Doctor Who_ Lungbarrow - Marc Platt [154]
Chapter 32
Leela hasn't actually told anyone else about her interesting condition, but Romana obviously knows. Why else does she keep asking Leela how she is? So did she give orders for Leela to be kept under surveillance, even in the most intimate of situations? Or has Leela's K-9 been leaking information about morning sickness and folic acid levels to his counterpart?
Oh no, not another trial scene! Well, it sort of happened that way. Earlier on, when Ferain first emerged from the Gallifreyan woodwork, he kept talking in cold and detached legal jargon, so when I reached this point, the Doctor started to play Ferain at his own game. Naturally the Doctor takes the established rules, does a quick sleight of hand and turns them on their heads. He's such an old subversive!
Gallifreyan names: In Kate Orman's novel Sleepy, we're told that the Doctor's name has thirty eight syl ables! (Of course, we're not told what the name is.) Gallifreyan names probably run on the Welsh Llanfairpwllgwyngyl gogerychwyrndrobwl llantysiliogogogoch principal. Although I can't believe the Doctor's name is anything remotely like St Mary's Church in the Hollow of the White Hazel near a Rapid Whirlpool and the Church of St. Tysilio near the Red Cave. Anyway, that's still twenty syllables short. If we follow Kate's ruling, the ful -blown names we get for other Gal ifreyans here must be abbreviated versions too. Even Leela has been given one by right of her liaison with Andred: Leelandredloomsagwinaechegesima, (which makes her sound a bit like the third Sunday before Lent.) Blimey! Imagine how long the daily register at Prydon Academy must take. My real problem was that while everyone else in the universe could call the Doctor Doctor, his own Family would obviously call him by his real name. Fortunately the Doctor's disgrace came to the rescue. His incensed Family had struck their embarrassing renegade's name from the House's records.
It was just the Law of Irony that brought him neatly home to Lungbarrow on his nameday (some very Russian influences there), which just happened, purely coincidentally, to be the Feast of Otherstide as well. Only the Other doesn't have a name either…
I do like the fact that the Doctor eventually became the very thing he had planned to avoid. The Family wanted him to be President of the High Council, but were, of course, otherwise occupied when the event actually happened.
Yet another triumph for the Law of Irony.
Chapter 33
There's something of the Doctor/Master relationship between Romana and Ferain. They embody the Gallifreyan balance of power, High Council against CIA; bitter enemies, sometimes working together, sometimes against each other, but neither can do without the other.
The emergence of the massive edifice of the House, up from its long-term burial, is a bit like Moby Dick surfacing before its final attack on The Pequod.
The Doctor's little speech about things he likes is the direct antithesis of his speech to Ace in Part 1 of Ghost Light listing the things he hates, which were also things that I can't stand too. While we were recording GL, Sylvester told me that he hates burnt toast as well.
Finally the Doctor has to confront his own angry parent in a one-to-one with the Loom, the very heart of the House.
It's a bit like the egg confronting the chicken, until the chicken really does find out what came first. Whichever way you look at the result, it's al worryingly Oedipal.
Chapter 34
Un bel di: the title of the final chapter is appropriately Butterfly's aria from Act 2 of Puccini's Madama Butterfly, which turns up prominently in the TV movie. As in the original, it echoes the return of a long-awaited figure after years of absence, but for the Japanese geisha Butterfly that final reunion is nothing short of catastrophic.
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The opening section of this chapter, set on Extans Superior is entirely new. Because of all the loose threads that needed tying up, not just from this book, but the