At the time of writing this story there were no clues at all about what was going to happen in the 2006 TV series. I think I was probably the first writer to suggest an alternative reality where Pete Tyler is still alive. When it emerged later that such a storyline was being planned for the TV series I was interested in how they were going to do it. In fact, Rise of The Cybermen/Age of Steel presented a whole different Jackie and Pete and a very different London. Mine was not so far different. Pete was alive and he and Jackie and Rose still lived in the Powell Street Flats. Pete’s schemes had never amounted to much.

But Pete and The Doctor got on well and he overruled Jackie’s objections to her daughter’s much older boyfriend. In return The Doctor in this reality had made a sacrifice even he thought he wouldn’t make. For Rose he had given up being a Time Lord in a TARDIS. They had married in the same registry office as her parent had married and lived in the same flat as her mum and dad. And they were happy. The Doctor knew they WERE happy, but he couldn’t imagine how the version of him in this reality had changed so much. He WASN’T happy in the Lamb and Flag playing pool. He felt uncomfortable with Pete’s working class friends and their lifestyle.

This story puts The Doctor’s aversion to ‘domestic’ to the test. And he knows that such a life is not for him. He DOES love Rose. He wants to be with her. But he can’t live in her world. Not like that, at least. He contemplates leaving her there with her mum and dad, where she CAN be happy, where she will get over him and resume her normal life.

And he can’t do it. His love is too strong. The irony, of course, is in the 2006 episode, Doomsday, when Rose is trapped in the alternate universe with her mum and dad. Rose tells him that she is willing to sacrifice being with her parents in that reality to be with him. She makes the choice for herself. Sadly, fate steps in and sends her to her parents after all.

Here, in this story, Jackie and Rose make the decision to put the world back the way it was. As much as she loves Pete, Jackie knows she can’t stay in this world she doesn’t belong in. The Doctor makes it right for them. But Rose keeps one small memento – the photo of their alternate universe wedding. 

Incidentally, the Lamb and Flag pub gave me some strange problems. I chose the name more or less out of the ether. It sounded like a good name for a pub. Then I thought to myself that it didn’t sound like a London pub. A lamb and flag is actually the official crest of the town I live in, Preston, in the North-West of England. There used to be a pub called the ‘Lamb’ which had a lamb and flag on it's pub sign. And I wondered if  I should think of another name for a London pub. Then I watched the episode Father’s Day again and there is a reference in there to guests at the wedding coming  from ‘The Lamb and Flag’. It was one of those unimportant lines that I had not taken in the half a dozen times before that I had watched the episode, being more interested in the interaction between The Doctor and Rose. But this time I took notice. And on researching through Google I found there are quite a few Lamb and Flag pubs in London. So it stayed. How good their pub pool team is without The Doctor to do his turn at the tables is another matter, though.