FINAL SIN - STORY INSPIRATIONS

In this post, I'm going to talk about the two main inspirations for my new storyline.

First is Psychomachia, a poem from the 5th century written by the ancient poet Prudentius. It tells of battles held between the Seven Deadly Sins and the Seven Heavenly Virtues, each 1-1 battle involving two figures that are counterparts to each other; for example, Chastity fights Lust.

(A carving of Psychomachia in Catalonia, Spain)

I knew with Antibody out of the picture with the new script, I needed something new to push Gluttony towards acting upon his desires. When going back into researching the concept of the Sins, I found out they have direct counterparts known as the Seven Heavenly Virtues. In Christian belief, the names and particular virtues are much more flexible and variable depending on where you look, but I stuck with the ones that fit my pre-existing Sins.

And as I delved deeper, I found out about this poem (albeit a rather long poem), that chronicles how the Virtues continually achieved victory over the Sins, using their powers and personalities against them. I thought this kind of conflict could be a really interesting catalyst to get the story going, but not act as the main focus; it could just be the first domino to be knocked down. But I didn't want 1-1 fights and direct personal conflicts between the Sins and the Virtues, so I thought of a more appropriate type of conflict for the intergalactic setting; a space war.

The second influence is Day of the Doctor, the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special. In the first act, we see scenes from the last days of the Time War, an event teased since 2005's episode Dalek.

(The last day of the Time War - credit: BBC)

The Time War was a war fought between the Time Lords and the Daleks, in which both sides seemingly lost (until the Dalek Empire was rebuilt in The Parting of the Ways). The events we see in Day of the Doctor involves the Daleks surrounding Gallifrey, the planet of the Time Lords, enforcing both an air assault and a ground assault. Both sides have soldiers, but the Time Lords are very clearly losing. It's a spectacle of lasers, explosions, fire and light.

This conflict is my favourite example of a space battle (second to the Battle of Coruscant from Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith), and the particular scenario seemed like it fit perfectly with my Sins vs Virtues conflict; two opposing sides who hate each other entirely, figures in power safe as they send in lowly soldiers to fight for them... it fit very well!

I took inspiration in having one side very dominant on the technology front; the Daleks and the Virtues are both leading an armada of ships towards the home planet of their opponents, sending down drones in robotic suits to fight their foes' dwindling soldiers.