Marion's Graduation is really only the first part of this story. It’s what happened afterwards at the party that takes the ongoing saga of Marion and Kristoph further. But the discussion about her future choices is important. It echoes very slightly the speech about choice made by ‘Rita’ in the play and film ‘Educating Rita’ about the fact that getting her degree gave her choices. Marion’s choices are possibly even easier. She wants to marry Kristoph. She wants to have his children. Her life would seem to be assured. But she also likes the idea of teaching. It is a serious issue that faces women graduates whether they have a Time Lord fiancé or not. Do they give up their careers for family or not. Marion is faced with some interesting case studies. On Gallifrey, it is perfectly obvious that a wife of a senior Time Lord doesn’t need to work. On Haolstrom, the question doesn’t even arise. For the likes of Hillary, career and parenthood are interchangeable. For Marion, living in late 20th century Britain, there is ostensibly no bar to her being a wife, mother and career woman, but the glass ceiling is a very real thing.

That question still hangs in the air when the story takes a new twist. Remonte de Lœngbærrow arrives to tell Kristoph his father is ill. Now, when I started to right the sequences of stories that begins here, I had intended for his father to die. But I then remembered that Chrístõ in the Theta Sigma series remembered his grandfather from his childhood. Therefore, the elder Lord de Lœngbærrow had to survive this crisis. That meant a quick rethink of what I wanted to happen. Obviously, if the head of the family was to die, Kristoph would have no choice. He would have to return to Gallifrey and take his place as patriarch. And that would throw all of Marion’s options into disarray.

Marion’s choices of what to bring with her for the trip to Gallifrey raise interesting points. Just what WOULD you bring with you for an extended TARDIS trip? Most people who ever joined The Doctor on his travels didn’t get chance to pack, so the question didn’t arise. Donna Noble even had a hatbox in case of ‘planet of the hats’. Marion packs light. Her new degree certificate, her nightwear and two packets of tea, having learnt that they don’t have that on Gallifrey. I couldn’t think of anything else that she needed for that journey at that time.