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Author's Notes - Gary Russell's guide to The Scales of Injustice.

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Episode One

So here I am, exactly eight years on from writing The Scales of Injustice, and now giving it a read for the first time since then. Golly, but it's full of continuity nonsense, isn't it? There's a temptation to rush through this online version and do a search and replace for all the familiar character names and put in new ones, just so I don't look such a twit. But then again, just as I loathe those filmmakers who go back and create new effects and insert new characters into old movies, it'd be wrong of me to make this book a "director's cut" style thingy. I'm simply not convinced that I wouldn't make it worse rather than better (oh if only the director of ET had shown the same degree of self-awareness!).

So here we are, the Memo prologues and Episode One, and some dreary notes.

I liked the Memo idea, I just thought that was a better 'pre-credits' sequence than an actual chapter, and as the book was created at the height of X-Files mania, it seemed appropriate. Also, the idea of the story being in seven episodes rather than chapters was appealing, although I'd done it before, with my previous book, the so-terribly successful and popular Invasion of the Cat-People. It just seemed neater and more Doctor Who-like than straight chapters.

So, within the Memo section, we face references to Sir John Sudbury and his C19, who of course was first mentioned by the Fifth Doctor in Time-Flight. The memo is from Cambridge (ie an old associate of Liz Shaw) Professor Andrew Montrose, a character from an old amateur Doctor Who audio play I'd directed called Justyce (Montrose was played by fellow Big Finish writer/director Nicholas Pegg by the way. That Montrose however was from the far future - I just ripped off the name).

Of the people Montrose names as the 'team' - Richard Atkinson and James Griffin are two real people I know. Richard indeed designs a majority of our Short Trips book collection covers and also writes scathing reviews of Big Finish's output for TV Zone. Probably in revenge for his inclusion here! I honestly can't remember who Cathryn Wildeman is/was but bearing in mind I rarely just invent names, she must've been based on someone I knew. Perhaps it'll come back to me in subsequent chapters.

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Jimmy Munro was of course the Brig's right-hand man in Spearhead From Space and Dr Sweetman was named as UNIT's CMO in Planet of the Spiders, presumably before being replaced by Harry Sullivan. I tended to prefer to think that UNIT officers went back to the regular army after their UNIT stints rather than dying off-screen, but I wouldn't be surprised if another Doctor Who novel has been written at some point in which Munro or many of the other UNIT bods mentioned herein are said to have died.

Into Episode One then - and I realise that this book is full of nameless characters, the Pale Thin Man with the Scar, the blond assassin, Mister? and so on. I must've been going through a phase of doing that - I know that when the Pale Thin Man returns in my next book, he gets a name and a background.

The Traynor/Stalker sequence in this Episode is then shamelessly duplicated in the sequel, Business Unusual, although I also off the dog in that one. Sorry. Originality - never my strong point!

The reference to the adventure in the tropics and Amelia Grover is a link to Chris Bulis's novel The Eye of the Giant that, chronologically precedes this one.

Gosh, I really wanted to set up Liz's general dissatisfaction with her UNIT life straight away, didn't I? Subtlety, another weak spot it seems. I like Liz, I thought she was great as a kid (Season 7 really made me a fan of the show) but was also annoyed we never saw her leave. Despite Pertwee being my favourite Doctor then and now, I'm amazed at how unlikeable I make him in this story. He really has few redeeming features in Scales which surprises me reading this back now. Many people have said that Troughton is the hardest Doctor to write for but I never felt that, for me it's Pertwee. Which is why I've not tried it since.

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Major General Scobie of course also crops up in Spearhead From Space. Bless him. I notice I also opted to have them moved into the UNIT lab that first appeared in Terror of the Autons and survived through to The Time Monster, rather than the Season 7 one. I think it's the same building, but UNIT budgetary concerns made them move the Doc up a couple of floors into a smaller room. Perhaps he liked the canal view. Perhaps him constantly chucking things into said canal is what made 'em move out of London to the Three Doctors onwards UNIT base. Perhaps I think too much about all this.

