Why is The Doctor a Preston North End fan? Because Christopher Eccleston who is the real life personification of Doctor Number Nine is a lifelong Manchester United fan and I am a lifelong Liverpool fan and for that reason I wasn’t going to choose either of those teams. Preston, apart from being the town I live in, lies roughly between Manchester and Liverpool and so it’s a compromise. It’s also faintly amusing to speculate on a team which has yet to reach the premiership becoming the champions in the very near future. Sadly, North End keep missing their chance of promotion so they may spoil the story by not living up to The Doctor’s expectations of them.

Why a story set around Deepdale? Because the football stadium is next to an army barracks and that, in turn, is next to a school. It has always struck me as the setting for something like an episode of Spooks or Ultimate Force, with one or other of those establishments the target of gunmen. But I don’t write that sort of story so I instead used the football ground as the focus for the time-shifts of the title. And it proved a very good way of showing the potentially dangerous anomaly in a lighter way, with the sky above the stadium being the first sign of the anomaly, and then them seeing different football games momentarily as the effect got stronger.

The statue in one of the pictures is of Tom Finney in his heyday and is outside the Deepdale stadium.

The pub is the Sumners, and it DOES do very nice food and it IS opposite Fulwood Barracks, and again slotted in well. Fulwood Barracks is not, however, a U.N.I.T. HQ. But it could be!

The twins continue to grow in their abilities and in this case come up trumps when they recognise the evil before The Doctor. Remote telekinesis solves the problem and all's well that ends well.

All said, it was fun writing a story set in a place I am familiar with.

http://www.pnefc.premiumtv.co.uk/page/Home/0,,10362,00.html