Lady de Lœngbærrow’s Birthday is the calm before the storm. There are some serious stories coming up, soon. But first a bit of quiet time for Marion. We start with the premise that Time Lords celebrate birthdays differently to humans. Well, it seems logical to me.

“Their very young, of course, had birthdays yearly up to the age of ten. After that, it was really only every half decade that they celebrated. Later, by the time they were fifty or so, it would be only the decade. And the older ones only really marked the centuries.”

But Marion doesn’t have as many birthdays to celebrate as them, so her twenty-third has to be marked. Of course, diamonds are involved. It was rather gratifying to find in the 2009 Doctor Who Christmas special, The End of Time that diamonds are important to Time Lord society. After all, I introduced the idea that The Doctor’s family made their money from diamond mining in 2005.

Marion has more diamonds than she knows what to do with by this point. What she needs is surprises. And for her birthday Kristoph gives her plenty of those. A picnic lunch in the limousine, a surprise party in the National Gallery in Athenica.

The painting of the Twelve Houses was a little detail I wanted to put into the story to emphasise the deep rooted family traditions of de Lœngbærrow. The detail about brown eyes reminds the readers that Kristoph and Marion’s son will be brown eyed when he is born. The Doctor’s first incarnation was brown eyes, after all. The Ninth had slate-grey eyes like his mother’s.

The news that Gallis Limmon brings at the end of the story reminds the faithful reader that there is a danger our there that Kristoph is blissfully protected Marion from. Watch this space.