Jossey O'Grahame, the failed actor who worked with the greats. Hmmm... wonder what I'm channelling there. Justin (Richards) and Grayson (Fuller) are two real people whose names I hijacked. Trevithick is of course the Nightshade actor from Mark Gatiss's book of the same name. And I wince at the idea of Carry on Digging now, but that said, it does sound like an early Seventies Carry On movie.

"There's no higher responsibility than great potential" was a phrase someone said to me as a kid and it was a philosophy I tried to live by. Which explains the fractured, paranoid, self-deprecating person I became in my adult life by not living up to such perceived potential.

I liked the flashback/race memory thing - lifted in concept from Mac Hulke's Cave-Monsters novel, and I was particularly pleased with the phrase 'Devilbacks' to describe the Silurians. Hey, I can be pleased with something, can't I?

Not sure where the Silurian name Sula is from, but Baal is clearly lifted from Brecht's work.

Oh God, look, another trite continuity reference. Mister Campbell, the electrical storesman is obviously the same "dolly Scotsman" that Jo Grant talks to in Terror of the Autons. Corporal Bell is, well, Corporal Bell from Mind of Evil and Claws of Axos, and Masie Hawke is the name I gave to the character played by Gypsie Kemp in Day of the Daleks. Boyle, however, is I believe someone I've actually made up myself. There's a first time for everything.

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Marc Marshall - names that crop up a lot in my writing, although the actual child isn't based on anyone in particular. I set this in Dungeness because I love the place. It's bleak, depressing and seems to live in a monochrome world of Avengers locations rather than Derek Jarman extravagance. It's cold, inhospitable and bleak. I love it and a visit there the previous summer with my successor at DWM, Gary Gillatt sealed its fate as the setting for this book. I don't think I made use of the lighthouse though, which surprises me now. I want to live in a lighthouse. Always have. God knows why. I'm just weird.

Mrs Petter is based on the mum of an old school friend, and Steve Merrett was my mate and boss at the job I had when writing Scales, working for a PlayStation magazine. Others from the Playstation Plus editorial team, (Matt, Alex, Oz and Jacqui turn up later in this chapter).

Sir James Quinlan of course popped his clogs in Ambassadors of Death and in Terror of the Autons we learn that the Doctor frequents a London club with Lord 'Tubby' Rowlands.

Jeff Johnson, Liz's "partner" is a UNIT soldier from Ambassadors - I gave him the name Jeff cos he was played by Caroline John's hubby, Geoffrey Beevers. It's the Virgo in me. I'm sorry. Oh, and Liz smokes a pipe, just as Caroline John did back then. And I apologise for the blatant and unfunny Shada "May week" rip-off.

In November '95 I stayed at a guest house in Blackpool (I don't think it was called the Bay View though) where the owners were very jolly and nice but were members of something like the Rollercoaster Passengers Club and travelled the world, determined to take every rollercoaster ever. Now, I love Rollercoasters myself (Six Flags Magic Mountain in Los Angeles has the best ever I believe) but my god, these people bored even me.

WPC Barbara Redworth is named after a former flatmate of my old DWM co-worker and chum, Paul Vyse. These days she's not Redworth any more, but here she is, frozen in a moment of time, Redworth forever.

And finally (Esther), yes, I think the chauffeur mentioned here is the same one who shifted his allegiance to the Master in time for The Mind of Evil.

More continuity nonsense with Episode Two, folks...

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Episode Two

Well, nice to see that some of you have come back for more. Well done. Give yourselves a gold star. Or a Blue Peter badge even.

We’re onto Episode Two now – which introduces the majority of the rest of our human cast (but still not really the Silurians... ooohh).

Not really a great deal to note though, but here goes. The Glasshouse was borrowed (or nicked) from Dave Bishop’s Virgin novel Who Killed Kennedy, but I clearly moved it. I imagine there are probably quite a few Glasshouses dotted around the UK. The exterior is all lovely thirties art-deco. This has mostly been pillaged from both the marvellous Hoover Factory down the A40 (the route you’d take out of London to where the Brig lives and UNIT will one day end up being based) – Elvis Costello wrote a song about it, you know. It’s also partly swiped from a similar but smaller white art deco building in Lewisham, opposite Ladywell mainline station. I’m a big fan of thirties architecture, as you may have guessed.

