Ambassador of Ventura IV was never intended to be an action story. There were enough of those anyway in the emotional roller coaster that this mini series has been. This was going to be a family reunion with a Time Lord twist to it.

I had planned for quite a while Chrístõ seeing his mother in this story. Exactly how, I hadn’t decided. He has met her once before, of course, in the story Savang’s Paradox, but as that was set about twenty years before this story in the linear time of Marion de Lœngbærrow that was all right. Chrístõ clearly craves any opportunity to see his mother, or to talk about her with people who knew her. That was why he was interested in Silis Bonnoenfant, a man who had been impressed enough by her to paint her picture when she was young. He obviously misses his mother a lot, and I think he deserves to have a few purely emotional moments when they come along.

I also wanted a moment when Chrístõ as a young man comes across himself as a child. That was when I hit on the idea of him approaching that drawing room, remembering how he used to sit with his father, copying him, drinking from his baby cup and reading picture books, while his father sat with a glass of whiskey and important business papers.

Of course, we have been told in Doctor Who circles about the Blinovitch Limitation Effect, which prevents a person from meeting themselves in an earlier part of their timeline. This doesn’t matter with regenerated Time Lords as they have just a bit different DNA or something that allows them to interact. But Chrístõ and baby Chrístõ are still the same person, and so, after the initial effect, I needed to get him out of the room. Sending him off with Julia was the perfect idea. Sending Hext and Romana for a walk in the garden then left Chrístõ and his father to talk over things.

This was Chrístõ’s chance to get those issues off his chest altogether. And when he finds out the real reason for the execution in Amsterdam he finally lets go of his hangups. Why didn’t his father tell him about the murdered men back in Amsterdam? Well, quite simply because I hadn’t thought of it at the time. Sorry, but that’s the rather lame explanation.

After that, I just wanted Chrístõ to enjoy talking to the father he remembered from his childhood, before the regeneration into the man he knew as an older boy and as a young man.

And then, finally, of course, Chrístõ Mian, the Ambassador, was complete. His mind restored, and they were able to return to Gallifrey, happy ending all round. It might seem, possibly, that the ending was rushed? Yes, just a bit. But apart from the hugs and kisses as Chrístõ Mian is reunited with Valena and Garrick, the other issues that remain, such as Chrístõ’s future on Gallifrey or elsewhere really need a separate story. So there is an epilogue to it all that ties up the remaining loose ends as well as an ongoing Theta Sigma joke.

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