Yes, I HAVE seen the TV Series West Wing. No, I have never been to Washington DC. Yes, that TV series did inspire this story to some extent. It inspired the joke about the Oval Office rug at least. It was from one of the West Wing’s fan websites that I gleaned the information that the rugs are chosen by the incoming First Lady, along with the rest of the décor. It made for a wonderful counterpoint to Jackie’s protests about her kitchen lino.

As for the President – well, I don’t know how likely it is that America would ever elect a Chinese-American as president. And one from a poor background at that. It would take a huge change in the American political system to get anything other than a white, middle or upper class, male, Christian elected to the presidency. Irish catholic is about as adventurous as the electorate has managed so far. But this is fantasy and it seemed a good way to reintroduce Chang Li, the ‘Asian child’ of the TV Movie, as well as bringing back Simon the man who received The Doctor’s spare heart in the most unlikely heart operation in the history of medicine.

And then there are the seagulls. Unusual creatures attacking cities is not an original concept. Doctor Who has had London under threat from dinosaurs and the Loch Ness Monster among other things. Then there was Quatermass and his monster. New York had King Kong and Godzilla. Washington got giant birds. I considered the idea of a plague of ordinary sized birds being turned into killer packs by the alien technology at first. But after all, that’s BEEN DONE. There is still something of an element of Hitchcock’s classic in this story of course. But since we had the Tissue Compression Eliminator handy the idea that somebody might have reversed its technology to produce the giant birds fell into place. As did The Doctor’s suspicion that this was yet another lunatic who wanted to return the Earth to the wild. He had seen it in Invasion of the Dinosaurs as Jon Pertwee and Seeds of Doom as Tom Baker, where the crazed Harrison Chase believed plants were more noble than Humans and nurtured the alien plant-creature the Krynoid. And he was proved right once again.

The section of the story that gets the most comments, though, is that scene where The Doctor and Jack appear on the point of admitting something to each other. There was one crucial line that I changed more than once.

“No matter how insufferable and arrogant you are, I wouldn’t leave,” Jack said. “I stay for the same reason Rose does - because I LOVE you.”

This was how I wrote it originally. Then I panicked and changed LOVE to ‘care about’ but reading it back it seemed to make the sentence meaningless. What Jack was trying to say WAS that he loved The Doctor. Not necessarily in a homosexual sense, but as a friend with whom he had faced death more than once. The rest of the conversation turns upon that ambiguous relationship and makes it a little less ambiguous in that it admits there is an affection between them, while leaving Jack guessing about whether he ever has a chance of pressing it further. After all, The Doctor IS the renegade Time Lord. Yes, there are some people who find the scene offensive. But I didn’t write it for them. It is for those who understand Jack’s devotion to The Doctor as portrayed in the TV series.

As for the other question, most often asked by American readers of the stories. No, the president can’t have his sofas back. Now they belong to the TARDIS.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/whtour/

http://www.washington.org/index.cfm?blnNavView=True&idContentType=36&idCurrentPage=7

http://www.nps.gov/thje/