The Irish Twins – my most fav characters of anything I’ve ever created. Evil personified by beauty. The best evil always is. They’re actually cribbed from real people, or at least the male one is. I worked in a PR office once and we had a temp in. He was tall, lean, jet black hair and blue eyes, came from Eire and was called Cellian. I never asked if I could nick him as a villain but I did, and gave him a sister. That started my lifelong love of the Irish accent, a lilt that can still melt me today.

Peter Morely plays a pivotal role in Scales but you know, I have no idea where the name comes from. This is unusual - names or characters are usually from someone I know, but neither the name nor the description reminds me of anyone I know/knew. How odd. How unusual. And, cynics might say, how nice and original of me! I do know someone who was nicknamed, rather unfairly I feel, the Skull, and the toilets are certainly based on the scary ones in the King’s Head in a North London suburb I’d best not name for fear of libel suites! I suspect they’re very nice toilets nowadays, but back then, brrrr....

Dear old Marmaduke – the name rolled off the typewriter, but the no-nonsense approach and dismissal of anyone else’s opinion was certainly based on the MD of a company I once worked for. He got kicked out eventually, and Sir Marmaduke is just a cruel caricature of him.

The Brig’s house and street is based on a real one in Gerrard’s Cross where my old schoolfriend Dave Hall lived. I haven’t seen sight nor sound of him since we were 17, so I doubt he knows I tried to make his home famous!

The Brig’s neighbours are all probably based on real people – but only the Prys’s are ones I can remember (although Prys isn’t their name). They too boasted of having the Welsh rugger team on their patio once and I always thought that was an odd thing to be proud of.

I love Mah Jong but it’s so hard to find other people who do these days. Cadmore End Common is where an actor chum lives and Kate is of course from Marc Platt’s Downtime as, I think, is the phrase “Tiger”. I don’t know why Kate’s teacher is Miss Marshall (well, I do, it’s taken from Doctor Who fan Jackie Marshall) but it seems odd as there’s an unrelated Marc Marshall in the same book. I goofed there, but someone at Virgin ought to have spotted that, too. Fiona was Nick Courtney’s name for the Brig’s fictional first wife so I nicked it from him. He was always threatening at conventions to write a biog of the Brig, so I thought I’d get there first.

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The use of the Daily Sketch is, as any fan of the old Target novels would know, the source of that marvellous phrase "The childrens’ own programme that adults adore", which is the best description of Doctor Who, bar none.

Jimmy Turner (from The Invasion) has married his “dolly” Isobel Watkins (also from The Invasion). Awww... I love happy endings. Corporal Nutting is about the only UNIT soldier not killed by a Silurian in the TV story, so I thought he deserved a mention here.

Hooray for Police Sergeant Robert Lines, a name stolen from my mate Rob Lines (he was best man at Who writer Rob Shearman’s wedding y’know). I liked this rather open-minded policeman and he returns in both sequels to this book. Patricia Haggard is the character played by Louise Jameson in BBV’s PROBE videos alongside Caroline John as Liz Shaw. Ah, it all fits together...

Seaview Cottage is based, in my mind’s eye at least, on an old white cottage built on a shingle beach near Exbury, in Hampshire. It had to be the most ridiculous and impossible to reach cottage in the world – needless to say, in the days when I used to call myself an actor, we filmed an episode of the Famous Five there. Only a TV crew could choose to use somewhere it was impossible to get electric cables near.

Ooh, Silurians at last. The idea that there are different species of Silurians comes from, most obviously, the fact that on telly the Silurians, Sea Devils and other Silurians (in Warriors of the Deep) don’t look that alike. It always annoys me that in Star Trek, you have the crew of the Enterprise or Voyager or whatever, all of whom are different heights, hair and skin colours, waist sizes etc. Yet Star Trek aliens always seem to be cloned. I thought if everyone on Earth looks different depending on which continent or even country they’re from, then why wouldn’t the Reptile People be similar different. Hence this story...

