Doctor Who_ The Dying Days - Lance Parkin [141]
Greyhaven is my Ian Richardson character. There’s always someone in my books ‘played’ by Ian Richardson. I’m sure there was a very good reason for that at one point, but if there is, I’ve forgotten it. Anyway, this is the only ‘Ian Richardson’ specifically based on a character Richardson played – you might very well think that he’s based on Francis Urquhart from House of Cards, but I couldn’t possibly comment. The character was original y named Lord Winchester, but the Virgin legal people thought that the Marquis of Winchester would sue, so it got changed.
"Afro-Saxon" was a bizarre proofreading change, one that makes no sense at al . So I let it stay in, on the grounds it would give me an amusing anecdote if the book ever appeared online in annotated form.
Another New Adventure cliché was a token gay character, usual y a young man who smiles winsomely, then dies a horrible, gory death two chapters later. Not that I want to give away what happens. I also out Ralph Cornish from The Ambassadors of Death, for no other reason than that’s the sort of thing we used to do in the Virgin books.
The reference to IIF building a nuclear waste dump on the Moon is me, very cheekily, linking perhaps the best television series of all time, Edge of Darkness, with perhaps the worst television series of al time, Space:1999.
The reference to Donnebys must rank as one of the more obscure in the book, but it harks back to the very first Who novel – it’s the rocket company that Ian has applied to work for.
Chapter 4
Gratuitous Violets
One of my better chapter titles.
I like the stuff on Mars, with the human astronauts. It’s something I perhaps should have developed more. On the other hand, it isn’t their story. They’re there as a pretext.
Chesterton Road is real, it’s by Ladbroke Grove tube station, and you went past it to get to the Virgin offices.
Again, it’s an in-joke. Because, even if I’m the only one who admits it, every single Who author thought about Ian Chesterton when they saw the sign.
Note that Benny real y fancies this new Doctor, but won’t admit it.
The John Smith and the Common Men album. They’re the pop combo that Susan’s listening to in the first ever episode on TV. I loved the idea that they were still going. The Who universe probably has tribute bands to them, and Britpop there was very subtly different because of their influence. Again, I’m bringing Doctor Who full circle –
or at least referring back to its beginnings.
Storms Over Avallion (or some minor variation of it) was the provisional title of Battlefield, a TV story that is set a few months before The Dying Days. The joke (first introduced in Kate Orman’s books, shamelessly ripped off by me here and in Father Time) is that in the Doctor Who universe, there are just as many Doctor Who fanzines, novels and internet discussion groups, but they’re al discussing real alien invasions that the government wants covering up.
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Chapter 5
The World at One
Deflowering
Lex Christian upholds another New Adventures tradition – retconning a sex life for a television companion. I think, in the course of sixty books, that we managed to deflower every regular character from the TV series. Apart from K9 – and I once proposed a book where K9 got a robot dog girlfriend. Ironic for a company cal ed Virgin, I know, but their ‘erotic fiction’ line was edited in the same room, and something clearly rubbed off. So to speak. Bizarrely,