This story was written primarily to get Susan and her grandfather together in a situation other than her house in the 23rd century and to explore their relationship more fully, as well as to introduce the baby as a fuller character. Until now she had not even been named. Now, I introduced the idea that Sukie, a diminutive of Susan, of course, keeping the names in the family, was both a hybrid, more Human than Gallifreyan, unlike their mother and brothers, and a potentially strong telepath whose skills would develop as she got older.

The title of the story was taken from a 1945 French film, Les Enfants du Paradis. The title came up in a list of Time Magazine’s “100 All Time Greatest Movies”. I don’t in fact, know a lot about the film, except that it was a romantic story about love and betrayal and was made during the German occupation of France virtually in secret. The title, however, intrigued me. The germ of an idea that the title suggested was then given a nudge by an episode of the Canadian Sci Fi series, Stargate Atlantis called “Childhood’s End” which featured a sort of Lord of the Flies community in which nobody got older than twenty-four because they committee suicide at that age for the good of the community. I had no intention of going down that sort of path in a story intended for the 7pm PG genre of Doctor Who, but a world inhabited by children was an intriguing idea and I thought about several variations on the theme before settling on the idea of adults who had reverted to children through the ‘Well of Life’. The dangers The Doctor immediately thought of, such as the Well being misused by the unscrupulous fell into place next, and I was already considering the possibility of a sequel in which his fears would be realised. But this was not going to be that sort of a story.

Wendy almost created herself. And of course The Doctor’s comment about ‘Lost Boys’ referenced the other obvious literary allusion after Lord of the Flies. But The Doctor’s reaction to Paradise once he had learnt all there was to know about it from Wendy was a surprising one. He did nothing. He acknowledged that the people had made their own choice, and it was a choice that was not harming anyone. Those, like Wendy, who wanted to grow up were not prevented from doing so. He was happy to leave them as they were. But his concern remained. The sequel possibility was set up as The Doctor left Wendy with a crystal that could signal him in the event of an emergency.

http://www.gateworld.net/atlantis/s1/106.shtml

http://www.time.com/time/2005/100movies/0,23220,children_of_paradise,00.html

http://www.gerenser.com/lotf/