Doctor Who_ The Dying Days - Lance Parkin [2]
No-one, least of all Bex, took the remark seriously. Five or six years on, the phrase pops up in internet discussion of the books completely unironically. There’s even a word for it: NAstalgia.
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Other influences
Links to War of the Worlds
The War of the Worlds was obviously a huge influence – how could it fail to be, with Martians invading the Home Counties? Some of the chapter titles are the same, and almost al the original characters were named after places or people in Wells’ book. Both, for example, have an astronomer called Ogilvy.
Note that I do invert a few of the things from The War of the Worlds – germs don’t kill the Martians in this, they’re working for them! I saw Independence Day when I was writing Chapter Seven. As you’ll see for yourselves.
The title took longer than the plot. All we could come up with were joke titles: Licence to Kill, Licence Revoked, The Morte D’Octor. We wanted something ominous, something that reflected the end of the New Adventures in fact as well as fiction. In the end, I decided to watch the Bond film Licence to Kill, partly out of sheer masochism, partly to pick up tips on how to kill a popular franchise. And there the title was, in the theme tune – The Dying Days.
Bex and I had got a story and we had a title. Which was just as well, because the lead time for the book meant I only had five weeks to write it...
Below: the original cover for THE DYING DAYS
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C
hapter One
What We Saw From the Ruined House
Tuesday, May 6th 1997
The Doctor was late, as usual.
Professor Bernice Summerfield wouldn't mind, but he was a Time Lord. Not only did this mean that he could travel freely in the fourth and fifth dimensions of time and space, so he ought to be able to keep his appointments, it meant that he could always have popped back afterwards and left her a note saying he was going to had been late. He really had no excuse.
She resolved not to get too upset, and poured herself another cup of coffee. There were worse places to be than the Kent countryside in the dying days of the twentieth century. Kadiatu and aM!xitsa had dropped her off at the Doctor's house on Allen Road a week ago, on the morning of April the thirtieth 1997, the day before she and the Doctor had arranged to meet. Kadiatu had told Benny that they couldn't stay long without violating the non-aggression treaty between the People and the Time Lords. Benny and Kadiatu had used what time they had to drive down to Adisham to stock up on provisions. AM!xitsa stayed behind to keep an eye out for the Doctor, just in case he turned up early. The locals were used to them, now: they didn't turn heads at Mrs Darling's little corner shop, even when they tried to pay for a trolleyful of food with a single five pound coin.
Kadiatu had never been the easiest of people to strike up a conversation with, but this time she had been more taciturn than normal. She and aM!xitsa stowed away the provisions in virtual silence and soon after that their time machine vanished from the gravel driveway in a burst of colour and light that Benny's human vocabulary couldn't even begin to describe. Once she'd probably have envied them as they flew off into the unknown for another new adventure, but now she was quite content to spend a day on her own sitting in the overgrown garden of the Doctor's house, watching the birds chase each other around the treetops.
On that first morning she'd mopped down the wrought-iron garden furniture and brought out a couple of faded cushions from the living room sofa. She'd arranged them along the south side of the house, the one with the best view of the grounds, she'd put up a garden umbrella and then settled down to a day of serious relaxation. First, she had caught up with her diary. This was more important than ever, now that she'd final y persuaded a publishing company that there was a market for her memoirs. They'd paid her quite a big advance for the rights, so it only seemed fair that she should get around to