Tear of Omega came from a very dull afternoon when the TV was on in the background. The programme was a thoroughly awful, badly made and appallingly written series called Relic Hunter that fills one of the many spaces in the satellite television schedules. It follows a completely unlikely bunch of people to different exotic settings around the world – though all filmed in LA – in search of historical relics. Once episode which was as bad as all the others involved a huge African diamond that wound up in Amsterdam. The plot is nothing at all like the plot of Tear of Omega. With my eyes shut and one hand behind my back I could still write a better story than Relic Hunter ever came up with. But the idea of setting a Theta Sigma story in Amsterdam’s diamond quarter came from it.

I long ago established that the Lœngbærrow family’s wealth came from gold and diamonds. So Chrístõ would know a bit about the subject. And it was a likely place to find his father.

When I needed a name for the diamond, I looked up Dutch surnames and surprisingly, Google was unhelpful. I then looked up the Dutch national football team. As anyone who follows football would know, Edwin Van der Saar, sometimes also spelt Van der Sar, is a goalkeeper for the Netherlands and – at time of writing, and at least until the next transfer window -Manchester United. There were a number of other options, but that one had a nice ring to it.

The Tear of Omega, then made a nice little bit of shared culture for the three Gallifreyans, Hext, Romana and Chrístõ. I wanted to emphasise that they were almost the same age, Hext being about a hundred and fifty years older then the other two, but in Human terms that would make him about twenty-five while the others were about twenty. But they would all have the same memories of childhood on their world, and being brought to see national treasures like The Tear of Omega.

And speaking of National Treasure, that film was where I got the idea of them stealing the diamond before anyone else could. But the theft of the diamond wasn’t really the main point of the story. Really it was the rift that was driven between Chrístõ and his father when he executed the theft. This is an issue that will be resolved in the next few stories, of course. But meanwhile I know I risk upsetting a few fans of Chrístõ Mian – aka Kristoph - by leaving this hanging.

http://www.amsterdamdiamondcenter.nl/

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

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singel_(Amsterdam)