The Life of Dougal Drummond starts out as a quite simple idea – a man is killed, comes back to life. His story is pieced together by the Torchwood Glasgow team, and he is invited to join them.

I had the idea that Torchwood Glasgow needs a man who can’t die! But not as the boss as Jack is, rather as one of the subordinates. I actually puzzled for a while about WHY Dougal is immortal. I played with the idea of him accidentally coming in contact with The Doctor at some point, but it sounded too complicated.

Then I remembered about nano-genes and had a totally blank moment when I wondered if Torchwood knew about those things. Then I remembered that Jack Harkness’s Doctor Who debut was the nano-gene episode, Empty Child! Doh! Anyway, it slotted in quite nicely. I never actually said in the story, but obviously Dougal was found in the desert by a passing Chula ambulance!

I’m getting to grips with Glasgow geography now. Braehead Shopping Centre is THE place to go shopping in the city. It slotted in very nicely as the place for the nasty accident to occur.

The injuries Dougal sustains, are quite muted compared to the website I googled with images of really gruesome car accident victims, which I am not going to link to. Nobody else needs putting off their dinner by pictures of decapitated bodies.

Of course, I wrote this before Children of Earth aired on British TV, making a body reconstituting itself in the body bag just a bit passé! But it still works. Tom Merrick, the contact at Southern General hospital’s morgue, may well come into these stories again. Watch the space.

Making Dougal both a soldier and gay was a bit of a controversial thing to do. But it shouldn’t be. Gay people can be courageous, too. There has long been a campaign for pink representation at the Cenotaph. If I can make a point in this story about that, then so be it. 

http://www.braehead.co.uk/
http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Nanogene