Doctor Who: Lungbarrow (45 page)

Chancel or Theora's hairdo is not a symbol of the labyrinthine plot.

Cousin Rynde is an unsavoury fel ow. He used to be in catering (that rings bells), but now he's more of a spiv into any sort of dodgy deal. He's always ready to sel you, under the counter, no questions asked, half a pound of tafelshrew and mushroom sausages that he's knocked off from the Drudges' kitchen. Don't touch them, they're well past their Best Before date.

Drat, another of the legion of games from Innocet's compendium, is a card game, probably the Gallifreyan equivalent of the German game Skat.

Wouldn't I much rather write an Earth-bound story? Wel , it certainly hands me a lot of minute detail on a plate. I know, and the readers know the references, rules and social structures for Earth. But I do love fil ing in the detail of alien societies. That's where the colour comes from and I can spend far too long getting myself into the right world for a story. I have to be inside it before I can write it. Even then, it still has to be recognisable for the reader. Real alien life could well be so alien that we wouldn't recognise it as life at al . On tv, we rarely see more than half a dozen woggly creatures to represent an entire race. So most tv alien societies can only be variations on an Earthly theme.

Are the living Houses a complete anathema to everything we've ever seen of Gallifreyan culture? I don't think so.

They are a throwback to the beginning of the Intuitive Revelation, which marked the end of the dark days of the Old Time. Like the Looms they house, they were conceived to protect a species threatened with extinction: the Gallifreyans themselves. TARDISes are very much alive; so is the old and battered Hand of Omega, itself a relic from another age. If you looked at the ancient culture of Japan, before it adopted and outdid the invasive culture of the West, you might think it very unearthly indeed. The past is there to be respected, but there's no point in writing at all if you don't come up with something new.

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The body-bepple is a 30th century extension of tattooing or body piercing, allowing the fashion-conscious to remake their bodies into interesting (and exotic) forms. When Chris first appeared in Andy Lane's Original Sin, he was aptly beppled into the shape of a giant teddy bear.

Time Lords count their age in years and generations. Even over this, there seems to be rivalry. The Doctor keeps quiet when asked how old he is. He's going through his regenerations far too fast.

Looking at the array of creatures that turn up in Lungbarrow, from gullet grubs to fledershrews, blossom thieves to scrubblers and neversuch beetles, it feels like time for someone to write a Flora and Fauna of Outer Gallifrey.

Natural history has always been one of my specialist subjects (see Ghost Light), and when I was about seven, I wrote to David Attenborough asking how I could go about being a zoo keeper. In those days, he presented the Zoo Quest series for the Beeb, exploring exotic locations in black and white and collecting animals for the London Zoo.

He even wrote back to me outlining his path through university and the BBC. My career never really followed the Komodo dragon path, but over forty years later, the man is still one of my heroes. There should at least be a spaceship, even better a major planet, named Attenborough.

Meanwhile, we already know that there are cats and mice on Gallifrey, and tafelshrews first turned up in Time's Crucible as laboratory specimens on board one of the first Gallifreyan timeships. In Paul Cornell's Happy Endings, we learn that there is a Loom of Rassilon's Mouse. But in The Invasion of Time, that load of couch potatoes, the capitol-bound Time Lords, are terrified of being cast out into the wilderness. Maybe it's the centuries of urban living that make them uncomfortable with the uncontrol able wildness of nature. They'd rather watch it on a screen.

We're back to David Attenborough again. Even so, the remote Houses have orchards and formal gardens, presumably tended by the Drudges, and we know that the Doctor used to high-tail it up the mountain to visit Mount Lung's local hermit.

I do like this image of looking up the chimney, staring up at a tiny disk of sky which must seem as remote as an unreachable planet.

The end of this chapter, with its revelation of what has befallen the House and its inhabitants, was the original end of the tv version's first episode. And as Innocet points out, a large part of the blame lies with the Doctor himself. All that being mysterious is final y catching up with him.

