Chameleon Arch owes a little of its inspiration to Human Nature, the critically acclaimed Doctor Who episode which dealt with The Doctor coping with life as a Human in a private school in 1910. Of course, it does. That was the first time anyone ever heard of a Chameleon Arch and the ability to change a Time Lord body into another species. And there’s a school in the story.

But mostly it was inspired by my old school, Magdelene College School in Brackley, Northamptonshire. It was getting a bit past it by the 1970s, having become a comprehensive with no entry exams rather than a grammar school with real links to its namesake at Oxford. Even so, traces of an old, traditional school housed in beautiful Victorian buildings, was still visible. I was tempted to set the story in Brackley, and around that school. The only reason I didn’t was that it has been so long since I was there, and I couldn’t remember the geography accurately enough. Even Google Earth wasn’t much help. It all seemed to have changed just a bit too much. So I invented a town with a school and a church as its dominant features. That also allowed me to invent places like The Brownstones for the fight between the Rogue Time Lord and Maestro, and to have the church tower how I wanted it rather than confined to actual existing buildings. I can’t recall any of the churches in Brackley having a distinctive bell tower.

Giving Maestro a central role and relegating Chrístõ and his father to the sidelines was not my original intention, but it worked out nicely that way. The story is told from his viewpoint, seeing the effect of the chameleon arch on his friend and his son. It allows a fresh view of Chrístõ and his father. I did have to consider a few things, though. For example, I have already written a story in which Chrístõ appears to meet Maestro for the first time when he is a young Prydonian experiencing school bullying and wanting to escape from it. This is partly why Maestro regenerates in this story and why young Chrístõ experiences total memory blackout of the whole thing. When he does meet Maestro again he is a teacher at the Academy and an occasional visitor to his home with which the boy has no particular connection.

I toyed with the idea of the bully, Robertson, being possessed by the dead Time Lord in an attempt to exact revenge from beyond the grave. But, in fact, a simple extension of Robertson as a bully taking young Chris up the tower to stop him reporting his theft from the church sufficed. Ordinary Human motives overlap the Time Lord ones.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalen_College_School,_Brackley
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brackley