Jimmy Turner (from The Invasion) has married his “dolly” Isobel Watkins (also from The Invasion). Awww... I love happy endings. Corporal Nutting is about the only UNIT soldier not killed by a Silurian in the TV story, so I thought he deserved a mention here.

Hooray for Police Sergeant Robert Lines, a name stolen from my mate Rob Lines (he was best man at Who writer Rob Shearman’s wedding y’know). I liked this rather open-minded policeman and he returns in both sequels to this book. Patricia Haggard is the character played by Louise Jameson in BBV’s PROBE videos alongside Caroline John as Liz Shaw. Ah, it all fits together...

Seaview Cottage is based, in my mind’s eye at least, on an old white cottage built on a shingle beach near Exbury, in Hampshire. It had to be the most ridiculous and impossible to reach cottage in the world – needless to say, in the days when I used to call myself an actor, we filmed an episode of the Famous Five there. Only a TV crew could choose to use somewhere it was impossible to get electric cables near.

Ooh, Silurians at last. The idea that there are different species of Silurians comes from, most obviously, the fact that on telly the Silurians, Sea Devils and other Silurians (in Warriors of the Deep) don’t look that alike. It always annoys me that in Star Trek, you have the crew of the Enterprise or Voyager or whatever, all of whom are different heights, hair and skin colours, waist sizes etc. Yet Star Trek aliens always seem to be cloned. I thought if everyone on Earth looks different depending on which continent or even country they’re from, then why wouldn’t the Reptile People be similar different. Hence this story...