I’ve done a couple of summer schools. The last night ball is always something a bit special. Very few people ever wear Riviera fashions to them, though. The first page or so is obviously another reminder that Marion has changed over the weeks that she has been with Kristoph. Did it seem too fast? Can a life change so much in such a short time? I think it can.

The brooch, with the silvertrees, the crest of the House of Lœngbærrow, is another step towards making Marion a part of that noble family. The silvertree crest comes from the same place I found the bit about Time Lords tasting of honey, and I can’t find it again. I don’t know why it should be The Doctor’s family crest. But I think this passes as an explanation:

“Because we have deep roots, an Oldblood house, sired by Rassilon himself.”

Disguising Kristoph’s TARDIS as a phone box, of course, is s self-referential joke.

The Crown Hotel is a real place, very impressive, possibly a bit too impressive for a summer school ball. The ones I went to were at less ornate, modern hotels. But it is perfectly possible. It does have a function room where a party could take place.

Marion and Kristoph in the foyer, with nobody recognising her at first in her posh dress, is slightly similar to the scene at the Yule Ball in Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire. I hadn’t read that when I wrote this. I absolutely hadn’t. Complete coincidence. But every prom, ball and end of term dance should have such a moment.

My experiences of Harrogate go back a few years and I didn’t encounter any knife wielding muggers. I personally wouldn’t imagine it as that sort of place. But these days crime is everywhere. What happened to Kristoph might well happen in Harrogate or anywhere else. It is no reflection on what is a very nice historical town. The point of the incident, of course, is for Marion to witness Kristoph repairing his body while in deep meditation. I described this sort of thing in detail in an Unfinished Business story, Tani Atoshi. That saw the Ninth Doctor badly wounded and repairing himself. In television cannon, the Third Doctor did something similar in The Daemons.

It also raises a small theological question.

She wasn’t sure if she could pray for an alien. Did the God she learnt about in school as a little girl actually have any say in the lives of people born 250 million light years away?

Or did that matter?

She had been told that He was a loving God who cared for all of creation. Wasn’t Gallifrey, wasn’t Kristoph, part of that creation?

I think Gallifrey is part of that Creation – in the sense that the writers whose imaginations created and coloured and populated it over the years were using God given talents to do so. Why not?

http://www.crownhotelharrogate.com/