The problem with Trial of Epsilon was how not to make it – as Stargate fans call it – a clip show, with nothing but flashbacks to all of Epsilon’s nefarious activities. I wanted to be able to move the story on as well as looking back.

I think in the end it did that. The depositions given by everyone about Epsilon were only the backdrop to the main drama of Minniette Oakdăĕηĕ’s bitterness and the fact that she blames Chrístõ for it. The darkness of that story surprised a lot of readers, especially her eventual suicide.

Chrístõ swapped for Epsilon and sent to Shada for cryogenic freezing was a much less harrowing version of a plotline I considered for a while in which Chrístõ would actually be on trial for some trumped up charge and actually frozen for two or three years. I had thought of a situation where, once he was acquitted and freed from Shada his father would plead for his right to go through a portal and be returned to his life before the arrest and have his memory of the trauma erased. Even a short piece I had written felt too harrowing, though. So the portal issue went with the Missing Years story, when he was accidentally thrust forward in time, and his journey to Shada was purely a case of mistaken identity and he would be rescued long before he got near a chamber.

The reunion of Chrístõ and Jack Harkness and another stolen kiss was a throwaway but irresistible moment. Yet again Jack forgets that he met Chrístõ as well as kissed him, because he has to go through the time portal. Still, there WILL be other kisses!