The Day The Earth Screamed is a variation of the 1961 disaster film, The Day The Earth Caught Fire. I first saw that film some time in the early 1970s, around the time I first started watching Doctor Who. The ‘end of the world’ theme was pretty frightening at the time and Doctor Who was reassuring because it showed the Earth in the far future still intact.

In the film, the USA and Russia fire off nuclear missiles and knock the Earth out of orbit. Post cold-war, the nuclear threat has shifted to the Middle East. So it’s the United Arab Emirates who cause the trouble with an underground test that goes wrong. I’m not sure if it could do that. I’m not that fond of nuclear physics to find out. Just suspend disbelief and go for it.

The setting in a park with a jazz band playing is something of a homage to Silver Nemesis, which begins with a jazz concert in a park. Originally I was going to set it specifically in Moor Park in Preston, for two reasons. First, because Preston is so notoriously dull that an earthquake in it is considered a byword for something unlikely to happen. Also because I had a perfect image in my mind of the view from the park straight down St. Paul’s Road, all the way to the city centre which helped form the idea of the shockwave taking out a swathe of buildings all the way through it. I dropped the idea of setting it in a specific place because it allowed me to be more flexible about the shops and buildings around it. There is an ALDI store in the area, but it’s a good quarter of a mile from the park. On the other hand there is Preston North End FC’s stadium which would have been a lot of trouble to have collapsing after an earthquake.

On reflection, I almost wish I had been more specific. It might have been interesting. But it’s done now.

Romana as President of Gallifrey is a reference to some of the non-cannon fiction that came about between 1989 and 2005 in which she was raised to that exalted position. Don’t ask how she got out of E-Space. It’s just too complicated. Suffice to say she was a familiar face in the short scene in which she gives The Doctor permission to go back and sort things out so that it never happened.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_the_Earth_Caught_Fire
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Nemesis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moor_Park,_Preston

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

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