Doctor Who_ The Dying Days - Lance Parkin [147]
ones. ‘The man that gives monsters nightmares’ was coined by Paul Cornell; the ‘Bringer of Darkness’ is from the Remembrance of the Daleks novelisation by Ben Aaronovitch, more than any other book the harbinger of the New Adventures era; ‘Eighth Man Bound’ is from Christmas on a Rational Planet; the Doctor had been ‘Time’s Champion’ throughout the NAs, and became ‘Life’s Champion’ in Vampire Science; ‘the guy with two hearts’ is from the TV Movie and ‘I make history better’ is from the short story ‘Continuity Errors’ by Steven Moffat. ‘I... am...
the Doctor!’ was from the TV Movie – more specifically, the adverts for the TV Movie.
Handover
I had real y wanted to have a symbolic handover from the Virgin books to the BBC books – the Doctor literally having something in his hand at the end of this book that he still had in his hand at the beginning of the first EDA.
But my book was finished before The Eight Doctors was commissioned, so that proved impossible. The short lead times for to the BBC books meant that a number of things I wish I could have done couldn’t happen.
The original plan for the EDAs was that Grace would be the companion – that changed very late in the day, so late that Kate and Jon wrote sections of Vampire Science with Grace. The Dying Days would have had Grace in if I’d have known the BBC books couldn’t. I’d have mentioned Sam, the new BBC companion, if I’d had the chance.
Agendas
My favourite line in the book is probably ‘And it was’. Virgin were constantly being accused from some quarters of
‘betraying Doctor Who’, ‘pursuing their own agenda’, ‘change for change’s sake’ and having ‘an ego that wants to see Doctor Who destroyed’. As, of course, have the EDAs, Dan Freedman, Big Finish, Phillip Segal, ‘Curse of Fatal Death’, JNT, Robert Holmes, Patrick Troughton and, if you go back far enough, Nigel Kneale, HG Wells, and the first caveman to daub paint on a wall. Anyone making Doctor Who that doesn’t get that reaction is almost certainly doing something monumentally wrong. The Doctor’s not back, he never went away and he never will.
Chapter 15
Going Down in History
Turning the tables
He’s back and it’s about time... in the space of three words, the Doctor’s alive, and the tables have completely turned.
Survival
I wasn’t going to explain how the Doctor survived at first – who cares, now he’s back? But everyone that read the first draft wanted an explanation, so I put one in. Re-reading the book, you’ll see that the Doctor’s been very busy, working with Lex Christian and Eve (which is why we’ve not seen them, either).
Scary monsters
When the Doctor confronts Xznaal, the description of him is an inversion of the first description of Xznaal back in chapter seven. He won’t admit it, but Xznaal’s scared.
Into the abyss
The ‘gazing into the abyss’ quote is, of course, an inversion of the Nietzsche quote. Along with quoting from Things Fall Apart, it was the favourite quote of the New Adventures, popping up all over the place to encapsulate how the
‘dark’ seventh Doctor was becoming as much of a monster as his adversaries. The eighth Doctor is different – and he’s conquered the Red Death once, so it’s not going to frighten him now.
Dying again
I wanted people to think that I’d brought the Doctor back to kill him, and that he would die falling out of the ship. It’s meant to evoke a Reichenbach Fal s / Logopolis moment... but I don’t think it works – he’s such an irresistible force in this last chapter, that you don’t wonder if he’l survive, you only wonder how he’ll manage to.
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In the end, I wanted to end the book with a memorable image – and, in those terms, it works. By quoting from Logopolis, I perhaps fooled people for ten seconds into thinking he was going to regenerate.
E
pilogue
Kisses to the Future
Kisses to the past
The chapter title is a play on Phillip Segal’s comment that the TV Movie has ‘kisses to the past’, like the Doctor finding a long woollen scarf.
Self-criticism
I’m biased,