The idea of K9 standing for
election amused me - inspired by the November Five Avengers
episode which I'd just seen, and an Edmund Crispin book where
his hero Gervase Fenn stands for a seat. You're always looking
for a fresh angle with Who, and it struck me that there hadn't
been a Doctor Who story that dealt explicitly with party
politics, which has always fascinated me.
I love court intrigue, powerplay and deception. Out of that
came the notion of a war that had stalled, where the two sides
had just settled down and became mates as diplomatic process
dragged on and on. What would happen if it started up again?
The plot's pretty Byzantine; the length of the Virgin range
meant they had to be more complex than TV Doctor Who, so I
tried to take advantage of that by structuring layer upon
layer of lies, and (hopefully) dropping clues as to what was
really going on.
I always tried to keep the flavour of the TV series. I
remember a review that said something like, "The Well-Mannered
War reads like it was filmed in a power station in Leeds in
1978." I'm afraid I took that as a great compliment.
