whittaker was revealed as the incoming Thirteenth Doctor over the summer Doctor Who fans were gobsmacked, with many surprised that the BBC had been brave enough to cast the first female incarnation of the Time Lord and manage keep the whole thing secret for so long.

However, there was one mega-fan who wasn’t quite so shocked about the announcement – former series boss Russell T Davies, who revived and ran the sci-fi series from 2005 to 2010 and had a bit of an inside track about the Tardis’ new owner (or at least her gender).

“Let’s just say I’m friends with all these people, with [current showrunner Steven Moffat] and with [new boss Chris Chibnall],” Davies told RadioTimes.com. “And we’ve been friends for years. So I knew what was in the air. I knew kind of.”

And so when Davies was contacted by BBC books to illustrate a new volume of Doctor Who poetry by novelist James Goss (called Now We Are Six Hundred and loosely based on verse by Winnie-the-Pooh author AA Milne), he couldn’t resist slipping in a few references to the series’ exciting future – even if he wasn’t sure of the specifics at the time.

“There’s a poem called Contents, which I thought ‘Well I’ll draw a trunk, and in that trunk there’s something representing every single Doctor,” Davies recalled.

“And that was tough, and that was me sitting there scratching my head for a long time on some of them. And I got there! And there’s also a handbag in there, you’ll be glad to see.”

And Davies didn’t stop there, also showing Peter Capaldi’s current Doctor looking significantly towards a female mannequin inside the Tardis (pictured, above) in one illustration, while another drawing appears to actually feature Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor in action – albeit in disguise.

“There’s a whole poem about an unnamed Doctor…. where is it?” Davies said, looking to his notes. “Oh yes, The Death List.

“Which has the kind of masked, unknown secret Doctor running around. On page 23, if you look at the swirl of those clothes she’s wearing women’s stilettos and the numbers 1 and 3 are hidden in the folds of those clothes.”

And if you can look closely the illustration in question below, you can see he’s right – so in a way, this is one of our first looks at a female Doctor in action.

“That’s a female Doctor running around!” Davies said.

“Well, I suppose anyone could wear high-heels, but there’s a curve there you wouldn’t get on a male figure.”

And even if his hunch about the female Doctor turned out to be wrong, Davies says he had a plan.

“I kind of knew anything could happen, so there was time with the publishing of it to have removed any of those,” he told us. “But actually they’re all quite speculative.

“Even if we hadn’t gone with Jodie Whittaker, that photograph of Peter Capaldi looking at the female mannequin represents that time when everyone’s saying there could be a female Doctor anyway.

“The illustration still stands, even if they’d gone and cast [Coronation Street star] William Roache as the Doctor. You could still have got away with that drawing.”

Speaking more generally about hiding such references in his drawings, Davies said: “Well when you’ve got a book of Doctor Who poems, you kind of know that’s really for fans.

“I mean I hope everyone reads it because it’s lovely and the poems are beautiful, and I think you could be six years old and have fun with it. Nonetheless, you are kind of looking at a niche market here. It’s not like photos of Daleks that are gonna appeal to lots and lots of kids. It’s very fannish.

“So I felt very free to get very fannish in it. There was a really mad Dalek toy made by Doctor Who adventures comic recently, which is the most misshapen Dalek ever. It got a kind of a cult following, it was such a bad Dalek toy. People kind of love it, fans, in a very niche sense, fans love it.

“So I’ve drawn that, that crops up about two or three times that mad little Dalek, the Doctor Who adventures Dalek.“So things like that are VERY specialist. But equally, then there’s Tom Baker with his scarf, and your mum and dad would know what that is.”

And soon enough, everyone and their mum will just as easily recognise the first female Doctor when she springs into action this Christmas – and her time hiding in the shadows will be a thing of the past.

Now We Are Six Hundred: A Collection of Time Lord Verse by James Goss and Russell T Davies is available for purchase in hardback from Thursday 14th September