Doctor Who: Lungbarrow (48 page)

Susan at last! She must be very young at this point, although we were never told how long she and the Doctor had been travelling together before they landed up on Earth in 1963. But at this point, her grandfather isn't the Doctor at all. There are shades of Verdi's Rigoletto here. This other grandfather keeps Susan hidden away, just as the Duke of Mantua's hunch-backed jester, who was party to al sorts of his master's debaucheries, hid his own innocent daughter from reality - with particularly blood-curdling results.

This shady figure, whoever he is, has obviously been on Gallifrey long enough to become a grandparent, although we don't know to which of Susan's parents he is the father. He may not even be Gal ifreyan himself. Who knows?

And while Susan was the last child born alive before the Pythia's dying curse rendered Gallifrey a sterile world, we learned in Time's Crucible that Rassilon's own unborn daughter was a victim of the curse. Susan's father died on one of Rassilon's bow-ships, which implies he was involved in the Vampire Wars. Meanwhile, on the alternative Gallifrey of Auld Mortality, where the Doctor definitely is Susan's natural grandfather, we hear that Susan's mother thought he was a bad influence on his grandchild.

Has it occurred to anyone else that all the characters on the Sandminer in Robots of Death are dressed as chess pieces? How many chess games have appeared in Doctor Who? (That's another one for the Forum.) Rassilon's multi-layered game within a game within a game etc is certainly the Mother of all Chessboards, knocking out Mr Spock's game by several extra dimensions. It sounds dangerously addictive. Meanwhile, the Other's words about being "a pawn on the board in the thick of it" echo the Doctor's own words in Chapter 21.

I have a sneaky feeling that this historic confrontation should take place at Number 10, or more likely, the garden at Chequers. Only the costumes wouldn't be nearly as good. The Other first appeared in Ben Aaronovitch's novelisation of Remembrance of the Daleks. (What was his name again?) He is an
eminence grise
; the power lurking behind the throne, like a skulking, limelight-shunning version of Alastair Campbell or Peter Mandelson, who manipulates the emergence of Gallifrey as one of the supreme seats of power in the Universe. But Blair and Campbell/Mandelson are puny substitutes for Rassilon and the Other. Only Thatcher (all squawks and eyepatch), from whose evil Pythian empire a new world is being built, is worthy of comparison.

While the First Doctor escaped his persecutors by fleeing into the forbidden past of Gallifrey, the Other flees into the future.

Susan didn't appear in the original tv storyline, but her appearance in the much-expanded book was a necessity.

The debate over whether she is or is not the Doctor's granddaughter is an old one. In early stories, it's difficult to deny the evidence that they are related, but by the time we get to Deadly Assassin, Susan is still the only female Gallifreyan we have seen. Even in Deadly Assassin, there are no visible women and only one female computer voice. After which, Time Ladies (I hate that term!) suddenly arrive by the coach load, but they almost feel like an afterthought. I'd be the last to deny us the wonderful Romana, but when I was thinking about the ideal Gallifreyan family set-up, I tried very hard to avoid anything boringly Earth-like. This is an ancient, alien world for heaven's sake. It's not 2.4 Children. It's no place for children at all.

Robert Holmes took joyous liberties with Gallifrey. There was no point in me writing anything if I didn't do the same.

Hence each family's statute quota of 45 Cousins, all born full-grown from a genetic Loom, prescribed by the need to counter the apocalyptic curse of the Pythia. Unfortunately that rather put Susan out in the cold. In Time's Crucible, Ace, who had learned a little of Gallifreyan families, was surprised to find a card in the TARDIS library that said "Happy Birthday, Grandfather." Yet if the last real Gallifreyan children were born millennia ago and Susan had a natural birth, then how could she possibly be the Doctor's descendant? And where, if she real y was direct bloodline, are her parents, the Doctor's own children? Whatever the possibility, whether her lineage came direct or by the extended scenic route, Susan still knows her grandfather when she sees him.

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Lord Ferain met the Doctor in the trenches of Skaro at the start of Genesis of the Daleks, looking a bit like Death in Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal. Hence the Alternative History of the Daleks that sits in his office at the CIA.

Leela hasn't actually told anyone else about her interesting condition, but Romana obviously knows. Why else does she keep asking Leela how she is? So did she give orders for Leela to be kept under surveillance, even in the most intimate of situations? Or has Leela's K-9 been leaking information about morning sickness and folic acid levels to his counterpart?

Oh no, not another trial scene! Well, it sort of happened that way. Earlier on, when Ferain first emerged from the Gallifreyan woodwork, he kept talking in cold and detached legal jargon, so when I reached this point, the Doctor started to play Ferain at his own game. Naturally the Doctor takes the established rules, does a quick sleight of hand and turns them on their heads. He's such an old subversive!

