The first scene of Anti Plastic was written a very long time before the rest of the story. I had in mind the sequence in which Ace and Dodo talked together about The Doctor, knowing that he could help them with the problem they were having at the time. Dodo, a companion of the First Doctor, ended up living with Ace as a result of the second Ten story I wrote, in which he rescues her from a difficult situation and brings her to stay with Ace in the Lake District. Ace’s occupation as the headmistress of a school for wayward girls was established in the Unfinished Business series. As a result, Ace’s Doctor is the Ninth Doctor now, having started with the Seventh, and Dodo’s is the Tenth, having first traveled with the First. By complete coincidence both of them are called Dorothy and neither answer to that name.

I hadn’t, at that point, decided what the problem would be. I had a vague idea about some kind of baleful influence coming from the mountain, Coniston Old Man. I had a VERY vague idea about shimmering lights coming from the sky. That actually comes from a Famous Five story I read MANY years ago, the name of which completely escapes me. I remember that it was set in Wales in winter and there was skiing in it and that’s all. The lights in the sky were very badly explained in that story and I think, some time, I might do a better job. But meantime I decided to do something else for this story.

First of all I decided this would not be The Doctor to the rescue. In fact I would send Chris and Davie, with Brenda at his side, to help. Davie is being groomed as the new Doctor, and this was his chance to prove himself to former companions, tackling an old enemy.

The reason a DOG is in the story, was that I was going through a Google image search for pictures of Coniston Old Man, and one of the best ones I found of the summit had a dog in it. So I decided to write in a dog that was one of the first victims Chris and Davie have to deal with. The dog and her owner are attacked by polythene sheets that try to suffocate them. A cup of tea and some sympathy later they are presented with a set of plastic dolls belonging to one of Ace’s students, tied up with plastic covered CD player headphone wires. Davie makes a guess at what is happening and phones The Doctor to ask him the recipe for Anti-plastic.

They have a Nestene problem. And old enemy, indeed. And this was my opportunity to sort out something I found slightly disappointing about the otherwise wonderful first episode of the 2005 series, Rose. We were told that the Nestene could control ANY plastic but all we really saw was the shop window dummies and one wheelie bin. But it should have been possible to have all kinds of plastic things going mad.

So while Chris and Davie cook up industrial strength anti-plastic the school comes under siege by all things plastic. I thought about just how many plastic things there would be in a garden. Wheelie bins, of course. Milk crates, plastic garden furniture, LOTS of polythene sheeting. COMPOSTERS. Now, we have four black composters in our garden and the first morning they were delivered I looked out of the window at the noise and reported that there seemed to be four black Daleks in the garden. At a glance that’s exactly what they look like even before a Blue Peter makeover. So a scene in which they see what looks like a Dalek but turns out to be composters on the attack was going to happen. The monster made of milk crates and the one made of the plastic shampoo bottles from the bathroom were going in, too.

Latex as in balloons and water bombs are NOT plastic. That was a breakthrough in my research into something that the anti-plastic could go in that would conceivably be in a school. It also allowed me to introduce, VERY briefly, the LAMP MONSTER which was suggested by my daughter, Brandon, for a story idea. I have NOT been able to get a whole plot about lamp monsters, but the lamp and the phone joined forces to try to kill Ace.

A much more imaginative use of the Nestene ability to control plastic than seen on TV so far.

And once they get up the mountain there is a new problem to deal with. U.N.I.T. Davie pulls the Doctor card and claims to be The Man Himself, only to run into the new Brigadier who knows exactly who he is, but nevertheless bows to his superior experience. Davie wins the day. Cumbria and the world is saved from the Nestene menace.

http://www.pearsecom.co.uk/Ten/02savingdodo.htm
http://www.pearsecom.co.uk/doctorwho/04stopoverincumbria.htm
http://www.pearsecom.co.uk/doctorwho/38cuckoo.htm
http://www.rdwf.org.uk/doctors/D9/01rose.htm

http://www.stridingedge.net/Wainwright%20Fells/A-L%20fells/Coniston%20Old%20Man.htm