The opening sequence of Cuckoos, when Julia asserts her independence over her guardians and Chrístõ and tells him she wants to go to the sports academy after High School was originally going to be part of the opening of the story called Swords of Llamissa, taking place in the TARDIS with the four graduate Chrysalids having their say. I took it out because there was already too much going on in that story. This one was more of a slow build up so I was able to slip it in. Julia has one more year of high school by the English model of education. If she was American she would be going up to the age of eighteen. But I’m sticking with the English model. She should be doing the 23rd century equivalent of A levels in the next year and preparing for further education.

Anyway, she gets her way. A few readers thought that Chrístõ was acting a bit out of character by even thinking of a finishing school for her. He should have known that wasn’t her kind of thing. And besides, how much training could she possibly need in such matters? Put it down to him being, for a brief time, the aristocrat he was born to be.

One problem I had with this story was avoiding obvious comparisons with the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode called Bad Eggs in which Sunnydale High students were asked to look after an egg as a practical lesson in ‘parenting’. These eggs turned out to be alien creatures who took possession of their Human ‘parent’ and Buffy and Co had to step in to save the day. This story had to go in a different direction if possible. So for a start, I abandoned the idea of any of the crystals turning up in school on Monday morning. Instead it was the adults, primarily the mothers of New Canberra who were affected by the impulse to forget their own families and devote their energies and their emotions to the care of the cuckoos.

Cal’s situation comes to the fore. We don’t know a lot about his mother, but let’s assume she loved him as well as she could. But he has been alone for ten years since her death and carried a lot of emotional baggage that prevented him becoming close to anyone. So it says a lot for his development since becoming Chrístõ’s ‘apprentice’ that he did what he could to help his foster siblings. Grabbing baby Donny and the two little girls and bringing them to Chrístõ was just about the most heroic thing he could do. He knew where they could get the help he wasn’t qualified to give.

Chrístõ is rather ruthless with the entities in the crystals. He has to be, for the sake of everyone. Whether he would have allowed the one in his hands to fall was a bit of a point of debate among the readership. I think, no. Chrístõ respects all forms of life and knows that this particular one is innocent. He wouldn’t have harmed it. But bluffing that he would solved the problem.

I initially intended the story to go slightly differently at this point. Chrístõ was going to send the entities back to their home world and then find that Cal had hidden one of them inside his coat, because he wanted to keep it – and give and receive the love that is missing from his life. That would have been a perfectly good way to go, but in the end I decided it would also work if Chrístõ gave the gestalt entity within the single crystal to him, making him a parent to them. The difference is that in the one version he chose the responsibility, in the other Chrístõ makes him accept the responsibility. Either way he does become a ‘single parent’ to the entities and does so happily. But there were two different ways that conclusion could have been reached.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Eggs_(Buffy_episode)