Lungbarrow History by Louis Peacock

Today we're bringing you an educational piece on the history of Lungbarrow. If you enjoy it, or even if you don't, you can go enjoy the new novel "Lungbarrow by Loomlight" at the links below:

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Amazon UK: https://amzn.eu/d/0d5WbNTX
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Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/cwej-tomoko-banks/1149936663

Lungbarrow History
A piece by Louis peacock

Time’s roses grow heavy with the scent of memory here at Arcbeatle Press, as we prepare for Chris Cwej to venture into the House of Lungbarrow, that fatal pile woven of ancient wood and even more ancient stories, for the first time in the almost thirty years since the intrepid Adjudicator first ventured into the House as a very different man, in a very different world. Much has happened in the interim, both in the world of Doctor Who and our own, and Lungbarrow has, over that time, accrued a status as something of an esoteric relic—a whispered ghost story of a novel, often invoked but rarely understood or, indeed, read. 

This little primer exists to dispel the mists of rumor and controversy surrounding the novel, and to hopefully allow a deeper understanding of this fascinating, strange little book which has gripped the Doctor Who fandom for almost three decades before you dive into it, its sequel, or indeed both! If you haven’t the foggiest what a “Lungbarrow” is going in, don’t worry! This guide is written to familiarize you with just that, and will hopefully provide a little trivia for even the most hardened Doctor Who EU veteran in addition. With our purpose and context in mind, let us begin; so that when the time comes, we may be lost in the Loomlight with a little more of our own light to lead the way…

Though the book was published in 1997, at the height of the “Wilderness Years” that saw Doctor Who go off the air—with a brief interregnum following the release of a made for television movie starring Paul McGann’s Eighth Doctor in 1996—from 1989 to 2005, the story of the book really begins back when the original show, the so-called Classic Series, was still airing. By the time that Lungbarrow’s writer, Marc Platt, entered the scene, the show had already been running for over two decades, and had seen seven actors step into the titular role as the mysterious Time Lord known only as the Doctor. At the time, the current Doctor was the seventh, played by Scottish actor Sylvester McCoy, who had entered the role during a very fraught period in the show’s history. Though cancellation was only a few years away, the series was actually enjoying something of a creative renaissance under script editor Andrew Cartmel, who had set about infusing a new air of mystery and drama into the program. It was from within that context that Marc Platt began writing his original treatment for Lungbarrow.

Platt had actually been writing pitches for the show since the 70s, with his first pitch, Fires of the Starmind, providing an early indication that Platt had a particular interest in exploring the history and setting of the Doctor’s home planet of Gallifrey; this first idea was responded to favorably by Who luminary Robert Holmes, but ultimately dropped due to its conflict with the then yet to air serial The Deadly Assassin, the first episode of the show to feature Gallifrey as a main setting written by Holmes himself. Platt continued to submit proposals for years to come, many of which ended up being adapted or incorporated into later stories of his, but it was ultimately his pitch Cat’s Cradle that caught the eye of Andrew Cartmel, who asked for another proposal from Platt. After the favorably received but ultimately unproduced Shrine, Platt was set to the task of creating an episode in the same slot as Shrine for the show’s 26th season. Thus, Lungbarrow was born.

Thanks to a recovered scene breakdown of Platt’s original proposal, we actually know a good deal about this version of Lungbarrow. This was a story that was always to be about certain things—the Doctor’s past, his relationship to his family, and the House he was raised in, all bundled up in something of a series of revelations regarding himself and his home planet. All of these were quite bold subjects for 1980s Doctor Who, where the notion that the Doctor even had a family worth referencing was a matter of some dispute. Here in the original pitch, the story roughly resembles its novel form—the Doctor lands in the foreboding and gothic House Lungbarrow, which we learn has sunk due to some unfortunate event in its past, and is still occupied by remnants of his family, where he must undergo journeys into his past and face ghosts of old memories along with his companion—here the punk explosives expert Ace—before his journey amongst the stars can continue.

Most everything regarding Gallifrey is revealed to be rather odd in Platt’s telling, with Gallifreyans not being people with mothers and fathers but rather a set of so-called Cousins, all literally woven out of biological stuff in the life-creating machines known as looms, and raised in living, thinking dwellings known as Houses. This set up would be bold and provocative for any sci-fi series, and was all the more so for one with such a marked tendency towards the staid and the formulaic as Doctor Who at this stage in its lifespan. Already, therefore, we see how ambitious the story is, and indeed much of the structure that is set to recur in later iterations of the story; Lungbarrow is a knotted, iterative thing, but it is ultimately a very stable core story in all versions, all informed by a very maverick take on a particular sci-fi franchise, and even deeper in its core by being something of a gothic, haunted house tale.

This particular version, however, was not to be. Platt did still create a serial for the 26th season, writing the baroque and obscure Ghost Light as the last filmed episode of the classic show (though, confusingly enough, not the last to be aired; that honor went to the episode Survival). Though one can see some traces of Platt’s Gallifreyan Gothic in Ghost Light--an ancient and surreal house, high concept and fantastical elements, the general themes of the past catching up with the present, though this time mostly for Ace rather than the Doctor—the two are ultimately not very similar, and Lungbarrow remained on the shelf even as the show was ultimately cancelled in 1989.

