Several reasons for putting this story together. First, I had used the Crystal Palace as a backdrop to a story in the Theta Sigma series. But in it’s second location at Sydenham Hill, not far from where the football club of the same name is. It was moved there after the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park. It had only EVER been intended as a temporary structure there. But like the Eiffel Tower, also meant to be a temporary exhibition piece, it proved too popular to dismantle altogether. But I really wanted to try a story set at the actual opening of the Crystal Palace, with all the pomp and circumstance.

I also wanted a scene with Queen Victoria that countered the rather negative one in Tooth and Claw, the 2006 Doctor Who story on TV. This introduced Victoria in her younger, happier days, with Albert at her side, and Prince Edward, who Rose had found a nuisance way back in the Parisian story, too young to be any trouble.

The Victoria sequence is just a cameo, though. Intended only to slip in the title of the story. Interesting Times. The title is a homage to Terry Pratchett, who has a book of the same name. But it is worth knowing that HE got the title from a phrase “May you live in interesting times” that appears to be a bit of a mystery itself. It is supposed to be an English translation of an old Chinese proverb, and was even quoted by Robert Kennedy in a speech. But researchers have never been able to find the original Chinese version of the quote and it is entirely possible it is a fictional quote which has become accepted as a genuine piece of ancient Chinese wisdom.

The idea of the Sesame Street hunt for things that don’t belong plays on a common theme of time travel fiction. The problem of anachronistic items left in history. Thinking up all the different anachronisms was fun. And for a while the story is light-hearted. But a sinister note is thrown in through the appearance of the character known as Epsilon. Now, readers of the Theta Sigma stories will already know that Epsilon is the teenage Time Lord version of The Master, just like young Lex Luthor in Smallville, but twice as nasty. The Master has appeared in a Theta Sigma story causing trouble for the younger version of The Doctor, and it seemed reasonable to introduce Epsilon into The Doctor’s later life as a nuisance to deal with. Wyn as the kidnapped heroine, meanwhile, plays back to the reference to Scooby Do in earlier stories in which Wyn says that Rose is the ‘Daphne’, the pretty girl who the bad guys would grab. This time Wyn gets to be Daphne. But as anyone who has seen the Scooby Do films knows, Daphne does more than scream and get kidnapped now, and neither Wyn nor Rose are wilting flowers. Epsilon has his come uppance, as all villains must.

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

http://www.victorianstation.com/palace.html

http://www.crystalpalacefoundation.org.uk/

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