Liberation of Gallifrey introduces a startling notion. Chrístõ, the prototype of The Doctor, a man of peace, wearing military fatigues, carrying a gun, using that gun against a deadly enemy. It struck me very forcefully when I was writing these stories, that the TV series that was running at that time – season 4 – or 30 depending on your viewpoint – had repeatedly emphasised The Doctor’s hatred of guns. He wouldn’t use one himself. He hated people holding them near him. It is most obvious in the episode The Doctor’s Daughter when he DOES pick up a gun and looks as if he will kill in cold blood for about twenty seconds, before he declares himself ‘the man who never would’.

But the man who never would knows perfectly well that SOMETIMES you have to. He fought on the front line of the Time War. We know that. He must have killed the enemy. When you are fighting for the peace and liberty of your own people, your loved ones, your world, you have no choice.

Chrístõ has no choice. He has to lead his group of resistance fighters into the Citadel and rescue the High Councillors and others who are held there as prisoners of the Mallus. He knows he can’t be a pacifist now. The important thing is that he never glorifies in the kill. He knows it is a necessary evil, that is all.

Penne’s view of the battle, as commander of the massed troops coming to liberate Gallifrey, also emphasises the necessity of war without glorifying it. That is why Penne is shown feeling the weight of the dead souls each time his own people take out an enemy ship. The thousands dying are doing so on his order. And he has to take that responsibility.

When I was writing this story, I started to realise something. Without actually thinking about it consciously, I was writing a space-born story about invaded worlds and aliens that actually mirrored in many ways an ordinary, Earth conflict. The besieged Gallifreyans, being abused by the Mallus, were very much like the Falkland Islanders in 1982, under the Argentinean forces. And Penne’s Allied Force coming to their aid was a lot like the British Taskforce that set out to the South Atlantic. The Islanders, when the battle was finally engaged, actually were in much the same position as the Gallifreyans – hunkered in their basements until they were told it was safe to go out. And I had actually written those lines about the Mallus government being politically unstable and needing a victory on Gallifrey to prop up their failing administration before I remembered that General Galtieri was in much the same situation in Buenos Aires. The chief difference between the two campaigns was that the British went to the Falklands alone, whereas Penne had a solid bunch of allies on his side.

Silis Bonnoenfant’s death, was a late idea. I had intended that Penne’s forced regeneration would be with the sacrifice of one of his father’s lives. But it actually was more poignant that way, and provided a brave and worthy death for a character who was more interesting for the brief glimpse there was of him, first in Marion and Kristoph, and then in Theta Sigma, than a whole series of stories about him would have been.

And then we come to The Ambassador, Chrístõ’s father. What is wrong with him? What will happen? Watch this space.

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