Okay, now onto Episode Three...

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Episode Three

As I write these notes for each chapter/episode, it’s important to tell you (well, it isn’t but I’m doing so anyway) that I’m reading the book as I go along. Thus I’ve not read chapter four yet. Hence discrepancies may turn up that contradict what I’ve written here or earlier. A good example in chapter two was when I stated that UNIT HQ wasn’t the one seen in The Three Doctors. Trouble is, here in Chapter Three, it clearly is. D’oh! Still, we live and learn.

L’ithe, you’ll be unsurprised to learn doesn’t exist. One cannot nip over to Guernsey or Sark and get into Monsieur Renault’s boat and pop over to visit the Silurians. Which is just as well, as if L’ithe did exist, I doubt the Channel Islands tourist board would like me very much.

The quick reference to Psychic Shirl is meant to be an oh-so-subtle parody of Mystic Meg. For non-UK readers, she’s one of those people who writes a horoscope column in a newspaper and appears on TV now and again explaining how our lives are governed by the stars.

I know some people who are terribly good astrologers and after a couple of pints can almost convince me that there’s something in it. Mystic Meg has never taken me out for a pint but were she to do so, I doubt she’d convince me anyway.

PC Stuart Halton is named after a lovely mate of mine from Bolton. I hope he didn’t mind being used here! Auggi is based on the mother of someone I know. I won’t say who because Auggi’s none too flattering a comparison, but I even nicked some of her more castigating dialogue direct from her human counterpart.

Tahni is of course stolen from the original name for Sixties Doctor Who companion Vicki. The 1965 story The Rescue was originally known as "Dr Who and Tanni" and I thought it was too daft a name to lose. This whole chapter has so much continuity nonsense as I attempted to draw together Doctor Who and The Silurians, The Sea Devils, Warriors of the Deep and the novelisation of that first story, The Cave-Monsters, Okdel, K’to, Morka, the nonsense about the moon etc.

I saw the Silurian Triad (Icthar, Tarpok and Scibus from Warriors) a bit like three Marlon Brandos from The Godfather – with the Silurians being a bit Mafiosi in style generally. No one likes the Sea Devil Warriors because they're like the assassins and no one quite trusts them,. Who knows, you might be their next secret target...

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The background to our two human villains, re-reading this now, disturbs me. Having acknowledged that my books generally contain a degree of infanticide, I now notice that most of my unlikable male characters tend to have a history of spousal abuse and ultimately murder. It’s all unconscious. Maybe it’s subconscious. Maybe I need to seek some therapy.

I liked the idea of a man so consumed with a love of killing, of creating death to be the ultimate high, that real sex never appealed to him. He never needed sex because he gets off on being responsible for killing people. Hmmm, perhaps I read too much Ian Fleming as a child.

I had also forgotten that, via the scene with the bottle in the door, that I had set up the origins of the pale young man this early. I thought that’d only come out of the sequel to this, Business Unusual. Still, it fits in with the concept of the Vault. As does the fact that Traynor’s dog is augmented with Stahlman’s gas. Nevertheless, it’s a horrible over-use of continuity and I apologise. Sadly I just know it won’t be the last piece of gratuitous continuity in Scales. Oh dear...

Ooh, we get to see Liz’s home. How nice. Mrs Longhurst who lives downstairs is named after a lovely lady called Claire Longhurst who I met at the same time as Rob Lines (see Chapter Two). I’ve never owned guinea pigs, but my elder brothers did and I have vague memories of them from when I was knee-high to a grasshopper. They were originally going to be rats, because my friend David Bailey had pet rats when I wrote this. He then got rid of the rats and so John-Paul and George-Ringo became guinea pigs.

Corbett Woodall was a real TV news reporter – I think from a local rather than national BBC service but during the sixties and seventies he found a new career as the man who played newsreaders in everything the BBC did. Alex Macintosh (he was in Day of the Daleks) was the same. But Corbett Woodall was always better.

