The Soldier's Return is the one hundredth Marion and Kristoph story. That in itself has to be recognised as an achievement. Of course, nobody is pretending that this is highbrow literature. It’s a weekly online soap opera in which an ordinary woman gets thrown into extraordinary situations or, conversely, an extraordinary man, Kristoph, copes with ordinary situations.

The title, Soldier’s Return, comes from a song about a soldier returning to Ireland after the First World War and wondering what he was fighting for, considering the way his own country was treated in the meantime. It isn’t really relevant to this story, but I thought I would point that out. This story has much more in common with the present day Afghanistan conflict, and the families waiting for their loved ones to return home. The difference is that the Third Squadron of the Gallifreyan Space Fleet have been on a peace-keeping mission on the Andromedan border. They haven’t been in anything like the same danger and on this occasion there is no equivalent of the Repatriations British people have got all too painfully used to in recent years.

The war that Lord Haddandrox and Kristoph de Lœngbærrow remember was a different story. That WAS about bringing home coffins, as well as wounded men whose arrival at the space port shocked the civilians waiting for them. In that way, the Sarre Offensive was something like the First World War, in which the horrors of conflict were brought home in a stark and shocking way. Its aftermath was also something like the attitude towards Vietnam veterans in early 1970s America – a kind of embarrassed silence around them.

There are references, of course, to Gallifrey changing its foreign policies, wanting to close the Transduction Barrier and withdraw from galactic affairs. By the time The Doctor breaks away from his world, that prediction has come to pass. These stories are set at a time when Gallifrey is still a player in intergalactic politics. That actually does sit slightly at odds with official cannon, but mainly because so little has been revealed about Gallifrey’s history.