Gallifreyan names: In Kate Orman's novel Sleepy, we're told that the Doctor's name has thirty eight syl ables! (Of course, we're not told what the name is.) Gallifreyan names probably run on the Welsh Llanfairpwllgwyngyl gogerychwyrndrobwl llantysiliogogogoch principal. Although I can't believe the Doctor's name is anything remotely like St Mary's Church in the Hollow of the White Hazel near a Rapid Whirlpool and the Church of St. Tysilio near the Red Cave. Anyway, that's still twenty syllables short. If we follow Kate's ruling, the ful -blown names we get for other Gal ifreyans here must be abbreviated versions too. Even Leela has been given one by right of her liaison with Andred: Leelandredloomsagwinaechegesima, (which makes her sound a bit like the third Sunday before Lent.) Blimey! Imagine how long the daily register at Prydon Academy must take. My real problem was that while everyone else in the universe could call the Doctor Doctor, his own Family would obviously call him by his real name. Fortunately the Doctor's disgrace came to the rescue. His incensed Family had struck their embarrassing renegade's name from the House's records.

It was just the Law of Irony that brought him neatly home to Lungbarrow on his nameday (some very Russian influences there), which just happened, purely coincidentally, to be the Feast of Otherstide as well. Only the Other doesn't have a name either…

I do like the fact that the Doctor eventually became the very thing he had planned to avoid. The Family wanted him to be President of the High Council, but were, of course, otherwise occupied when the event actually happened.

Yet another triumph for the Law of Irony.

There's something of the Doctor/Master relationship between Romana and Ferain. They embody the Gallifreyan balance of power, High Council against CIA; bitter enemies, sometimes working together, sometimes against each other, but neither can do without the other.

The emergence of the massive edifice of the House, up from its long-term burial, is a bit like Moby Dick surfacing before its final attack on The Pequod.

The Doctor's little speech about things he likes is the direct antithesis of his speech to Ace in Part 1 of Ghost Light listing the things he hates, which were also things that I can't stand too. While we were recording GL, Sylvester told me that he hates burnt toast as well.

Finally the Doctor has to confront his own angry parent in a one-to-one with the Loom, the very heart of the House.

It's a bit like the egg confronting the chicken, until the chicken really does find out what came first. Whichever way you look at the result, it's al worryingly Oedipal.

Un bel di: the title of the final chapter is appropriately Butterfly's aria from Act 2 of Puccini's Madama Butterfly, which turns up prominently in the TV movie. As in the original, it echoes the return of a long-awaited figure after years of absence, but for the Japanese geisha Butterfly that final reunion is nothing short of catastrophic.

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The opening section of this chapter, set on Extans Superior is entirely new. Because of all the loose threads that needed tying up, not just from this book, but the entire range of New Adventures and even before that, plus the requirement to link up with the McGann movie, the original ending of Lungbarrow was far too rushed. There was nowhere for the Doctor and Chris to come to terms with what had happened or to assess where their own relationship stood. So I've taken them out of time, given Chris a glimpse of that paradise he was dreaming about, and al owed the Doctor a few moments to mul things over. And then they can go back to exactly where they left off…

Ace/Dorothée's exploits in the New Adventures took her worlds away from the destined enrolment at Prydon Academy originally planned for her on TV. But it seemed right final y for her at least to offer to complete the Doctor's plans. And it shows that she'd also guessed just what he was up to al those years before.

After the all the fuss and people tying themselves in knots over whether Skaro was or wasn't destroyed at the end of Remembrance of the Daleks, the Doctor has a small comment of his own to make.

Innocet is a true librarian at heart. She sniffs her books. Kate Orman says that's what al real librarians do. The book Innocet's been given is, of course, Winnie-the-Pooh.

So here we are at the end - wel , it was an ending of sorts. By now I'd ticked off everything on my list of things that needed explaining or linking with the movie. The Doctor is such a personal thing - different for each of us. One person's Doctor treads on the toes of someone else's. In Lungbarrow, some things needed saying, and others (even Others) were better only hinted at. Or to quote Alice: 'Which dreamed it?' You pays your money and you takes your choice.

The Doctor had to face his past and put it behind him before striking out into the future. So the end is a beginning too. The first of several new beginnings. New Doctors and new old Doctors. The ride never really stops, does it?

It's been a little odd going back over Lungbarrow, and realising, despite my efforts to improve some sections, how much I stil love and care about the story. I've travelled a long way with it. And now, thanks to Daryl's amazing paintings, I even know what it looks like. Balancing nostalgia for the past with hopes for the future is what writing Who is al about. The old stories are a great place to play in, but it's finding the fresh slant and surprise that are important. And that, if anything at all, is the whole point of Lungbarrow.

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