Mountain of the Gods is one of two stories which are played out simultaneously. The events here take place at the same time as Jackie and Christopher have their honeymoon adventure in the following story. It is set on Tibora, the former Time Lord dominion planet where Brenda Freeman lives. She, of course, is the girl who had a demon occupying her mind in “Cuckoo in the Nest”, one of the Unfinished Business stories and the follow up “Blind Man’s Buff”. I decided she would be perfect as a love interest for Davie. The idea of her being shy of him because he is a Time Lord – or going to be a Time Lord stems from her reaction to The Doctor in the original stories. Davie’s attempts to get her to accept him as simply a boy of her own age make a prelude to the main action with the volcano.

 The volcano that forms the background of the story is inspired by several different movies, of course. I don’t live in a volcanic part of the world and have no personal experience of them. Dante’s Peak is an obvious one. The acidic river, the dead trees, the stroppiness of the volcano owe a lot to the early parts of that film. As does the word pyroclastic which I had never used in a sentence before seeing that film. The nature of the lava – pāhoehoe lava – basically meaning the runny sort – comes from various other films, most recently ‘Volcano’ the one where a lot of pāhoehoe lava runs through downtown LA. Pāhoehoe is another word I rarely use in everyday language. I did a bit of background reading on types of lava in order to give The Doctor some semblance of authority on the subject.

The dwarf bears just seemed like a nice idea to give an ‘ahh’ moment in the story. A sad one when the mother bear is killed, a moment which brings Brenda and Davie together, and a sweet one when Sukie and Vicki adopt the baby ones despite The Doctor’s attempt to say no. The Doctor as a sucker for two pairs of appealing brown eyes is a touch I wanted to add. It isn’t exactly in character with the Ninth Doctor as the TV series presented him, but he has changed since being married and being a dad again!

Blowing the side out of a mountain and letting the lava flow in a controlled way IS probably possible. It is a similar idea to the blocking of the lava flow in Volcano by blowing up a building. I don’t think it has ever been done, since in real life we don’t have transmats to place the explosives.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcano

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante%27s_peak

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcano_%28film%29