Mauve and Dangerous – because I wanted to bring Harriet Jones back into the equation. The idea of her calling The Doctor for a national crisis was obviously inspired by the 2006 Christmas Invasion and the Code 9. But in this universe she and The Doctor are still friends. That is quite important. There seems to be something going on in the British government in Season Three on TV, but here in these stories Harriet does her three terms in office and stays friends with The Doctor.

But what sort of crisis? When I wrote the introduction I didn’t actually HAVE an idea. But I knew I wanted it to be something very serious. And I wanted it to be something that would threaten London in a big way. Of course, with Rassilon’s Envelope in place it wouldn’t be a huge spaceship hovering over the major landmarks. Instead I made it something much smaller.

Plant infestations have been done before, of course. There is the creeping alien weed in War of The Worlds which is the classic, and bears some resemblance to the “Mauve Peril”. The originality of it was in the crystalline structure and the idea that it drew oxygen from the air, the opposite to Earth plant life. The visualisation of a deserted central London being taken over by the crystalline vegetation should, I hope, be on the scale of War of The Worlds.

In Aliens of London all the experts in aliens were killed. In this story the same befalls all the biologists and botanists. The only exception was Clifford Jones, Wyn’s dad, who we had to save by putting him in the outback.

Kerrigan is actually inspired by a character from the first series of Stargate Atlantis called Kavanagh who constantly moaned in the same way. For the first draft he WAS called Kavanagh, before I decided to change it in case it was too obvious. The moral of this story, if there is one, is not to take people at face value. Wyn did not look like somebody capable of saving the world. But she IS the daughter of Cliff and Jo and The Doctor puts her in a position to make a difference. Meanwhile he has his own agenda.

Life for Mickey has moved on meanwhile. He has married Linda, and she is pregnant. Of course there is the implication that those two things happened in reverse order. But in this story Mickey grows up and becomes a dad while they are under siege from the Mauve Peril, trapped in the TARDIS. Of course The Doctor is more than capable of helping her through the birth while Mickey and Rose consider the ‘what ifs’ of their lives and share a moment of affection before returning to the relationships they have now that they have moved on such a long way. This is very nearly the last we see of Mickey in these stories so it is right that he does find his own happy ever after.

And of course, it ties up the first loose end. Way back in Unfnished Business, the first story, set in 2012, The Doctor wondered when Mickey became a dad. It all comes around.

The idea that Wyn COULD fine the solution to the problem, and that it WOULD be something so simple as chilli powder and artificial sweetener is pure humbug. But it is Doctor Who humbug. Simple home grown solutions to problems are not unusual here. The Slitheen were defeated with pickled onions. Werewolves hate boiled mistletoe. Why not. It’s not just Doctor Who, either. In the film Evolution, Head and Shoulders was the solution to a rather nasty alien threat. So it isn’t an unheard of idea. The two ingredients were chosen because at the time of writing both were subject to a health panic. “Sudan Red” food colouring was at the centre of a major scare and there was a lot of talk about whether long term use of aspartame sweetener was healthy.

The pin that Rose gives The Doctor comes into a later story, by the way. Remember it.

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