Alan Morton is named after a Scots Doctor Who fan I knew. I don’t think he ever took a bullet for anyone though. Oh and in another piece of naff continuity, Wagstaffe, the reporter who dies shielding Sudbury is meant to be the guy from Spearhead from Space.

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Oh gosh, look, the Doctor is actually in this chapter! But not for long.

I really enjoyed destroying the Lethbridge-Stewarts' marriage. I just enjoyed writing what I like to think is a good bit of real-life drama without spaceships and rayguns, and kept visualising this scene as if it’d been done on telly.

I’m amazed Alistair and Fiona’s relationship got this far – I’m always surprised at how well people do cope when they can’t discuss their careers with their families because they’ve signed the official secrets act, or there’s doctor/patient confidentiality for instance.

The Saracen’s Head is or was anyway a real restaurant in Beaconsfield Old Town which we visited once or twice. Great food. The Captain Walters mentioned here was clearly Sergeant Walters from The Invasion. He’s been promoted. Well done to him.

Now I won’t take the blame for this one – this is a bit of bad copyediting by someone at Virgin. It wasn’t like this when I wrote it. I know, and I’m fairly certain that the Brigadier would know that whilst Smallmarshes and Dungeness are in Kent, Hastings is in Sussex. Grrr…

Ooh, I like the ending here. It’s the scene portrayed on Andrew Skilleter’s book cover, featuring the hologram of Marc Marshall in the Silurian’s hand. I was very keen to ensure that the cover Andrew did represented a scene rather than served as just an impression of the story.

Well, that’s Episode Three done. What happens next week? And why isn’t Basil Brush singing a song with Mister Derek before it starts?

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Episode Four

And here we are in Episode Four. We're at the stage where there aren't many new characters or situations left to talk about, so this one's going to be quite brief.

To start off with, woo hoo, Private Parkinson is a new UNIT character. He'll probably die in that case. I don't know anyone called Parkinson so he's not named after anyone that I can remember.

Ooh, now here's this whole Kent/Sussex thing raising its head again. Surely a person injured in Smallmarshes (in Kent) wouldn't be taken to a hospital in Hastings (in Sussex)? More likely a hospital in East Kent.

Later during the UNIT sequence where Masie Hawk gets into civvies, we again get the hint that Smallmarshes is in Sussex. It's not, it's in Kent. Either mine or the Virgin copy-editor's geography was shot to hell. And whilst I'm often the first to accept such things on the chin, a quick glance at my initial drafts show, I did indeed get my geography right. Grrr…

One of the main reasons I'm so fond of Scales of Injustice is the human stories, especially Lethbridge-Stewart's. I really wanted to put the Brig through the wringer and show how whilst his orderly UNIT world is being shattered by the Doctor leaking things and his budget being cut by Geneva, his home life is falling apart in parallel. Poor bugger.

I like the idea he knows about Liz Shaw and Jeff Johnson but never mentions it until he has to. The reference to Gilmore of course refers to Remembrance of the Daleks, and Ben Aaronovitich's novelisation of the same that, if I recall, suggests his experiences led directly to the formation of unit.

When I worked at Marvel as editor of Doctor Who Magazine, it was often a seven days a week job, with a lot of (unpaid) late nights. I was lucky enough not to have a Fiona at home - but could well have had. The conversation Alistair and Fiona have over the phone was merely me imagining things that could easily have been levelled at me by my better half during my time there.

I loved the idea that he wonders if Kate was just a subconscious way of keeping his marriage alive and that he couldn't even bring himself to say anything more than a formal "sorry" to Doris Wilson on hearing of her husband's death. The Brigadier is a fascinating character who despite all this finds himself 'ready for action'. It was quite deliberate that it's Alistair throughout this entire scene until that final line where he becomes the Brig.

