Consequences

The book version of the original studio-bound script of Lungbarrow meant a big expansion of the story. It was easy enough to add extra bits in Paris, or at the Gallifreyan Capitol, or anywhere in The Past, but the main thrust of the story still remained trapped inside the House. It's not unlike Evil Of The Daleks. All the 1866 part of that story is confined to Maxtible's house, apart from the brief location moment when Victoria stares from a window at the unreachable world outside, before being led away by her Dalek persecutors, just as Chris stares from the window of Lungbarrow in Chapter 5. (Yes, I know Evil has scenes in an outside stable, but that's a studio set, so it doesn't count.)

In Ghost Light, the mad explorer Redvers sees the house of Gabriel Chase as a jungle, and by Part 3, the place is actually becoming one. I tried to find as many ways of bringing the outside into the House of Lungbarrow as possible: most of the building is a forest, seen at different levels, with the attic as the dense woodland canopy. And now we have a stream and a black lagoon. The House has become a domain for the living furniture: a realm in which the House, as a living entity, is gradually withdrawing into itself with its own denizens and creatures. Trapped inside, the Gallifreyan inhabitants are tolerated, but are becoming almost like intruders.

When Andrew Cartmel and Ben Aaronovitch first outlined their ideas about the mythos of Gallifrey to me, I was quite shocked. I didn't sleep that night, partly because the Doctor's mystery was ingrained for me as something that should never be touched. It was heresy, but I also knew they were right. We already knew too much. Andrew and Ben weren't taking anything away, because so much had already gone. They were deepening and revitalising the mystery. I'd been having the same thoughts. That's where the idea for the Doctor's Family and House came from, but I'd been too scared to send the idea in. So this story is an amalgam of all our ideas, additionally influenced by what so many other people added in the New Adventures and by the looming Paul McGann movie, which in so many ways, meant the end of the world as we knew it. Even so, most of the detail is mine.

The little exchange between Dorothée and Leela deliberately lays out fandom's conflicting attitude towards the great question: Who is the Doctor? Leela firmly believes the Doctor's mystery should be preserved. Dorothée agrees absolutely with her, but is dying to find out anyway. But for all Leela's protestations, it was she who went digging up the Doctor's past in the first place.

I love the line "She folded away her thoughts in the dark." It's exactly inside Innocet's meticulously thorough and tidy character. It's also incredibly sad and touching. She's the only Cousin who really cares about the Doctor. I tried to keep this scene absolutely simple, but I cried a lot when I wrote it.

This is the Seventh Doctor's final quest before a new beginning. In full view of his friends, he's beset by both his Family and his past. And if that isn't enough, his own sanctuary and real home, the TARDIS, is being violated too. As his despair mounts, he returns to his roots, back to the room where he grew up. But he doesn't find a solution there. It isn't back to the womb at all. Instead, facing his own fear like the Third Doctor in the Cave of Crystal, he lands up going even further. Back before the womb, like travelling beyond the edge of space into speculation.

The Doctor refers to Professor Thripsted's Flora and Fauna of the Universe in The Sun Makers.

Innocet's fate in the original tv storyline was quite different. She was crushed whilst saving the Doctor's life, when the room in which he was trapped was ground to dust by the enraged House. And that was where she stopped. It wouldn't have been fair to the actress to have resurrected her in another persona for the last half episode.