Doctor Who_ Lungbarrow - Marc Platt [153]
This shady figure, whoever he is, has obviously been on Gallifrey long enough to become a grandparent, although we don't know to which of Susan's parents he is the father. He may not even be Gal ifreyan himself. Who knows?
And while Susan was the last child born alive before the Pythia's dying curse rendered Gallifrey a sterile world, we learned in Time's Crucible that Rassilon's own unborn daughter was a victim of the curse. Susan's father died on one of Rassilon's bow-ships, which implies he was involved in the Vampire Wars. Meanwhile, on the alternative Gallifrey of Auld Mortality, where the Doctor definitely is Susan's natural grandfather, we hear that Susan's mother thought he was a bad influence on his grandchild.
Has it occurred to anyone else that all the characters on the Sandminer in Robots of Death are dressed as chess pieces? How many chess games have appeared in Doctor Who? (That's another one for the Forum.) Rassilon's multi-layered game within a game within a game etc is certainly the Mother of all Chessboards, knocking out Mr Spock's game by several extra dimensions. It sounds dangerously addictive. Meanwhile, the Other's words about being "a pawn on the board in the thick of it" echo the Doctor's own words in Chapter 21.
I have a sneaky feeling that this historic confrontation should take place at Number 10, or more likely, the garden at Chequers. Only the costumes wouldn't be nearly as good. The Other first appeared in Ben Aaronovitch's novelisation of Remembrance of the Daleks. (What was his name again?) He is an eminence grise; the power lurking behind the throne, like a skulking, limelight-shunning version of Alastair Campbell or Peter Mandelson, who manipulates the emergence of Gallifrey as one of the supreme seats of power in the Universe. But Blair and Campbell/Mandelson are puny substitutes for Rassilon and the Other. Only Thatcher (all squawks and eyepatch), from whose evil Pythian empire a new world is being built, is worthy of comparison.
While the First Doctor escaped his persecutors by fleeing into the forbidden past of Gallifrey, the Other flees into the future.
Chapter 31
Susan didn't appear in the original tv storyline, but her appearance in the much-expanded book was a necessity.
The debate over whether she is or is not the Doctor's granddaughter is an old one. In early stories, it's difficult to deny the evidence that they are related, but by the time we get to Deadly Assassin, Susan is still the only female Gallifreyan we have seen. Even in Deadly Assassin, there are no visible women and only one female computer voice. After which, Time Ladies (I hate that term!) suddenly arrive by the coach load, but they almost feel like an afterthought. I'd be the last to deny us the wonderful Romana, but when I was thinking about the ideal Gallifreyan family set-up, I tried very hard to avoid anything boringly Earth-like. This is an ancient, alien world for heaven's sake. It's not 2.4 Children. It's no place for children at all.
Robert Holmes took joyous liberties with Gallifrey. There was no point in me writing anything if I didn't do the same.
Hence each family's statute quota of 45 Cousins, all born full-grown from a genetic Loom, prescribed by the need to counter the apocalyptic curse of the Pythia. Unfortunately that rather put Susan out in the cold. In Time's Crucible, Ace, who had learned a little of Gallifreyan families, was surprised to find a card in the TARDIS library that said "Happy Birthday, Grandfather." Yet if the last real Gallifreyan children were born millennia ago and Susan had a natural birth, then how could she possibly be the Doctor's descendant? And where, if she real y was direct bloodline, are her parents, the Doctor's own children? Whatever the possibility, whether her lineage came direct or by the extended scenic route, Susan still knows her grandfather when she sees him.
239
Lord Ferain met the Doctor in the trenches of Skaro at the start of Genesis of the Daleks, looking a bit like Death in Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh