Author Notes

The chapter title is a play on Phillip Segal’s comment that the TV Movie has ‘kisses to the past’, like the Doctor finding a long woollen scarf.

I’m biased, I know, but I love this last chapter, I think absolutely every word falls in the right place and has exactly the right weight. I’m very self-critical – there’s one whole Who book of mine that I wouldn’t have published, if I’d had the choice. But I think this chapter’s the best thing I’ve ever written.

The first section of the book is meant to be a pastiche of Paul Cornell’s writing style, as a lead in to the next New Adventure, written by him, Oh No It Isn’t. It’s meant to quickly sketch in the set up of the Benny books for people, so, hopefully, they’d buy next month’s book, not just leave with the Doctor. In the end, though, if I could write like Paul Cornell, I’d write like Paul Cornell, and saying ‘wonderful’ a lot isn’t the same thing.

I’d first used the ‘robarman’ joke in Cold Fusion.

Benny’s bicycle was, at one point, meant to be something she used in all her books – possibly a nod to Emma Thompson’s character in the Arnie film Junior, a professor who got around campus on a bike. In the event, I think it was only mentioned in Oh No It Isn’t.

‘She used the F-word because she could’. The BBC wouldn’t let the New Adventures use swear words, as there had been complaints after a few early books had done so (most memorably Iceberg, which began with the memorable phrase ‘ "F- you, mate! Just f- you you f-ing w-ker". There was no doubting the strength of feeling in the biker. He was angry.’, the sheer gratuitous nature and psychological insight of which caused much merriment among the NA writers). I had, of course, wanted Benny to use the F-word, not merely allude to it, but even three pages from the end, no swearing was allowed.