A New Mission Begins was made into a separate story simply because there was already too much happening in the Liberation story and it would have been an overload of information, some of which really deserved not to be an afterthought.

First of all, Hext and Chrístõ have a quiet moment in which Chrístõ finds out just what Silis Bonnoenfant was all about. This is one of those moments where anyone who has read the Marion and Kristoph stories are ahead. They know what happened between Marion, Chrístõ’s mother, and Silis over the course of three stories. But for those who haven’t, a short version of the story is necessary.

Then, what IS wrong with The Ambassador? And one or two readers of the previous story did guess, because they remembered a Tenth Doctor story I wrote called Split Personality, in which Ten suffers a brain implosion and his friends have to go and find his previous incarnations to recover the segments of his mind that they hold in their own heads. At one point, The Doctor says that he had to do the same thing for his own father. So a story in which that happened was, at that point, inevitable. But it had to wait until after the exile story arc had been worked through to its conclusion.

The Ten story happened all in one episode. But going back to meet twelve versions of Chrístõ Mian de Lœngbærrow is another matter.

One reader likened the gathering of the friends who would accompany Chrístõ as akin to the forming of the Fellowship in Lord of the Rings. Well, not quite. But it is nice to be compared to such quality. Hext, of course, was going to be with Chrístõ. The two have become almost inseparable in recent stories. Then Julia, accidentally transported in the TARDIS had inevitably to be included.

Then there is Romana.

Now, this Romana, who has dedicated herself to the Sisterhood, and wears a silk veil, is NOT the same Romana who The Fourth Doctor meets later. She is the child of Hesthor and Bolar Lundar, of course, who Marion and Kristoph fans know as among Marion’s best friends. But Romana Dvoratrelundar is, in my Masterplan, this Romana’s daughter.

Anyway, this short story launches a nine part story arc, The Lives of Chrístõ Mian, which sees this fellowship of four – five if Humphrey is included - exploring the history of Chrístõ’s father.