It's odd that this book seems to be about disintegrating relationships. The Liz scene suggests that she and the Doctor are world apart in outlook, and we already know she's having problems with Jeff. I'd recently gone through a breakdown of a relationship and must have transferred a lot of my feelings into this book. I doubt that I thought that then, but can see it clearly now.

Liz's friend Jan-Dick Heijs is based on a real Dutchman I knew. I think in the earliest sketchings I did for this story, Jana's character was a bloke and I called him Jan-Dick. When Jana turned into a woman, I used his name here.

When I wrote the final draft of this book, the tramp/man feeding them info - the UK equivalent of Woodward and Bernstein's Deep Throat - was written as 'Mister ?' but Virgin wouldn't do that and so the copyeditor went through and changed it to 'a friend'. I never understood why and I don't like it.

As Chuuk shows the Doctor around the base, we hear of the legendary two-faced, cowardly Masz K'll. That really was me working out my demons by naming an evil character after the man who'd pushed me out of Marvel. Hence Pannini and Tunbridge Wells (where they were based) get not very subtle digs as well. I like Chukk, the rejected genetic inferior reptile man (apparently) trying to prove he and his people are equal to the pure Silurians and Sea Devils.

Bless the Marshall family - yet another couple in this adventure who blame each other for their own failings. Clearly I'm relentlessly depressing in my apparent belief that relationships and marriage are doomed to failure. God, I must have been tedious to be around during 1996. I apologise to everyone who knew me then. Alan Marshall is MP for Irlam o'the Heights, the silliest place name I knew (courtesy of Steve Lyons who lives there).

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The Chevoits were chosen as the base for the Vault for no other reason than I'm a huge fan of Marvel Comics' Captain Britain character who got his superpowers up in the Cheviots. Indeed, anyone who has read those early 1976 issues of the comic and can remember the underground Darkmoor research centre that Brian Braddock (ie Captain Britain) worked in should now be able to picture the Vault quite easily. Hell, the Darkmoor facility and the Reaver's attack mentioned here are indeed from those issues of the comic. I'm shameless I really am. Oh, and note the use of the name Windscale not Sellafield, to remind us of our late seventies setting.

Aargghh there's some more Grussell continuity hell! Now we have two characters from Remembrance of the Daleks (Gilmore and Jensen), one from Fenric (Judson), one from The Time Monster (Ruth Ingram) and one from The Web of Fear (Anne Travers). As I say, I'm shameless.

I'm really amazed that I provided the pale young man's origins from The Invasion here; I was convinced it was in Business Unusual. Well, just goes to show I know very little about my own work. The Nigerian from earlier (and The Mind of Evil) gets a name, Bailey. After David Bailey (who ironically wrote a Sea Devil Benny audio for Big Finish recently). David is neither black, a driver nor an evil munitions expert. Well, I don't think so.

Towards the end of the chapter we have the scene necessary to explain how Peter Davison's Doctor recognised Icthar, Tarpok and co in Warriors of the Deep. See, it all fits together neatly. Eventually...

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Episode Five

Not a great deal to say about this Episode I'm afraid, folks. The story moves along and we get the truth about Jana just in time for her to die. Looking back at this now, I think I handled her very badly - I did what I'd call an 'Eric Saward' on her and just killed her off when her function in the story had ceased. Except that she doesn't actually have one - I'm rather appalled at this. She's there to get Liz to L'ithe and then provide a cliffhanger. Beyond that, she's rather irrelevant to the whole thing. What a shame. Sorry.

The idea of the pale young man having a scar that immediately tells the reader who he is but not the story's characters is an unashamed rip-off from Malcolm Hulke's novelisation of Invasion of the Dinosaurs where the character of Butler is only identified by his scar. I didn't even have the wherewithall to change it from a scar! That's outrageous. Naughty Gary. I do love the fact he has crosshairs instead of eyes, however. A spark of originality at last - but only because it's something I wrote in a story when I was eight.

Ooh look, Tom Osgood from The Daemons makes his appearance. So does Champion and (in conversation) Robins from The Silurians plus Tracy from The Invasion. Shipman and Farley are the names of people I knew at school and have turned up in other things I've written. I wonder where they are now. Oh well, one for Friends, Reunited I suppose...

