Samhain Blood originally was going to have the introduction that went with Terror of An Daingean. It introduces Chiv and Mac as telepathic but Human friends of Chris and Davie. The section in the first story was going to be followed by the section here that takes place after they all go to bed. But in a way that DID make two introductions to the story and took far too long, so it was split.

This IS the story I intended, but one of the boys was actually meant to be killed by his father. But I felt that was a bit too much having introduced them as a pair of brothers like Chris and Davie. Instead I had Mac seriously injured and Chiv able to contact Chris and tell him what was happening.

The journey to Cornwall by TARDIS was a perfect example of the Schrödinger's Cat scenario. A much less horrible one is opening an examination result envelope that is either a pass or a fail or a response to a job application. Whatever the scenario, it is almost always one with a potentially bad outcome, and understanding the principle doesn’t make it any easier.

Samhain, is the Irish word for November. It is the ancient Celtic harvest festival. There IS no such god as Samhain. There is a whole heap of nonsense, mostly spawned by Hollywood and some silly films like Halloween Three. There is no tradition in any part of Celtic culture that demanded blood sacrifices, certainly not Human ones. As The Doctor says, it maybe wasn’t a good time to be a chicken.

So from the start, he knew it had to be something fake. The only surprise was that it turned out to be a Human being who had lost his mind and took so many other people with him, not an alien entity of any kind. But sometimes humans manage to be monstrous all by themselves.

Why Cornwall? Well, it is an ancient Celtic nation. And I thought it would made a nice irony. The Cornish legend of the Cailleach in The Stones of Blood led to me writing the two stories with the Irish Cailleach legend, so it was appropriate to bring an Irish tradition, albeit one that had been made unrecognisable by the fake legends, to Cornwall.

There is a slight problem with setting the story in Cornwall, of course. This story is set in 2216, after the Dalek invasion, and the TV episode did mention that Cornwall was more or less emptied of people. But, it is not unreasonable to suppose that fifty years or so of rebuilding and repopulating might not have gone on. Of course, I have usually represented the world of 2216 as not too far different to know, apart from some technology like hover cars and videophones. The invasion caused a setback in Human advancement. It hasn’t become the sort of space age that others might have imagined.

Anyway, there was a suitably PG happy ending and Chiv and Mac will return another day. Sometime I need a story which uses them again. But for now they’re in the background for re-emergence at that later date. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger's_cat

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