Doctor Who_ Lungbarrow - Marc Platt [151]
Chapter 28
The "Yemaya and Yemaya etc..." quote, coming to Chris's head live from the Doctor's overloaded brain, is a mangled misquote of the "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" line from Macbeth. Yemaya 4 was the planet visited by the Doctor, Chris, Roz and Benny in Kate Orman's novel Sleepy.
The most obvious ways to get the TARDIS down from the dustweb are either to throw things at it or get a ladder.
Natural y the Doctor comes up with his own inimitable solution - a sort of victory by provocation, entirely in character for both him and the antagonised House. Result: Doctor 1, House 0.
The Great Hal at Lungbarrow is big enough for several scenes to be going on around it at once. So in this section, the spotlight keeps switching from one group to another as the inmates of the House gauge their reactions to the Doctor's revelations. Very theatrical in a "compare and contrast" sort of way. You throw the Doctor into a bucket of water and watch al his Cousins and their agendas bobbing and slapping about on the spreading ripples.
The claw marks on the TARDIS paintwork were acquired on the Trans-Amazon Express and belong to one of the Loups-garoux. The Who production office had already rejected my two-part storyline for a werewolf story during the Davison era. But why drop a good idea when it might be useful one day?
There was a little bonding scene between Badger and Ace in the original script, but redundant here. The start of it ran: (ACE IS SHOWING HER JACKET TO BADGER. SHE POINTS TO ONE OF THE BADGES.) ACE: And this is Houston Space Centre. I haven't been there either.
(BADGER STUDIES THE BADGES UP AND DOWN THE SLEEVE. THEN HE LOOKS UP) 237
BADGER: (PROUDLY) Then you are a Badger too.
(HE STARTS TO BOOM WITH LAUGHTER AND ACE JOINS IN.)
ACE: Yeah. Both Badgers!
(THE DOCTOR SMILES HALF-HEARTEDLY THROUGH HIS EMBARRASSMENT.)
Chapter 29
The book version of the original studio-bound script of Lungbarrow meant a big expansion of the story. It was easy enough to add extra bits in Paris, or at the Gallifreyan Capitol, or anywhere in The Past, but the main thrust of the story still remained trapped inside the House. It's not unlike Evil Of The Daleks. All the 1866 part of that story is confined to Maxtible's house, apart from the brief location moment when Victoria stares from a window at the unreachable world outside, before being led away by her Dalek persecutors, just as Chris stares from the window of Lungbarrow in Chapter 5. (Yes, I know Evil has scenes in an outside stable, but that's a studio set, so it doesn't count.)
In Ghost Light, the mad explorer Redvers sees the house of Gabriel Chase as a jungle, and by Part 3, the place is actually becoming one. I tried to find as many ways of bringing the outside into the House of Lungbarrow as possible: most of the building is a forest, seen at different levels, with the attic as the dense woodland canopy. And now we have a stream and a black lagoon. The House has become a domain for the living furniture: a realm in which the House, as a living entity, is gradual y withdrawing into itself with its own denizens and creatures. Trapped inside, the Gallifreyan inhabitants are tolerated, but are becoming almost like intruders.
When Andrew Cartmel and Ben Aaronovitch first outlined their ideas about the mythos of Gallifrey to me, I was quite shocked. I didn't sleep that night, partly because the Doctor's mystery was ingrained for me as something that should never be touched. It was heresy, but I also knew they were right. We already knew too much. Andrew and Ben weren't taking anything away, because so much had already gone. They were deepening and revitalising the mystery. I'd been having the same thoughts. That's where the idea for the Doctor's Family and House