On that bitter night when the Doctor battled Igby on the rooftop overlooking Hyde Park, a man sat alone on a bench in Kensington Gardens. He was sombre-faced with a high forehead and large kind eyes.
An author by trade, he’d found some little success in the theatre, but had not yet found the spark of a magical idea that could elevate him to the status of his friend Arthur Conan Doyle.
The young writer tugged on his moustache, a nervous habit, and looked to the stars for inspiration. What he saw there lasted for the merest blink of an eye and he would often wonder if it had indeed happened or if his imagination had brewed it up to set him on the road to literary immortality.
What he thought he saw was this:
Children surrounded by stardust flying into the night.
Two people fighting on a rooftop.
One was perhaps a pirate and the other seemed to have a hook for a hand.
The writer sat stunned for perhaps half an hour until the cold seeped through the seat of his trousers, then he pulled some scraps of paper from his pocket, chewed the top of his pencil stub, and began to write.