Marion’s first Gallifreyan hover car is pale blue and looks a bit like a Saab. Make of that what you will. I’m not much of a car person myself. I usually rely on Top Gear for advice on what kind of cars my characters should drive. To say is looks like a Saab is a little vague, actually. That company do a range of models for a variety of purposes. Saabs are used as police cars in several different forces across Europe, and they are a big name in car racing and rallying. It was a Saab Impreza that Doctor Who star, John Barrowman spectacularly crashed doing a rally section for Fifth Gear in the summer of 2009.

And yet, a Saab can also be a middle range kind of car that a young woman might use to go to work in. and that is exactly what Marion wanted it for. It also serves nicely as a weekend runabout. Stón – Saturday – is a perfect day for a drive in the country. Marion takes Kristoph, asserting her independence over him, of course, through the red valley and towards the Mountains of Solace and Solitude that lie in the distance. Now, in my imagination, Marion is driving east through the Pendle are of Lancashire towards the Pennines, with the colour scheme changed. And if anyone thinks that is a bit mundane, it is worth noting that Tolkein used the very same landscape when he imagined the journey taken by the Hobbits in Lord of the Rings.

The Mountains of Solace and Solitude, of course, were mentioned by The Doctor when Martha asked him to describe his homeworld to her. Later, in Sound of Drums we also learn about the Untempered Schism. Both of these things were new to the mythology of Gallifrey, so obviously I had to get them into my stories and make it look as if they had always been there. Kristoph’s explanation of it to Marion is extrapolated from what The Doctor said in Sound of Drums and given a bit of my own spin.

At eight we are tested. By then our psychic abilities are fully formed and we are judged emotionally ready for the test. We are brought up to the valley, one boy – or girl – and one mentor. And we are shown the Untempered Schism. It is a great circle made of metal, as big as a house, inside which a gap in the fabric of reality is harnessed. The child who hopes to be a Time Lord must stand before it and look into eternity…. See the universe from outside, see all of time at once. It’s… terrifying. Some fail. They can’t bear to look. Others find a space in their heads to encompass it. Some… a very few… are badly affected by it. They never get to the Academy. Never become Time Lords. A very rare few are SO affected that their minds are skewed… damaged. It’s… Well, I don’t know what happens to them. There is a rumour that they go to the Academy too, and become politicians. Because here as on Earth it IS said that you have to be mad to do that job!”

Marion is going to come back on this subject a few more times yet, because it is an important one, and her Human view of the Time Lord ritual is significant. But meanwhile, to the ice cascade. This is only briefly mentioned here.

And there WAS, as Kristoph said, a magnificent ice cascade. It was like a waterfall that was frozen solid except for the very last ten feet or so where it melted into a torrent of cold water that filled a rushing stream.

In another story, from the New Lords of Time series, it gets a bit more detail.

One such was the Ice Valley, where they planned to spend the night. It wasn’t icy, or especially cold. Red grass grew in a meadow that saw plenty of warming light when the sun was high in the sky, although it was mostly in shadow by the time they got there this day. Christopher and his father walked by the ice cascade and marvelled at it. Even his father, who knew all there was to know about thermodynamics, couldn’t adequately explain why it was that in this one spot the ice age that happened many millions of years ago on Gallifrey still hung on. A river of ice tumbled from so high up the mountain that Christopher couldn’t see it at all, though his father’s mature Gallifreyan eyes were able to focus on it. It looked as if it had been frozen like that for millennia. Only at the very bottom did the ice melt very slowly and collect in a pool that was only a mere degree above freezing. Even then, chunks of the ice floated in it.

Almost as spectacular as the Untempered Schism, and as amazing as the Petrifying Pool at Knaresborough!