I was looking up reviews of the Doctor Who episode, Turn Left, which opened on a Chinese style planet called Shan Shen. One website pointed out that an alternative spelling for Shan Shen would be Xiang Xien and then went on to point out that it seemed to be a Human colony of some sort with a Chinese population. At that point, I started to consider the possibility of a Theta Sigma story set on that planet, and fleshed it out with the idea that overpopulated China had settled this planet, and that the settlers had decided to become an autonomous planet and return to a non-mechanised feudal Chinese society which might well be regarded as a golden age for Chinese culture.

The opening description of the busy, colourful market, of course, was easily described after the opening scene of Turn Left, but with our Theta Sigma heroes instead of The Doctor and Donna. But then something else had to happen. Initially, I had an idea about a public execution near the market place. I remembered a scene in the very old film about pre-war China, the Inn of the Sixth Happiness, where the young, unworldly missionary finds herself witnessing a beheading and is upset by it. In fact, that may well be something I could use in a future story, possibly when Julia is a year or so older. But meanwhile I fell back on the idea of the Mandarin’s Palace.

I had used a Mandarin’s Palace in a Marion and Kristoph story, previously, in which Li Tuo was the Mandarin, receiving his friends as guests. In feudal China, the Mandarin was a wealthy landowner and magistrate. His palace would usually have a prison, courtroom and a garrison within it. Naturally, he would be the most powerful person in the region he ruled over.

The idea than came to me that Chrístõ Mian and Li Tuo, disguised as Chinese by a method I didn’t go into in too much detail, would be prisoners of the Mandarin, and therefore need rescuing by Chrístõ. I fleshed that out quite a bit, with the assassination at the gate and the complicated reason why Chrístõ Mian was posing as an outlaw. It was at that point that it became clear it was going to be a two parter!

Lissandro Harpaindrix Gellovia, the renegade Time Lord mentioned in this story, was originally invented for the Unfinished Business story Dark Matrix. He’s a nasty piece of work, and so are his followers, hence the wish of the High Council for swift executions.

The Chinese names used in this story, Yan Xin Xu, the Mandarin, Wu Rong Feng, the outlaw (AKA Chrístõ Mian) Tong Fu Wa, the Mandarin’s advisor, the Renegade, Lin Ai Guo, Hext, as well as the women, Ladies Xiao Wen and Shu Chun (Julia and Romana) and the Mandarin’s wife, Lady Liu Shu, were all created using an online Chinese name creator. Mai Li Tuo and Chrístõ’s Chinese name, am Liu Shang Hui, came from there originally, of course. I have some slight doubts about the authenticity, but they look good. So do dadao swords, which are authentic Chinese fighting swords that could take a man’s head off quite easily.

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn_Left_(Doctor_Who)

http://www.mandarintools.com/chinesename.html