The title of this story is unashamedly lifted from a book I have known and loved for years. It has nothing to do with this genre. It is a spy novel – sometimes called the FIRST spy novel in English Literature, involving yachts and Germans.

And of course the actual plot of this story has a lot of obvious origins. The difference between rip-off and homage, of course, is a bit of post-modernist referencing. In other words, YES, it's kind of obvious when the authorities want to pretend nothing is happening that we’ve seen this plot before. For anyone who hasn’t clocked on The Doctor makes that comment about the Amity city fathers, and later there is the dialogue about genre fiction. The two most famous films cited are easy. Jaws and Tremors. Very few people would remember Blood Beach, which WAS a film about a sort of amoeba monster that ate people from under the sand. I was very careful to make my monster very different from that one. So the sand dragon came into creation.

But the important thing here is that The Doctor doesn’t blame the monster. He sees it as a victim as much as anyone. This is redemption for all the times he wanted Humans and Silurians and Sea Devils to share the Earth they all come from, and other occasions where he would rather it could have been another way.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073195/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100814/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082083/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Riddle_of_the_Sands

http://robroy.dyndns.info/books/rec/rs.html