A standard episode of the Eighth Doctor/Lucie adventures did not completely fill an hour-long programming block. Vortex thus filled in the remaining few minutes of the hour. Because the related stories did not have a standard run time and the impetus for Vortex was to offer a complete hour to BBC7, Vortex ran between five and nine minutes. The series was mainly produced by Martin Montague, the BBC7 producer who originally commissioned the New Eighth Doctor Adventures for BBC7.