The Nestene Energy Sphere going to the National Space Museum is of course a precursor to Terror of the Autons. I like the conversation here between Mike Yates and Masie Hawke. I'd forgotten that I'd paired her off with Captain Hawkins from The Silurians. This is a nice moment - something that's always bothered me about the casual death count in UNIT stories was always what do they tell the families. If UNIT's this top secret organisation (or was at the time of Season Seven), then what could they be told. I loved the fact that Masie couldn't tell Sam Hawkins' family about his death because of the Official Secrets Act, and that she had to write all the letters full of lies and half-truths to other families. Oh, and I also like Dairy Milk chocolate bars.

Finally we end up back with the Third Doctor doing what he does best - trying to broker a peace deal and losing when stupid humans turn up with guns and things.

Oh well, next time, the Myrka probably turns up...

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Episode Six

As we enter the final furlong of this book, my notes are getting briefer and briefer (which, for many of you, will be a relief!). But Episode Six turns up two of the most important, for me, aspects of the book that were the main raison d'etre of its existence. Firstly, at the very end we see the heroism of Mike Yates come into play, justifying his later promotion and, more importantly, we introduce the Vault.

As a lad, I always was concerned about what UNIT did with the left-overs from alien invasions etc., and although it's taken until this chapter, we are finally at the crux of the story. I always intended this to be a trilogy of stories (the sequels ultimately being Business Unusual in 1997 and Instruments of Darkness in 2001) but had no idea it'd be spread over five years - I thought I'd manage one a year!

The ongoing story of the Pale Young man, the Irish Twins and the blond assassin, plus assorted hangers-on such as the Stalker were all intended to be Third Doctor stories. Then, as I mapped things out, I realised that what ultimately became Instruments would have to be a later Doctor, preferably the Sixth. But after doing Scales, Virgin didn't want what I wanted - i.e. Business Unusual to be a Third Doctor/Sarah Jane/Jeremy Fitzoliver story.

Indeed, as their licence to do Doctor Who ended shortly afterwards, it couldn't happen that way. And in conversations with BBC Books, it was made clear that they wanted a Sixth Doctor/Mel book quite early on, so Business Unusual shifted to that era. With Instruments wrapping it all up, I lost the natural time lapse that Season 11 to Season 23 would have given me (to allow for the characters of Trey and Joe to grow up and the Irish wins to seek redemption) and also the Jeremy Fitzoliver backstory. But what I gained (the chance to write for the Sixth Doctor and Mel twice) more than made up for that. But I digress...

Now, because of the Vault's modus operandi, I make no apologies this time for all the continuity references in this chapter - they're essential to the storytelling. For once. The 'wireless business' mentioned by Marmaduke refers to The Invasion. Mars Probe Six, Quinlan and Ralph Cornish are all from The Ambassadors of Death. The move of the space research centre to Devesham is a reference to The Android Invasion. WOTAN is from The War Machines. I've a feeling Lawson turns up again in Business Unusual, exercising the Stalker.

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Liz's family home in Burton Joyce in Nottinghamshire is based entirely on the family home of my mate Nick Pegg. Oh look, Priory Mews is UNIT's Denham HQ - which ties in I guess with Pyramids of Mars (out now on shiny BBC DVD!). During the dream sequence, I thought it'd be fun for Liz to see the Doctor in an angelic way, complete with halo effect, as seen on Cho-Je/K'anpo at the Third Doctor's regeneration scene in Planet of the Spiders. Oh and to my knowledge Slough doesn't have a canal. And see, my evil Virgoan brain has tried justifying why Sea Devils wear string vests. Aww, how sweet. Nutra Sweet even...

Torture is a regular standard of my books. Usually heaped upon bad guys by other bad guys. The torture of Marmaduke is just sick isn't it? I love it. The man gets what he deserves. Similarly, I love Auggi's reaction to Tahni being with the Doctor on the submersible and her reasoning away its destruction. I love mad people. Psychos are so much more fun to write for.

