I wanted to bring back the Powell Estate, and also the characters I created, Maureen and Mark. Mark, of course, was the boy that The Doctor rescued from a child molester in ‘suspicion’ and the suggestion is that a friendship was formed which has lasted. But when trouble comes to Buckland House The Doctor is unavailable and Jackie and Christopher come to the rescue instead. Christopher is still trying to walk in his father’s shoes at times like this. Jackie wants to live up to Rose. Both generally pull it off, but really Christopher is not the one destined to fill those shoes. Davie, his grandson, is. Christopher WAS meant to have that role originally, but these stories in some ways develop a life of their own and Christopher and Jackie have been superseded by Davie and Brenda in that ‘following in The Doctor’s footsteps’ role. But in this scenario it WAS Jackie and Christopher’s story. I will probably do more involving the two of them, but they will be few and far between.

Mark being something of a fan of The Doctor, with his drawings of the TARDIS and so on, is initially disappointed to get a ‘substitute’ but very quickly forms a relationship with Christopher that actually felt so right that it is a shame that it was only for one story. Mark and Christopher do all the running about as a duo, while Maureen and Jackie form their own duo and goto find the alien in Jackie’s old flat.

For quite some time when I wrote this, incidentally, this story was going to be called Catflap, because of the way the aliens got into the houses. There IS, of course, a catflap in the door of Jackie’s flat which featured in the first Christopher Eccleston episode, Rose. But it was ALSO the working title of the last classic Doctor Who episode, Survival. So I really wanted to go with it, but by the time I’d finished the story I felt it didn’t work.

Monsters that drain bodies are pretty much done, of course. It was most recently done in Doctor Who in Lazarus Experiment, but there are countless science fiction stories with that theme. I wanted to do something a LITTLE different, so I looked at the fluid of the brain. A Google search supplied the fact that it is called cerebrospinal fluid, and Christopher’s explanation that this is ‘engine oil for the brain’ is petty much correct. That this fluid changes in older people is pure science fiction.

Christopher’s slightly misplaced joy at having discovered an alien species his father didn’t know about is a theme that is passed on later to Davie, who seeks out planets and experiences that HE can make his own impact upon without being in The Doctor’s shadow. But in this case the Human cost was too high to count that as a reason to celebrate.

http://www.powellestate.org.uk/

ikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebrospinal_fluid