Fast forward a few years, and Marc Platt has found himself writing for Doctor Who again. Beginning in 1991, the publisher Virgin Books acquired the rights to publish original Doctor Who novels, picking up right where the series had left off in 1989 with the Seventh Doctor and Ace. Billed as a more adult, more complex take on the teatime sci-fi series, it seemed just the perfect place for Platt’s fantastical and dark take on the show. And so it was that Marc Platt produced his first work for the line, 1992’s Cat’s Cradle: Time’s Crucible. As the title suggests, the novel was an adaptation of sorts of Platt’s old Cat’s Cradle proposal, sharing the adaptation of an abandoned TV script theme in common with its future successor. The book is complex and has a plot whose details are not terribly important to recount here, but it, importantly, allowed Platt to set his pen to writing his ideas into official Doctor Who material. Looms, Houses, and many new elements make appearances, and afterwards Platt departed the line for some years, having now put his stamp onto the franchise twice over, but with no version of Lungbarrow yet to be actually released.

Fast forward five years, and things are once again not looking good for Doctor Who. The attempted revival of the show in 1996 has failed, and Virgin Books is on the brink of losing its license to produce Doctor Who media to BBC Books. With that loss still somewhat on the horizon, the decision is made to produce a finale of sorts for the Seventh Doctor and the range, now firmly in the past due to his onscreen transformation into Paul McGann’s iteration of the character, so that new books could be made featuring the new Doctor, or the range ultimately retired after this one last triumphal note.

Enter Lungbarrow.    

Now meant to serve as a Doctor’s final full story, with a new companion in novel-exclusive Chris Cwej and a drastically longer run time than a 90 minute television serial, the novel is a rather different beast to what pieces of the original television pitch we have, but is also quite similar. Ace is still here, albeit in a new role, all of the original Lungbarrow Cousins from the original TV treatment return—though the maid characters of Grim and Grimmer are absent, replaced by the giant wooden figures known as Drudges—and much of the plot is retained. Really what changes the most is the scope, with whole new sections outside the House dealing in even more lore for Gallifrey as a planet, and much more emphasis being placed on the Doctor’s relation to a mysterious figure of the planet’s past known only as the Other. This element in particular was an adaptation of sorts (to continue the theme) of concepts tossed around during the Cartmel era; indeed, Lungbarrow is meant as a culmination of a great many things from that era and the six year long run of the Virgin line—the end of multiple eras, in a very, very real sense.

Coming as it does at the very end of its range (only one more book featuring the Eighth Doctor would be published with the official full Doctor Who license under Virgin, as well as the earlier in continuity but much delayed So Vile A Sin) and at the end of an entire era for the series, much as its original TV version would have done in all likelihood, and bolstered by its many lore reveals, the book was already quickly becoming legend soon after it hit stands in 1997. This, however, was not the end for the iterative journey of Lungbarrow, nor of its transitional journey into more of a legend than a read book.

This transitional and iterative journey continued in part for a very practical reason—copies of the book were becoming damn expensive. For reasons a little too complex to list here, Lungbarrow received no second printing, and copies of it soon became rather rare. In addition, the lack of licensing agreements on Virgin’s part made a future second printing increasingly unlikely as well. With the book harder to read than ever, Platt ultimately released a second edition of the book as an ebook with BBCi in 2003, thus meaning that the book had now technically been released by both main publishers of Doctor Who fiction. 

This second edition boasted a new cover, an introduction and extensive author’s notes from Platt, which give a glimpse into the process and background behind all iterations of the story (both of these being prime sources for this very article), a variety of mostly minor tweaks and changes to the novel itself, and a set of new illustrations from Daryl Joyce. Available as an ebook from BBCi on the official Doctor Who website for seven years, this edition eventually became unavailable in 2010.

With the lapse of the ebook, and the ever-dwindling availability of the original 1997 edition, Lungbarrow passed further into legend. It became the Lore Book, the Holy Grail, the awesome and perverse light at the end of the Doctor Who EU tunnel. It became, in effect, a myth, just as the subject of its title had. Nowadays, online copies of the book are relatively easy to come by, and information on the TARDIS Wiki, in existing editions of the second edition, and from the recovered scene treatments of the original TV pitch mean that it has never been easier to learn about all the various versions of Lungbarrow. Nonetheless, many still view the novel much as the characters within it view the titular House—forbidding, creepy, and perhaps even a little dangerous.

I hope this little primer has shown that is not the case. Lungbarrow is a legend, and justly so, but it is primarily a smashing good yarn, like all good legends are, with a real and definite history that we can track. I hope this piece has encouraged you to pick it up (or perhaps re-read it, who knows!) and that even if it hasn’t, it may encourage you to come along with us, very soon. For legends never stay buried forever, and the House of Lungbarrow is a legend indeed…



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