Welcome to Gaia! ::

Swiftly Tilting Planet is part of one of my favorite fantasy series... I haven't read them in years so I didn't pick up on that part about the unicorns.. I love how that seems to fit in so well.

As for Lungbarrow and Time Lord genetics, I'm not even going to try to understand or explain what little I've pieced together.... it's got so many ends to it that it's just a big ball of stuff. xp

Hmm... Let's think about this...

Back in the Sixties there was a BBC team called the 'Survey Group' whose job was to study different aspects of culture and report back as to how these aspects could be addressed by the corporation in their programming.

The first domino to fall in the sequence of events that would eventually lead to the invention of Doctor Who was a task set to the Survey Group - to read and study as much contemporary literary science fiction as possible to see if there were any ideas floating around that could be used.

So you've got a BBC team conducting preliminary research for what-would-eventually-become-Who by reading scads of current SF.

They were given this task in 1962.

1962 was also the year that A Wrinkle in Time was published.

I've no way of knowing for sure if they read it... but it's a very strong possibility.

I always assumed/interpreted the statement as the Doctor being more compassionate than most other Time Lords since he's been around humans far more often than other Time Lords. The "on my mother's side" I think of as a joke, or because he travels with girls more often then he does men and companions are normally the "heart" in the Doctor/Companion relationships. (The Master was probably just agreeing/insulting the Doctor since he, y'know, hates loving emotions.)