Arachnoids came about because it had been a couple of weeks since I did a story with monsters in it. Although I think this story series stands up without monsters, unlike the TV series to some extent. But I am not just writing for myself, I am writing for an audience who want variety in the storylines.

I also wanted to explore the idea of non-humanoid aliens.

There was a humanoid shape there somewhere, but the bulbous head had a single compound eye and a mouth that seemed all venomous fangs. They had eight limbs. Two obviously legs, six double jointed and ending in claws and two that were just foot long pincers. The torso and legs looked as if clad in leather, but he suspected that it was some kind of exo-skin. As they were taken prisoner he was repulsed by the stench of rotting flesh on their breath and reflected that they were almost certainly not vegetarians.

The web – the place where  the Arachnoids put their prisoners was a piece of fiendish inspiration. Something more than the usual prison cell. Something that would REALLY cause The Doctor some trouble.

The description of how crucifixion ‘works’ was something I had only learnt a few months before I wrote that particular story. The parish priest explained the process during the “Stations of the Cross” on Palm Sunday and although I didn’t at that point intend to use what I had learnt in a science fiction story it came readily to mind when I was developing this story.

The scene in which The Doctor uses remote telepathic projection to summon Jack does stretch the boundaries of science fiction. It is stretched again when the friends of The Doctor are all summoned. These are a mixed bag. Some are old TV characters – Yates, Benton, Ace, The Brigadier. Then there is Simon from my San Francisco story. But the big question at the time of posting this story was, WHO are Sammie and Bo. These, of course, are central characters from Theta Sigma, my series about the Doctor as a young Time Lord. But this was their debut as characters.

We had in Parting of the Ways, seen the TARDIS materialise around Rose and the Dalek. But in this story I reversed the process and had the TARDIS dematerialise leaving the Doctor’s volunteer army in position to fight the Arachnoids. This was a technique that had NOT been seen before on the TV series. It WAS seen in School Reunion when the TARDIS dematerialised leaving the Mk IV K-9 behind. Yet again I pre-empted the second series!

And of course there is a departure here, literally, from the TV series when I introduced Hellina Artura and had Jack take a shine to her. Of course, for Jack, it couldn’t be any ordinary woman that would turn his head. She had to be an androgynous space warrior who was equal to him. Jack decided that he, like The Doctor, could be a one woman man, and off he goes to become part of the 22^nd Space Corps.

In the TV series, of course, Jack is running Torchwood. But this was a suitable exit for him in my Doctor Who universe. Not, of course, gone for good. He will be back. So will Hellina.

Another issue in this story, of course, is The Doctor’s definition of pacifism and his involvement in the battle with the Arachnoids. No, in all conscience he could not stay behind in the TARDIS and let other risk their lives. But here we have one of those moments when the dark side of his nature is let out. He feels more pleasure than he knows he ought to feel about killing the Arachnoids and it is Jack who puts a restraining hand on him just as he did in Return to SangC’lune.

These scenes of him actually firing a big gun at an alien are not out of character. They are rare but The Doctor HAS handled guns in the past. And he handled one twice in the 2005 series – in Dalek and Bad Wolf, both times when Rose was in mortal peril and he was emotionally charged. That is the key factor. His emotional state. The Doctor, especially the Ninth Doctor, has a lot of burning emotion inside. And sometimes it comes out.

And finally, when The Doctor and Rose are alone in the TARDIS, a new idea is introduced when Rose talks about the recurring nightmares she has had of The Doctor being regenerated into a man she isn’t sure she can love. The Doctor tells her that she must be picking up resonances from an alternative reality where he HAD been regenerated. I had decided at this point that I WOULD want to write about the Tenth Doctor as well, so I needed to find a way to explain the continued Ninth Doctor stories alongside the Tenth Doctor. That they both exist in alternative realities, one in which he regenerated and one in which he didn’t, was the way around that. And this was a first hint of how that would pan out.

All in all a very packed story. And yet only in twenty pages!