Temporal Drag started from the car, the Holden Commodore. I used this car very briefly as a TARDIS disguise in the Theta Sigma story, Canberra. It’s an Australian car, for anyone who doesn’t know. I fully intended to use it again and it is such a gorgeous looking car that Davie Campbell would want to own one. It is far more practical than his utterly ice cool McLaren F1 and although built in 2009, could probably pass unchallenged in 1986, the intended destination for it as a time machine.

(Remember, his first time machine was a de Lorean!)

So that meant a trip in the vortex unprotected by a TARDIS. Of course, Spenser is going to be riding shotgun. Of course, something is going to go wrong. At the start of the story, I hadn’t even decided WHAT it would be.

I also wanted something to go wrong for Chris with the women all aboard his TARDIS. But the stories would be unconnected.

My intention for Davie and Spenser was to throw them back to the 1970s. It took a bit of research to decide exactly when, and setting the story in December 1974 actually throws up a couple of issues with timelines.

1.      Spenser mentions the Three Day Week, but that was over by Spring 1974. So obviously he is wrong about that. Perhaps the terrorists did something to the lights around the area?

2.      Meeting the Third Doctor – By December 1974, the Fourth Doctor was on TV. But the timelines are confused on TV anyway.

3.      That time is, however, in the middle of the worst of the IRA bombing campaign and accounts for the extreme reactions of the police who arrested Davie and Spenser.

Now, one or two readers were wondering how the IRA got into a Doctor Who world story. Mainly because it always struck me as socially significant that the era when U.N.I.T. featured most strongly in Doctor Who was also the time of some of the most notorious uses of the British Army on the streets of the United Kingdom – i,e, in Northern Ireland. I wonder sometimes if it was actually a deliberate piece of propaganda to present U.N.I.T. as a likeable bunch of lads in uniform who couldn’t hit a barn door at ten paces, at the same time as incidents such as internment and Bloody Sunday were happening. The famous U.N.I.T. phrase ‘ten rounds rapid’ has a disturbing ring in context with contemporaneous events.

This story highlights that clash between real life and fantasy in that era. I am not, incidentally, making any claims about who is right or wrong in that situation, except that Spenser is perfectly right when he mentions that a lot of people went to jail in that time for crimes they didn’t commit and the two of them couldn’t be sure that merely being innocent would help. Nor would not even sounding Irish!

As to what Davie DOES sound like, that’s an interesting question. His dad is Scottish. His mother is a Gallifreyan with a BBC English accent! Davie is bidialectal! No such word, you scream. Yes, there is, now. It was invented by John Barrowman and his sister, Carole, to describe their habit of slipping from Scots to American when talking to each other. And if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for Davie Campbell!

The treatment they receive in police custody is very much toned down. Descriptions of police brutality towards terrorist suspects in the 1970s are pretty lurid and I wanted to keep this story PG. Even so, it does seem to have shocked a few readers that Spenser suffered ruptured kidneys from being kicked around the interrogation room.

The police station in London, would be Paddington Green Station, incidentally. That was where terrorists were, and still are, taken. The description of the steps down to the processing and the cells is completely fictitious, however. I have no idea what it looks like inside, and I have no wish to find out.

The contrast when they finally get released and are flown to U.N.I.T. HQ, is obvious. Now they’re being listened to. I did originally have in mind a scene from the other side of the two way mirror in which The Doctor and his companion notice Davie and Spenser holding hands and kissing and are curious about it. But swapping from their point of view at that stage in the story would have been clumsy. Instead, The Doctor remarks about it later:-

“Well… it’s a good job you live on Earth. That would cause some ripples in Gallifreyan society.”

At this point, The Doctor knows who Davie is. The recognition comes in a piece of dialogue that met with the approval of the readership-

“Which one are you? You gave your names to the police as Spenser Draxic and David Campbell… Draxic… is a name long associated with the Arcalian Chapter. But Campbell…”

 

“Is a proud fighting Scots name,” Davie answered. “I’m usually known as Davie… My father is David Campbell….”

 

“Of course he is,” The Doctor said in a voice that was strangely hoarse. “A fine, brave, fighting Scotsman… And you…. My dear boy…”

The scene in which Dave almost kills the surrendering Dominators, pays homage to a writer I have always liked, Nevil Shute. In his novel, Requiem for a Wren, a young woman makes the very same mistake in the heat of battle and eventually commits suicide out of remorse for what happened and the loss of several people close to her which she saw as punishment for the deaths she caused. Davie is saved from such a catastrophe by The Doctor, and the two have something of an emotional meeting of minds over it.

Chris’s troubles are a lot less dramatic really, and Sukie saves the day quite neatly. My portrayal of her as a bit of a tomboy, a petrolhead and a lover of anything with an engine is ongoing. I also want to emphasise that she is a girl, with feminine interests. She wears lipstick as well as engine oil.

The 1986 Grand Prix, the last to be held at Brands Hatch, was, of course, won by Nigel Mansell in a Williams-Honda!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Day_Week

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

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

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

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

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

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_British_Grand_Prix