As a Bond movie fan I often have to justify liking the less well-liked movies such as License to Kill and A View to Kill. In both cases, it's because whilst the central villains are cartoonish, they are justified by the fact they are simply psychos who enjoy killing. Watching Christopher Walken mowing people down in the mines in the latter film, and just laughing while doing so, is as perfect a justification for adoring his villainy as any three dimensional Electras, Blofelds or Strombergs.

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Episode Seven

Woo hoo - I can't believe we're at the end of The Scales of Unjustice. And I'm pleased that we open this bit with a nice scene with Sergeant Benton, who was always my favourite UNIT regular when I was a kid. Benton mentions both The Web of Fear and, from The Invasion, Major Billy Rutlidge. We also learn that both Hawke and Bell had been members of UNIT from day one, alongside Jimmy Turner and Sergeant Walters, as well as Jack Tracy, all from The Invasion. Cosworth is the posh, rather unimpressive, guy from The Mind of Evil. Beech & co, the solicitors, are named after Andrew Beech, a former lawyer who now runs a company that put on one of the many Doctor Who conventions in the UK. I love the fact that Benton doesn't see himself as officer material at this stage. I could hear John Levene's voice saying all those lines quite clearly.

The Doctor's route through the Vault takes in Nestene energy spheres from Spearhead from Space, a phial of Silurian plague from, oddly enough, Doctor Who and the Silurians, the cyber-guns from The Invasion and even an imperial Dalek from Remembrance of the Daleks. Also from Remembrance is the body of Ratcliffe, and as we carry on through the morgue we meet Krimpton from The War Machines, Weams from the Web of Fear, Hibbert from Spearhead from Space and Gregory from The Invasion. I'd love to say that the inclusion of Hibbert's body is some subtle clue to the fallibility of the Pale Young Man and the Vault, that they can make mistakes. Because, as you and I know, Hibbert's body was completely vaporised by Channing's Autons. Truth is, I cocked it up. Sorry.

On the beach we finally get to see the Myrka. Yaaay. Private Beaton, its first victim is named after my then next door neighbour Lindsay Beaton. I hope she didn't mind being sacrificed like this! Ashton and Mitchell are, like Farley and Shipman before them, named after guys I knew at school. Private Salt is named after my fellow big finish audio director Ed Salt.

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The moment when Cellian speaks and says, 'never had anything worthwhile to say" is a terrible crib from Marvel's Fantastic Four comic. I believe it was during John Byrne's excellent eighties run, he had the Inhuman's pet dog Lockjaw utter the very same words when he spoke for the very first time in twenty-odd years. I loved it and ripped it off mercilessly here.

The final sequence in Regents Park ties in loosely with a story I commissioned from Terrance Dicks whilst I was at Marvel UK editing DWM. The reference to Sir Robert Marks is from an old seventies TV ad he used to do about people driving like maniacs unless they used decent tyres whereupon, one presumes, it was okay for them to drive like maniacs if they used said tyres. My comment about Trafalgar Square one day being pedestrianised was scarily prescient it would seem!

I was very keen to find a good reason for Liz to leave UNIT at the end of the book. Having her learn a new science, and use her real training to some good with the Silurian genetic problem was ideal. I could certainly believe she'd jack the Doctor, the Brig etc in to go off and do something more rewarding. The idea of just going back to Cambridge seemed a bit unlikely, even though it was given as the reason in Terror of the Autons. Therefore I wanted to ensure that what she went back to do was relevant and important to her. I love the idea of Liz trying to down a pint of Guinness at the UNIT Christmas party, too, to win a fiver. She's a feisty lass who'd give any bloke a run for their money. Maybe that's why she and the Third Doc could never be real friends. He wanted a girly-girl to boss around, and Liz was far from that.

And there you have it. The Scales of Injustice. I hope you've enjoyed reading it in weekly instalments, just like it might have been on the telly. Now go and track down Business Unusual (my fave of all the Doctor Who books wot I wrote) and Instruments of Darkness to see how the story ends.