The original TV storyline was a three-parter set exclusively inside the House of Lungbarrow, just as Ghost Light never ventured outside Gabriel Chase. It was a Seventh Doctor and Ace story, so none of the other companions in the book - Leela, Romana or the K9s - appeared. Chris Cwej is in the book by proxy as the Doctor's current companion, and a lot of his story was original y designated to Ace. The parts of the story set at the Capitol are only in the novel - the expanded book version was an excuse for plenty of political intrigue and conspiracy theory (at the time, we were all in the depths of X-Files mania.)

Romana has spent quite a while with the Tharils in E-Space, so the leonine time sensitives are her obvious choice to serve as the first alien ambassadors to Gallifrey for thousands of years. Haven't things changed a lot since the Fourth Doctor refused to take Sarah Jane Smith home with him?

The two K9s were a pretty irresistible idea. The Tharils must have overcome the problems that stopped Romana's K9 (the Mark II version) from leaving E-Space. So here they are, both wittering the obvious in those supercilious tones to anyone within hearing distance. K9's best feature is his ability to speak the unspeakable, unconstrained by the human vices of politeness and consideration. It's an endearing quality shared with Daleks and Cybermen if they're written properly and with the adorable Anya in Buffy. Two K9s are even better than one. Fortunately we're spared Sarah Jane turning up with her model as wel .

Leela has been having quite an effect on Andred, leading him not just up the garden path, but right out into the woods where all sorts of things can happen to an unsuspecting Time Lord. When Andred says that their physical relationship is the sort of things that other Time Lords watch on screens, has it occurred to him that he and Leela might also be the subjects of higher scrutiny? He can have no conception of the importance of their liaison. And talking of conception, Romana and her retinue have al been sitting round the screen with their fingers crossed.

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The courtroom visited by the Time Lord in black is the heart of the CIA's domain. It's also probably the chamber where the Second Doctor was tried at the end of The War Games. The courtroom in The Trial of a Time Lord was on that massive space station - or was it a time station? At least here, we are spared an inquisitor dressed as a wedding cake, complete with rampant doily as a ceremonial col ar of office.

There was a sort of inevitability that Leela and Dorothée should team up. Two strong women, both fighters skil ed in their respective weapons. But of course, to start off with, they don't get on. It seems to be standard procedure for Ace/Dorothée to be spiky towards other companions. She was the same with the Brigadier in Battlefield and although she and Benny are friends in the New Adventures, they are forever circling each other like a couple of very wary cats.

Few people get close to Dorothée as a person, and if she sees them getting between her and the Doctor, then a degree of jealousy tends to kick in. Meanwhile, if this catwalk cat-fight had been in the TV version, it would be the point when all the private cameras in the studio suddenly appeared, just as they did when Ace and Gwendoline wrestled on the bed in Ghost Light.

How much blame must the Doctor take for his Family's plight? We know from experience that he has a catalytic effect on any situation he visits. No one who meets him, even for just a moment, walks away untouched, unscathed or properly mangled. His involvement is usual y beneficial, but in his Family's case it's downright catastrophic. If you trace back the disastrous events in the House, don't they all lead to the moment when the Doctor failed to come home? Or do they go further back to the moment when he left? Or stil further to the moment of his birth? Cousin Glospin suspects it goes even further than that. Perhaps the real problem is that the Doctor exists at al . Sooner or later he may final y have to start saying he's sorry.

Poor Satthralope, rudely awakened from her deep sleep. She is keeper of the keys, the spider at the heart of the House's web, lost and lulled in shadowy dreams like Aunt Ada Doom, who saw something nasty in the woodshed at Cold Comfort Farm. It takes time to wipe the sleep from her rheumy old eyes. But when she wakes, when she feels the shuddering protests of the House to which she is wedded, when she sees the transgression thrown along corridors of mirrors; then forbidden secrets, lost under the dust of centuries, wil be uncovered and the price of their hiding will be exacted. Far better for everyone, if she just turns over and goes back to sleep again.

I needed another passage harking back to happier times and childhood adventures. The only sunlight in Lungbarrow comes in shafts of memory from life before the darkness. So it's a hot dry summer in the valley at the foot of Mount Lung. Somewhere across the meadow the Gal ifreyan equivalent of the Famous Five are solving crimes and being insufferable little oiks, the Gallifreyan equivalent of Swallows and Amazons are fighting pirate battles on the lazy river, the blossom thieves in the magenta orchard are too fagged out to tweet, and even bookish Cousin Innocet has been led out of doors on a berrying expedition by her roguish Cousin, the Doctor.

