Lungbarrow (unproduced TV story)

Daryl Joyce's illustration of the television Lungbarrow. (DWM 305)

Lungbarrow was a story by Marc Platt which was written during his period of submitting numerous stories to the Doctor Who production office. Having found following Fires of the Starmind that his vision of Gallifrey differed from the direction taken by the television series, Platt did not submit the script.

The story concluded that the Time Lords were infertile and required genetic banks known as looms to reproduce. Gallifreyan society was composed of Families composed of set numbers of Cousins. The plot involved the Doctor getting caught in a murder mystery involving his family at the House of Lungbarrow.

Following Andrew Cartmel and Ben Aaronovitch enjoying Platt's script for Shrine, they talked with Platt about their idea of the Other. Cartmel and Aaronovitch hadn't figured out how the Other would become the Doctor, prompting Platt to remember his idea of looms from Lungbarrow. This led to Lungbarrow becoming a key part of the Cartmel Masterplan, and Platt went ahead with developing a version of the story for the Seventh Doctor and Ace. A scene-by-scene breakdown was developed, with the story being a three-parter set entirely in the House. Platt pitched this to John Nathan-Turner, who liked the idea but thought it was better to be built up to for a later season, leading to Platt instead running with an alternate story which would come to be Ghost Light.

The House of Lungbarrow was going to be name-dropped in Ghost Light, but Sylvester McCoy changed the line at the eleventh hour. The general structure of Gallifreyan society developed in Lungbarrow was described in Gallifrey - Notes on the Planet's Background, which influenced the lore of the Virgin New Adventures. Platt's initial contribution to this range, Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible, featured a cameo from the House of Lungbarrow and Satthralope. Platt then wrote the novel Lungbarrow, an expanded version of the unproduced television story.