Doctor Who_ The Dying Days - Lance Parkin [146]
in 1979 according to another. Benny muses (not for the first time in the book) how The Dying Days fits into Doctor Who continuity.
Social chaos
One of the running themes of the book is how thin the line between a functioning society and social chaos is. I’m not sure I entirely agree with that, but there are a number of reminders throughout the book that what we think of as a stable, secure society relies a lot on goodwill and the trust in the people that lead us.
Since the book was written we’ve had the death of Princess Diana and the fuel protests, both of which, very briefly, really seemed to destabilise British society. In this scene, the bul etproof glass has become a symbol of Greyhaven’s weakness, not his strength.
Benny
Note the contrast between the Doctor and Benny when dealing with the Ice Warriors – earlier, the Doctor just strolled into the mothership and Xznaal didn’t kill him. Here, Benny’s sneaking around a shuttlecraft, and despite her cunning plan, she’s caught.
When the plans for the Benny books were drawn up, Virgin gathered about half a dozen writers together to come up with ideas – one thing we were all adamant shouldn’t happen (but weren’t quite sure how to do it) was that Benny couldn’t be ‘a Doctor substitute’. The dynamic of the books had to be different – here we start to see a hint of the difference. Benny can’t just say ‘take me to your leader’, she has to worry about basic things like money and speaking the native language.
Chapter 14
Look! Up In The Sky!
Implausibility
Ogilvy notes how scientifically implausible the Ice Warriors are.
The crown
The crown falls off Xznaal’s head – symbolic, but also a way of making sure the crown isn’t on the mothership in the last chapter.
Constable
The Hay Wain has appeared a few times throughout the book – the first time as a design on a tray owned by the Doctor. Here Xznaal uses the real thing as a tray.
Benny banter
Benny is giving as good as she gets here, but note that all her banter isn’t actually changing anything. She’s not talking Xznaal out of his plan, as the Doctor might, just making him more resolute.
War of the Worlds
‘It’s bows and arrows against the lightning’ is a quote from War of the Worlds – a soldier commenting on the futility of fighting the Martians. The line about only two Martians and one human being left is a paraphrase of an American general in the sixties discussing the Cold War and Communists. The image of the Ice Warrior Benny has was a description of the cover of the original Virgin edition of the book.
The Holo-man
The reason for the giant hologram is a convoluted one. Original y, I asked for the cover to be a mirror image of the first New Adventure, Genesys. That had four elements – a monster in the foreground, a full-length image of a man, with a temple wall in the background... and a ghostly floating face of the Doctor. The book covers had moved towards a literal depiction of a scene from the book since then.
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So I had to have a specific scene with a monster confronting a full length Benny in front of a castle wall, with a giant floating ghostly Doctor head in at some point! In the end, the idea of mirroring the original cover was dropped, because it didn’t fit the new cover format. But the version that was used still has echoes of the Genesys cover.
Famous last words
Benny’s ‘last words’ are actually taken from an unpublished fan story I wrote with Mark Clapham, where they were given to the Doctor’s companion there, Iffy.
Divided loyalties
The last scene of this chapter has divided people. Grown men have admitted to crying, others think it’s bombastic and utterly out of character. Remember that at the time, most people reading the book knew the Doctor died in it.
The guy’s just come back from the dead, so I think he’s al owed a big entrance. If it had been a TV story, it’s the bit that would get the biggest cheer at conventions.
I am the Doctor
The Doctor’s descriptions