Happy days. Any time now, Moominmamma wil arrive with the lemonade. It all serves to deepen the dank gloom to which the Family are now condemned. I like this little scene very much.

One of those Victorian style "at homes" where guests call, present their cards, take tea and exchange pleasanteries? Not real y.

In Kate Orman's Return of the Living Dad, the Doctor, Chris and Roz spent time in Sydney, 1966. Chris and Roz didn't get the jokes in The Producers - a bit like all those incomprehensibly unfunny jokes in Victorian copies of Punch. You had to be there at the time and not just visiting.

Poor fat Owis has minimal social skills, is easily led and is far more at home with objects and animals that don't tell him how to behave. He's still a very large kid. In the 673 years since the trouble started, no one seems to have developed in the House at all. They've just grown thinner, paler and madder. And Innocet's hair has grown longer.

It's as if time stopped when the sun went out.

Sepulchasm - a typically grim board game of both luck and skill, named after the Gallifreyan equivalent of Purgatory. The players move their chapter-coloured counters round the board, trying to reach the safety of "home."

They use telepathic skills to stop their counters tumbling into Hell when the ground cracks opens under them. It was either that or Serpents and Siege Engines (the Gallifreyan equivalent of Snakes and Ladders) or the Victorian counter game Squails.

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Gallifreyan dice seem to be a law unto themselves. The eight-faced die may have indeterminate numbers, but it does have a secret agenda to guide its performance: it can throw up any score that the author feels like.

I've been vegetarian since 1988. But like most of us, I could still murder a bacon sarnie... unless someone put one in front of me, that is.

Muffins - I recommend orange, lemon, lime and poppy seed. These go down well in the green room during recordings at Big Finish. Chocolate too, of course. And last Christmas, I invented muffins with mincemeat filling.

I was getting bored with the same three Time Lord Chapters being trooped out like a mantra in homage to the sainted Robert Holmes: Prydonian, Arcalian and Patrexes. So I added the Dromeian Chapter (probably Social Democrat) and the Cerulean Chapter (Blue in colour, Green in policy.) Neither have been heard of since.

Lord Ferain's Alternative History of Skaro picks up on the possible alternative Dalek history timeline created by the Doctor's intervention during Genesis of the Daleks, as described in Paul Cornell, Martin Day and Keith Topping's indispensable Bible The Discontinuity Guide.

The masonic symbols in Ferain's office imply secret rituals and dark deeds (and the police force too.) Rassilon was originally described as an architect. Although that suggests he was the architect of Time Lord civilisation rather than just a few high rise blocks and a leisure centre round the Citadel. I'll stop this thread now before my brain runs amok with scenes of mighty Rassilon arguing with the builders over how many mirror tiles he wants in the bathroom or how long a tea break should be.

I didn't want to stage the equivalent of the "M briefs Bond for his latest mission" scene in a boring old Presidential office. Having a tea party inside Monet's Impressionistic water lily paintings is much more up Romana's frivolous, yet stylish, garden path. Or perhaps the idea of a garden path. Rather better than going to Monet's actual garden at Giverny (complete with loads of tourists.) Or you could go to the Orangerie Museum in the Jardin des Tuileries in Paris, where the oval rooms containing Monet's pictures encircle you so that you feel as if you're inside the paintings (complete with loads of tourists.) Only you can't at the moment - a sign on the door says Closed For Refurbishment Until 2004. So I apologise to Daryl. This scene is probably a nightmare to illustrate, only I get the impression(!) that he's looking forward to it.

I like the idea that the Time Lords' exclusive power comes at a price. If Gallifrey is already slightly outside the continuum of the rest of the Universe, surely a good observation point, then the Time Lords' investment in the stabilising influence of Omega's Black Star has only made things worse. The power that neither fluxes nor changes is slowly, slowly grinding the whole of Gallifreyan existence to a halt. At this rate, the Time Lords will eventual y be frozen in Time themselves and the rest of the Universe will come to look at them instead.