Perceptions is the first of several stories I wrote in the course of three weeks in which perception filters played a part. These amazing gadgets, of course, were first seen in the Doctor Who episode, The Sound of Drums, but obviously the idea of using them in other situations took hold. I decided that they might be a feature of the visitors gallery in the Panopticon, ensuring no distraction from the public for the councillors in session. Of course, I realised it also meant that assassins had the perfect cover. But, then again, a perception filter only works if the person wearing it is quiet and unobtrusive. Making a scene or attempting to do something dangerous would break the filter.

The description of the Capitol with its dome, sitting on the edge of the Red Desert is inspired by the same Doctor Who episode, of course, where we see an image of a city beneath a protective dome.

“The Capitol, a great city of tall spires and graceful architecture, nestled between a sharp-peaked mountain range and the edge of the Great Red Desert. The view here was of that desert that lay beyond the protective dome that covered the whole of the Capitol. It looked like glass, but it was actually an energy shield that had been built for the protection of the seat of government on Gallifrey at the time of that terrible war Kristoph and Li and others of their generation had fought in. It also served as an environmental shield, maintaining an ambient temperature and humidity in the city and protecting against UV rays and Gamma rays and other dangers from space itself.”

Sheboggins, come from a much older Doctor Who episode, The Invasion of Time, when we first learn about the outlander tribes who eschew Time Lord technology. The vision of what the Capitol looked like in that story and the later one are rather different, but both are vague enough to allow for re-imagining of the Time Lord city.

The peaceful reverie is upset, of course, by Idell, and her bombshell upsets Marion. Lord Ravenswode is trying to re-enact the anti-alien laws.

So off Marion goes to the Panopticon itself with her friends. Now, here, it is worth remembering that I have played around with some of these words. In the course of Doctor Who history there have been references to The Capitol, the Citadel and the Panopticon. I decided that the city as a whole should be The Capitol, the building in which Time Lord government is conducted is The Citadel, and the seat of government within the Citadel would be The Panopticon. This makes sense of all three words and allows a geography of the city to be imagined.

In point of fact, Panopticon is a word usually associated with prisons.

Conceived by Jeremy Bentham the concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) prisoners without the prisoners being able to tell whether they are being watched, thereby conveying what one architect has called the "sentiment of an invisible omniscience.

But on Gallifrey, it is the equivalent of the House of Lords or a Senate, although clearly Gallifreyan government is unicameral and only has lords, not commons. The Panopticon is also used for ceremonies like presidential inaugurations and high caste weddings, unlike any parliament house I have ever come across. But no harm to that.

Of course, Lord Ravenswode was going to fail in his attempt to ban interspecies marriage. And his attempt leads to him losing a lot of credibility as a politician. But the whole thing does worry Marion. Her solution is the obvious one. She wants to know what people really think of her, so she keeps the perception filter and listens in.

Lady Dúccesci only came into it because I had created the character of Malika Dúccesci a couple of weeks before, who young Chrístõ had dealings with in his school days – the Arclalian lacrosse captain. Malika is something of a bigot who dislikes the half blood Lœngbærrow heir. But this lady, who would be his future mother, behaves differently. She speaks well of Marion, against the pompous and old fashioned views of the Ravenswode clique. And since Marion is hidden behind her perception filter, she knows that it is an honest view.

This, of course, is a very old literary device. Henry V before Agincourt dons an old cloak and listens to the views of the common soldiers about the king’s mission. But I really wasn’t looking to draw any such highbrow comparisons, only to tell a little story about an Earth woman finding her way on an alien world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameral
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicameralism