Kiendore Virus is, like almost any storyline about a disease, a sort of imitation of the film ‘Outbreak’. The closest to that kind of thing I ever got was the Unfinished Business story ‘Feet of Clay’ in which Rose becomes the hero’s girlfriend dying of the disease as he desperately searches for the cure. It’s hard to be original and even harder not to be really cheesy about the relationships in a story like this. And even harder to do both of these things in less than 2,500 words which is the maximum for these Marion and Kristoph stories.

The picture Kristoph paints of the virus spreading out from Liverpool across the worlds actually wasn’t inspired by Outbreak, but an even older cultural reference. The opening credits of the seminal 1970s doomsday series, ‘Survivors’ depicts a virus wiping out most of mankind through one person infecting countless others in a busy street and the infection spreading exponentially across the planet. Doctor Who did it in the Silurians episode in the 1970s, too. Most zombie films have also played on that human to human transference, right up to 28 Days Later. It is the classic nightmare scenario. Fortunately, in this instance, the quarantine has closed down the space quadrant and it’s all under control even if that means just waiting until all the infected are dead.

I had a bit of trouble when I started writing this because I realised that, like a lot of people, I wasn’t completely sure of the difference between a virus and disease causing bacteria. A bit of research sorted that out. Both viruses and bacteria, incidentally, are mind-bogglingly diverse organisms. Wikipedia says “there are nonillion (5×1030) bacteria on Earth.” About viruses they don’t even attempt to fix a total, saying only that “more than 5,000 types of virus have been described in detail, although most types of virus remain undiscovered, Viruses are ubiquitous, as they are found in almost every ecosystem on Earth, and are the most abundant type of biological entity on the planet.”

They are “the most abundant type of biological entity on the planet.” So just try to imagine how abundant they are in the universe? One thing I realised while writing this story was that I only scratched the surface. There is FAR bigger stories to write on the idea of viruses out there in the universe.

The solution, Kristoph’s blood with antibodies created within it by his own body fighting the virus, is also inspired by an old cultural reference. The Omega Man, is a 1970s post apocalyptic film in which one man carries the antibodies that would cure the disease that has wiped out most of mankind. Since Kristoph is a Time Lord, it is kind of inevitable his body would do that. I also used the same idea in a Ten story in which The Doctor injects his own blood, which has natural immunity, into an infected human, who then acquires the antibodies which he can recreate to cure everyone else in a village. But at the time of writing that one doesn’t go online for another week.

Klatos Research, of course, is something I have used several times in my stories. It is the galactic equivalent of the Wellcome Trust. And of course, all the hospital ships in space are named after famous Earth medical women. In this case I used the SS Marie Curie.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacteria
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibody
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiviral_drug
http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outbreak_(film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivors
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_man