is part two of the story which began with Chrístõ acting as Penne’s viceroy while he went on military manoeuvres with his Guardia Real. This half tells Penne’s story, of course.

The first idea was that Penne and Chrístõ would BOTH get in trouble in some hostile environment, but as Chrístõ IS the heir to the Adano-Ambrado throne, there is no way they would both go on such a trip together. It stands to reason. So this story is just about Penne.

A Theta Sigma story without Chrístõ in it is unusual. It hasn’t happened before. But Penne is a popular character with the readership, and has been ever since he was introduced, and the story went down very well without him.

The first question that arose while approaching this story was what kind of hostile terrain should it be? I ruled out desert since the story Dark Territory more or less covered the problems of no water, blazing heat and dangerous animal life. So I decided on jungle instead. Losing a shuttle in a jungle is more likely, anyway. Although I did put in a point about losing contact with the mothership before they entered the atmosphere just to make it that little bit more likely that they would be stranded for a while.

I toyed with various hostile native scenarios, harking back to those classic Tarzan movies where lost white people would have despicable things done to them by jungle tribes. Then I remembered a couple of Doctor Who stories from the past. The first I recalled was Planet of the Daleks with the plants that spewed a dangerously infectious fungus that made Jo Grant and The Doctor both very ill. Then I remembered that in an even older story, Dalek Masterplan, there was a planet where the jungle was hostile to life.

And that clinched it. Penne’s soldiers would not be up against an army they could fight with guns. They would be fighting the jungle itself. The enemy would not be one they could reason with. They couldn’t take prisoners. They couldn’t negotiate a truce. It was Adano-Abradans against their immediate environment.

After that, it was pretty much straight-forward. The descriptions of how the plants absorbed the still living bodies of the victims were far more extreme than either of those two Doctor Who stories. Theta Sigma is slightly closer to the watershed than its parent franchise. But mostly its about Penne’s leadership of his army, and how they as individuals and as a body rise to the occasion. Penne mostly proves his worth. He also proves that he’s grown up a bit since Chrístõ first met him. When he shares a sleeping bag with Ruana Beccan purely for warmth and comfort, he doesn’t try anything else. The old Penne, recognising that the female officer has a thing for him, would have tried to bed her long before now. But he’s become a good man through Chrístõ’s influence.

That Colonel Beccan has a major crush on her King-Emperor is pretty obvious to everyone. But it’s all about loyalty and service. Nothing is ever going to compromise that.

The complaining lieutenant was always going to die. I let him do so courageously, and to save others. It may be a tad corny, but so be it.

White phosphorous grenades are real and are used by the British army and other forces around the world for exactly the sort of thing Penne’s people used them for. I didn’t want to use any kind of futuristic ray guns or other space age technology here. I kept to weapons that would be recognizable in a contemporary military situation. Ray guns and the like really belong to the sixties era of science fiction writing. It seems more likely that future armaments would simply be faster, more accurate versions of the sort of guns we have now. And it actually makes it easier to write with veracity to use specifications for guns like the P90 or things like the phosphorous grenades, because it doesn’t sound so far-fetched.

Of course, Chrístõ would come to the rescue in the end. Deus ex Machina? Not at all. Penne said all along that somebody would be looking for him. And we know Chrístõ wouldn’t let him down. All’s well that ends well.

http://www.rdwf.org.uk/doctors/D1/s3/04daleksmasterplan.htm
http://www.rdwf.org.uk/doctors/D3/s10/04planetofthedaleks.htm

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