Anniversary - Well, it has only been a year since Marion and Kristoph’s Alliance of Unity! A lot has happened to them. Enough to fill a regular soap opera slot. And of course, that is very much what Marion and Kristoph is. It is a soap opera set on Gallifrey. I don’t think there is any shame in saying so. It is pitched at that level, with a mix of romance and drama and ordinary things happening in extraordinary ways. It takes the sort of pace that soap opera writing does to come up with a weekly episode, too.

An average soap opera would probably get through the same kind of events, no doubt. We’ve had a miscarriage and a pregnancy, an upstairs downstairs affair between Remonte and Rika, Li and Lily’s romance, a murder, a wedding, a kidnapping and another pregnancy. I think I’ve ticked all the serial drama boxes.

And more drama is around the corner. Everyone, of course, knows that Marion’s pregnancy is a problem. According to the Theta Sigma stories there were six failed pregnancies before young Chrístõ is born. So it is obvious something bad is going to happen, and we’re building towards it with the sequence in this story where Kristoph has a strong premonition of grief and sadness ahead.

Most of the story is about nice stuff, though. Marion is happy, so is Kristoph. They have a really lovely party and give each other special gifts, and the bad stuff is still ahead of them.