Liberation is the last of the three main stories about the Dominator invasion of planet Earth. How to actually do this particular story was always going to be a problem. I didn’t want it to be a Star Wars style space battle. That’s never been what Doctor Who was about. But there was, obviously, going to be a battle at some point.

My solution, was to tell most of the story from Christopher’s viewpoint. Two stories back, he was left behind on Earth where he was with his colleagues in the British government, trying to warn everyone of the imminent danger. We catch up with him in this story as a prisoner of the Dominators, along with the entire British Cabinet and the American Ambassador. Moira Greenwood, the president of the Republic of Great Britain that exists in the future, has been seen before in the story Amicus Humani Generis in which Christopher admitted to her that he was not Human and was, in fact, Chancellor of an alien government in exile on Earth. This story called for a few more members of the Cabinet to be named. Matthew Reynolds, the Treasury Minister, a disabled man, was written in essentially to add an extra level of pathos to their situation, kept prisoner for several weeks, not allowed to change their clothes and fed bad food in humiliating ways. I had intended to put in a scene in which some of them were tortured by the Dominators to find out about the Human race, and having them discover that Christopher was different, but the story had enough in it as it was.

Captain Jack Harkness is back, and pretty much his usual self. His smart remark when he hugs Moira on the way down in the transmat is pure Captain Jack.

The American Ambassador turning out to be a traitor is not any kind of dig at Americans or their diplomatic corps. It might have been any of the Cabinet. It might even have been more of a shock if it HAD been one of them. But the ambassador, it was. It is, of course, a nod to Dalek Invasion of Earth, where Human traitors betrayed the Resistance, and in fact, just about any war where civilians have been under an invader’s rule. The word ‘Quisling’ comes from a notorious Norwegian who worked with the Nazis. But as The Doctor notes in this story, collaborators don’t tend to come off well when the war is over and people start to count the cost.

Bringing in Ten to help the cause was always part of my plan. I just hadn’t worked out how at the time. I did vaguely have an idea that he might use the Delta Wave to kill the Dominators, but actually that struck me as something The Doctor would never do, no matter what the circumstances. The broadcast of the episode Journey’s End the week before this story was posted actually proved me right. The Doctor as we know him wouldn’t commit genocide. A duplicate of him, with Human characteristic mixed in, did that to the Daleks. A subtle difference. Using the EMP to destroy the clone cyborgs was a necessary evil. Those, he could perfectly well argue, were not true lives, but soldiers created for the subjugation of Earth. But to destroy the Dominators, a higher intelligence, would anathema to him.

Bringing the Allies through the time vortex using four TARDISes to force a gap and allow the ships through is a great vision. Whether it is possible depends a lot on what the time vortex really is and how it works. The imagery we have always had is of something much like a wormhole, but one only Time Lords and the like can use. In which case, what I described works fine. If it is anything else, then maybe it wouldn’t.

Hellina was originally going to die. I wrote a version of the story in which she did. But it seemed just a bit too cruel. The main reason for it was that I wanted to have Jack Earthbound and hanging around The Doctor and his family for a while. I decided he could do that just as easily while Hellina was recovering from her wounds. So I rewrote it with Ten coming up with the solution that would buy her time to recover.

And then the big bombshell – Rose is in hospital on Tibora. This was originally meant to be part of the same story of the liberation of Earth, but it became obvious it needed to be a separate story.