Finally, a real adventure
to follow up Unfinished Business. This time the inspiration for
the idea came from a different forum, one on Irish issues. The legend
of Tamar Tephi and the controversy surrounding
the building of a motorway near the Hill of Tara were both hot topics,
and then there was a news report about an archeogical dig elsewhere in
And enter the latest reunion after Sarah Jane and Ace.
Jo Grant was last seen marrying Clifford Jones and going off up the Amazon
after The Green Death adventure. We have no reason to assume that they
didn’t live happily ever after, or that they ever gave up being ecologists
and environmentalists. They would inevitably be on the anti-motorway side
in the Tara debate. Sarah and Jo, while playing their part in the first
part of the story, take something of a back seat in the main action, as
he takes Rose and Ace up the hill to rescue Cliff from the Vampyres.
The journey there provided an opportunity to explore The Doctor’s feelings
about his past and his possible future with Rose.
The Land-Rover The Doctor drives in that section
of the story caused me a bit of trouble in the first draught because a)
I forgot that it is a Land-Rover and twice typed Range-Rover, this being
a completely different vehicle and not the one I was thinking of at all.
In the original draft, Ace was going to shoot the Vampyre
through the hole in the roof from inside the Land Rover. It was pointed
out to me by Simon, my partner and proof-reader that rocket launchers
have a blow-back that would have seriously burned anyone inside the vehicle,
so I had to make sure the description was of a four door long-base 
Land Rover which Ace could dive out of before firing the
weapon. It made for an extra paragraph of action, anyway and a valuable
lesson in cars and ordnance for future reference.
Ironically, I am not the only Doctor Who writer
with a problem with Land Rovers. In the last episode of the 2006 series,
Doomsday, Rose talks of ‘getting into dad’s old jeep.’ Within ten minutes
of the episode finishing discussion groups online were full of people
pointing out that what they were driving to
That The Doctor has different blood to Humans is something occasionally touched on in the TV series. In the 1996 Movie Grace Holloway looks at a sample of The Doctor’s blood and says ‘It’s not blood.’ It has also been stated that he can give a transfusion to any Human as his blood has no ‘type’, and that it would ‘energise’ the Human recipient temporarily. That his blood kills vampyres and the passing on of certain Time Lord powers to the recipient was a natural extension of that idea.
These are some sites about the Hill of Tara
http://www.mythicalireland.com/ancientsites/tara/
http://www.megalithicireland.com/Hill%20of%20Tara.htm
http://www.irishclans.com/articles/tara1.html
And these refer to the Tamar Tephi legend.
http://www.unisa.ac.za/Default.asp?Cmd=ViewContent&ContentID=7370
http://www.geocities.com/bpstratton/tara.html
http://www.biblemysteries.com/library/coronation.htm
