Doctor Who_ Nightshade - Mark Gatiss [111]
you’re at a loose end.
The road-side posts with hexagonal reflectors that Back to scary things, I’ve always had a bit of a thing about Medway passes are in the North Yorks moors and they used waking up to find some sitting on the end of the bed. As a to fascinate me as a kid. They’re really tall so that can show kid, the idea of it scared the life out of me and I can up over the snowdrifts. Last Christmas I went with my Dad remember one night, after watching The Devil Rides Out, up to High Force, a fantastic waterfall in that region which I being absolutely certain that there was something there. I hadn’t been to in years. We drove past those posts and my was utterly unable to turn on the light just in case the first thought was of Nightshade.
pressure I was sure I could feel turned out to be, well, The Doctor is very cold towards Ace and her burgeoning probably something little...
relationship here. Is he jealous? Or merely angry that he’s got himself involved - again? There’s a little prefiguring of 312
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DOCTOR WHO: NIGHTSHADE
DOCTOR WHO: NIGHTSHADE
the more emotional slant of the new series here, I suppose beloved was dead when his property turned up, complete but then that was the ethic of the New Adventures. To be with bayoneted pocket-book, its pages stiff with blood.
broader and deeper. To boldly go... sorry.
I rather like the section where Ace muses on the 60s and the idea of the old stones of the monastery having witnessed Chapter Seven
countless generations musing over the same thoughts. I often get to thinking that way. These bricks will be here long I laughed when I saw that the Doctor says Whatever! Of after I’ve gone. But then, they’ll never have lived!
course, he’d know about early 21st Century slang, wouldn’t It’s worth saying here, of course, that P.J. Hammond’s he?
Sapphire and Steel was a huge influence on the book and Mr Peel’s comment “It’s these blackie postmen”, comes there are lots of bits (opaque black eyes for one!) that from the film Billy Liar and I put it in because it’s always reference it. The main one here is the singing of “Pack up made me laugh. I love listening to old people and the your troubles” which features in Adventure Two (or The magical, sometimes outrageous things they come out with.
One in the Railway Station). It’s worth pointing out, though, It’s probably why there’s a preponderance of elderly that like the Tomb of the Cybermen reference, this was done characters in my stuff (Trevithick, Whistler in Last of the before S and S had been released on video and so was much Gaderene, Mrs Peace in The Unquiet Dead and the more of a nostalgic nod than will appear today when Grandma in The Idiot’s Lantern).
everything is available and everyone knows everything! I When I was at college we were sent out to interview old still marvel at the atmosphere of that show. The man is a people for a project. My student digs were next door to one, genius.
as it happened, so I popped over with a tape recorder and The child poisoned by berries was inspired by my Dad’s spent a lovely hour with an old dear who waxed nostalgic brother who died in this way back in the Twenties. He was about all manner of things then suddenly broke down at the called Harry and, after his death, my grandparents had memory of her late husband. I’ve never forgotten it and another child and called him Harry. Isn’t that odd? You how uncomfortable and intrusive I suddenly felt. Also, I can’t imagine a family doing that today.
once talked to an old man who remembered working in a The evil Jesus! That’s quite brave. Probably wouldn’t be field in Yorkshire when a young lad came running over to allowed now. It’s nasty. I’m sure it was inspired by a bit in say the Titanic had gone down. Imagine that. Amazing.
The Martian Chronicles were a priest whose lost his faith This leads me into Mrs Holland’s sad recollection of accidentally forces an alien into appearing as he wants him discovering her husband had been killed in the Great War.
to be. As a kid, though, I was scared of the