The Great Tree Spirit was inspired by a walk with my church rambling group during which we came across a copse of very gnarly looking trees. I said something like ‘you know, that will end up in one of my stories as something sinister’ and they all laughed. But I rose to the challenge.

I toyed with the idea of a tree that sucked people in and dripped blood, the sort of hammer house of horror ideas for a while. I also remembered that there was something about trees enveloping people and trying to absorb them in Lord of the Rings. There is ALSO a scene in Terry Pratchett’s Colour of Magic with a hamadryad that pulls people into the spiritual inside of the tree. It’s been done in more or less every way already. This is my combination of more or less ALL these ways with a bit of Power of Kroll thrown in with the slightly psycho tribe and the totally psycho anthropologist who has become too involved with his subject of study. In the end, Chrístõ gets more sense out of the TREES than he does out of the people.

Natalie being able to pilot the TARDIS is a bit surprising, but then again, not, since she has begun to have a certain relationship with the semi-sentient TARDIS.