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.