Creature from the Deep was one of two ideas I had involving Davie and Brenda. The other is still currently in the drabbles folder, because I need to stick in a few stories involving other members of the family inbetween the Davie stories. Even though he is, basically, the central character of the New Lords of Time, now that the Doctor has taken a back seat, it is very much an ensemble cast, and I want to be able to ring the changes with stories featuring other members of the De Lœngbærrow family. After all, the series is called the New Lords of Time, plural. Some of the other young Time Lords and Time Lords Elect need to get in there now and again.

But this story pushed itself forward as a one off idea that I could work on. It owes a very, very tiny bit to the fact that I was watching Shark Attack Three again. Shark Attack Three is a really badly made B-Movie with a self-explanatory title. And the only reason anyone watches it is because it stars John Barrowman as a straight male hero. The fact that there is a large creature in the lake on Tibora is the only thing this story and SA3 have in common, however. I kept wanting to have Davie hit the creature with a baseball bat the way John’s character did, but it would have been a bit too corny.

I do worry slightly that there was only one obvious casualty of the creature called The Maw, and that a wild cat. Perhaps it ought to have eaten some people, too? But I’m not writing Shark Attack Four, after all. I wasn’t aiming for a gore fest. It was enough that it was causing a nuisance to local farmers, perhaps.

Brenda holding the creature’s tooth while Davie scanned it is a little dig at Shark Attack Three. In that film, John’s character holds a shark tooth sideways in his fingers and photographs it, and the picture appears on his computer screen the right way up and with no fingers in sight. Everyone laughs at that scene. Davie’s scan includes fingers and gives him instant identification of his lake monster.

Since there is a long tradition of killer sea monsters and people going out to deal with them, dating back to Jaws, through its sequels and culminating in the aforementioned B. movie, what I really needed was an original way of killing The Maw. The idea of the TARDIS being swallowed by it and then electrifying it from the inside came to me, but that would have killed every other creature in the lake. So I then had the idea of Davie making his TARDIS rise up out of the water, still inside the creature, and electrifying it in mid-air before dematerialising out of its stomach. Nobody in Jaws or Shark Attack ever had a TARDIS at their disposal!

The death of the Leone did cause a bit of disconcertion among the readership. I had portrayed it as a magnificent animal and then had it killed. Unfortunately, that’s the way of the universe. Animals live and die. I have been asked if I would do another Tiboran story that might feature a Leone. Well, I may certainly do a Tiboran story, but I am not really sure how a large predatory cat would fit in. But you never know.

The subplot of Davie and Brenda bringing their Alliance forward, is really because I don’t really want to wait another four years for it, either. Their wedding will be a storyline next year. Also, after Davie’s Baby, which was an intensely emotional story for Davie and Spenser, I thought it was time to wind down their relationship a bit, as I always intended it would do. This gives me an opportunity to do that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shark_Attack_3