Marion Meets Shakespeare and Sedna is another gentle introduction for Marion into the possibilities of life with Kristoph. She has travelled to the USA and back in an evening and orbited the Earth. Now, she takes a real time travel trip back to Shakespeare’s England and sees the solar system by the scenic route.

The opening scene, with the Shakespeare workshop is padding, in one way. But it is also a way of getting across just what a good teacher Kristoph is. Bear in mind that in Theta Sigma, his son, the future Doctor, also enjoys teaching. This is a family trait being demonstrated at the expense of a Mancunian. In fact, the first draft of the first story actually had Kristoph as a tutor at Salford university, not Liverpool. I changed the location for a couple of reasons, mainly I know Liverpool better than Manchester. But this scene would have needed a slight rewrite if I hadn’t made that decision early on.

I didn’t go into too much detail of their visit to the Globe, principally because that had already been done on Doctor Who, and just how many Time Lords DOES Shakespeare actually know? The more important part was the journey through the solar system.

The classification of Sedna as the tenth planet in the solar system is actually slightly dubious. A year or two back I thought it had officially been classified, but looking up the information online it looks as if that might not be the case. But it certainly does seem to be the outermost body in the solar system as at present understood. It really needs a Time Lord to sort it all out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/90377_Sedna
http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/sedna/
http://www.nineplanets.org/sedna.html