The Servant of Vol is an revised version of a short story I wrote for a Big Finish competition. The stories had to be about a ‘classic’ doctor and companion and had the title ‘How The Doctor Changed My Life’. My story didn’t succeed. Although actually I have never heard anything about the book that was supposed to be published, so perhaps nobody else did, either. Possibly one reason was that I wrote a story that never specified which Doctor and companion it was at all, because the story was from the point of view of the temple guard who saw them only as two strangers.

Well, I decided to rewrite the story from The Doctor’s point of view and have the invalid Doctor tell the story to Rose in his garden in the sunshine. I made it the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane, because that allowed an exploration of the Doctor/Sarah Jane relationship as it was when she was younger.

Apart from that, the story is the same. It is about an anthropologist who uses religion to manipulate the people he is studying. Obviously, that is the exact opposite of what an anthropologist is supposed to do. He should observe without affecting those being observed. Small wonder that The Doctor should be so angry.

The original story concept though, was a good one. How The Doctor Changed My Life. Because some of the best stories are those where The Doctor does not do very much except act as a catalyst, stirring others to do what they know they ought to do to change their own situation. Here, he was the catalyst for Gel’s conversion from a mere acolyte, following blindly the illogical demands of the religion, to one who questions and fights. In the end he becomes a rebel and stands against Vol. His life was destroyed, but at the same time his life was better.

One of the smaller stories told here, of course, is one that has been repeated from time to time in the Theta Sigma series, about a small boy on Gallifrey who fell into a fish pond. The story mirrors the one in which Vicki has a similar disaster, like father like daughter. It is basically a piece of recurring mythology that has been seeded through the stories simply to give some continuity between the story sections.