Fighting Campbells started with the opening sequences written a few weeks before and then left because I had other stories to write and I was already ahead on the NLOT series. I hadn’t actually decided what trouble Davie had got himself into. I debated a fight with Sontarans and Rutans, because my plan was to make them one of his particular nemeses. I was also thinking of something like the Dominators making trouble on Tibora, Brenda’s planet. By the time I came back to it, I had decided to make it a fight with Daleks, and make it a part of the Dalek invasion of Earth which started the Campbell family story as it were.

It’s not the first time I’ve set a story during the invasion but in a different part of the world than London. My Christmas story for Torchwood three years back was set in Cardiff at the Christmas of the year the Daleks invaded. In that story Jack tells everyone that there will be a man who comes to London in the spring and defeats the Daleks. Here, too, Davie, who has foreknowledge, tells the people of Dumfries that liberation is not far off.

I chose Dumfries as the former home of David Campbell almost at random. I passed through the town quite a lot in my younger hittchiking days when I wanted to get to the Irish ferry in Stranraer. It always struck me as a pretty town with a river running through it and some nice architecture. So naturally I set out to destroy most of it!

The church that features in part of the story, Saint Mary’s Greyfriars, came up in a Google search for information about Dumfries. The first picture I found of it was taken from the bottom of the steps, head on to the front façade, and it actually looked as if that was all there was of the church. From that I got the idea of it being ruined by the Daleks, leaving only that front façade with nothing behind. The idea became so set in my head at that point that I sought out other pictures to reassure myself that there WAS a solid church there. But its front actually made an excellent location for Davie’s first confrontation with a Dalek and his meeting with his grandparents.

Sheelagh’s character, suffering badly from dementia even though she isn’t very old, is based on some personal experience I have of people suffering from that illness. It is hard work and needs the patience of a saint and the sort of love Robert has for his wife. That Sheelagh is convinced that Davie is her son is not really a surprise, of course. It has been said more than once, including the start of this story, that he looks a lot like his father when he was in his twenties. So of course that’s who Sheelagh will think he is. Robert is sharper than that and quickly works out the truth. The relationship that develops between the two men is the key theme of the story, as Davie talks about and obviously plans, to reunite Robert with his long lost family. Poor Sheelagh has to die, of course. That leaves Robert with no reason to stay in Dumfries when the war is over. Instead he is free to travel to the future and meet his son and his grandchildren in a much more peaceful world than his own.

The young traitor, of course, harks back to the Dalek Invasion of Earth, where Barbara and Jenny are betrayed by two women who live in the woods near the encampment. I used a similar idea in my Torchwood Dalek invasion story. It all stems from a childhood reading stories about the French resistance and Nazi collaborators in my brother’s Warlord comics!

Caerlaverock Castle had also come up in Google searches about Dumfries. It immediately leant itself to being completely destroyed in the offensive against the Daleks.

Honestly, I LIKE Dumfries. I don’t really want to mess it up. It just turned out that way in this story.

http://www.pearsecom.co.uk/torchwood/19christmas.htm
http://www.stmarysgreyfriars.org.uk/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumfries
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caerlaverock_Castle
http://www.aboutscotland.co.uk/caer/caer.html