Doctor Who: Nightshade Part 38

occasional, lovely forays into the vernacular (see the Master's terse "D'you wanna rot in 'ere for the rest of yer natural?" in Frontier in s.p.a.ce). The best example, of course, being the wonderful line at the end of the novelization of The War Games when, having despatched the Doctor for his summary regeneration, one of the prosecutors comments: "Shame. He would've brightened the place up no end." I 304 305.

remember being very disappointed that this wasn't in the It's fascinating now to read this. It's like a snapshot of my TV version!

past, appropriately enough. So many of the character and place names are of people I knew then but not any more; Chapter One Holland, Railton, Yeadon, Bayles and Vijay Degun! I used to work in a nursery and one of my charges was a wonderful The story's setting came from a desire to redress Doctor kid of that name, one of the brightest, funniest children I've Who's South East bias. As a Northerner myself, I felt it was ever known. What became of him, I wonder? He'd be, G.o.d, high time an adventure took place further up than Watford twenty one now! (I've just Googled him. Looks like he does though it seems odd now that I chose Yorkshire rather than something in West Yorkshire Trading Standards!) the North-East which is where I'm from. It was probably a There's a lot of set up in this chapter but it's still pretty combination of having recently been to college in Yorkshire, atmospheric. Lots of my own Christmas memories have the moors (I once spent such a day in Ilkley with... well, been pressed into service here and the sequence where Jack that's another story) and, I suppose, not to want to look too Prudhoe chases his wife's phantom onto the moor still obvious (ie Darlington writer sets story in Darlington) makes me tingle a bit.

Either that or the fact that the fairly recent Mark of the Rani Edmund Trevithick is a composite figure. He's a grumpy had been set in Geordie-land.

old actor (my favourite kind) who used to star in a TV series I think it began life with a present day setting but then that isn't quite Quaterma.s.s and isn't quite Doctor Who.

Peter Darvill-Evans suggested some recent historical date I was utterly obsessed by Quaterma.s.s at that time (and and 1970 was briefly debated. I said I couldn't imagine making a short spoof with Reece and Steve, soon to be of setting anything in 1970! But then I remembered a story one The League of Gentlemen). I wanted some of Nigel Kneale's of my teachers had told me. He'd been the only hippy in grittiness to rub off on this story and, as I've said, make it Jarrow and recalled waiting outside the Pictures in kaftan more like the Doctor Who I remembered and loved. A year and Lennon specs with big, surly blokes on all sides waiting or so later when I was making The Zero Imperative with Bill for any excuse to smash his head in. It takes guts to stand Baggs, Gary Gillett mocked up some videos that can just be out from the crowd.

made out on Jon Pertwee's shelves. They were Nightshade, What began to interest me was the notion that the 60s Nightshade 2 and Nightshade and the Imps. I don't think obviously didn't swing everywhere. So how about the anyone ever noticed!

TARDIS pitching up in a tiny backwater during one of the The one bit I can't bear is the first paragraph of this most momentous years of the century? There'd be a sense chapter: "Perhaps the world was dreaming"... etc. etc. I know I that life was being lived elsewhere and a village full of wanted some kind of "It was the best of times, it was the people all yearning, in one way or another, for a vanished worst of times" feel but it now looks so bolted on and just past. But then life - or death - would catch up with them... I know I that life was being lived elsewhere and a village full of wanted some kind of "It was the best of times, it was the people all yearning, in one way or another, for a vanished worst of times" feel but it now looks so bolted on and just past. But then life - or death - would catch up with them...

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307.

plain weird. Much better to just crack on with the story.

I was keen to get something like a real romance going in Which is what I suggest we do now.

the story as I felt baffled and confused by the recent TV attempts at it, particularly the scene in Curse of Fenric Chapter Two between Ace and the soldier. I mean, what was that about? I don't know why Ace should fall for this particular bloke but Why has the Doctor decided to retire? I have no idea. I Robin seems quite a decent sort and pretty dishy.

suppose, ideally, this story would've come after some Another personal prejudice - this time given to Trevithick momentous, life-changing experience but it doesn't. There's - is the preference for the wintry seasons. From the 'burnt a gap there, should anyone want to pop a story in! Anyway, turnip smells of Hallowe'en' (we call them turnips where I here's the Seventh Doctor and Ace as I felt I'd like to see come from, although they're really swedes and we used to them. The Doctor's savage response to being called hollow them out and put candles in them. Pumpkins were Professor was simply a reflection of my own prejudice. I just only ever glimpsed in American films. Eeh, we were poor hated that affectation. The Doctor himself is feeling but we were 'appy) to Christmas. I couldn't bear the nostalgic, tying in with the theme of the whole adventure, summer. Now I'm older, I love the summer and, though missing his home, or whatever home represents.

there's nothing quite like the smoky loveliness of October I created the Tertiary Console Room because I thought it'd and the magic of Christmas, I find I absolutely dread the be lovely to have one and I was very fan-boyish about the dark winter evenings. Maybe I'm afraid there's something TARDIS in those days. Christopher H Bidmead had sort of out there...

created TARDIS lore overnight and the notion of an infinite I had a shot-silk blue dressing gown at the time, which is ship slightly obsessed me. I remember loving the idea of a why the Doctor's wearing one and I notice how much Ace's patch of open ground inside the TARDIS and I think there's 'tape-deck' now leaps out as a period touch! Tape-deck!

a beach in another of my books. I wanted the third control Imagine!

room to be like a church with the console like an altar and I'm sure I hoped it would be used by every other writer on Chapter Three the New Adventures - which it wasn't! I have a feeling it might've turned up in one.

I remember reading in a review somewhere that the Betty Yeadon's brother being eaten by sharks is directly characters of Winstanley and Hawthorne were there as a inspired by the famous Indianapolis speech in Jaws - a film I tribute to The Daemons. This isn't quite true. Although the absolutely adore. I suppose Alf is more likely to have been cut-off village is a Doctor Who staple and I adored The on an Atlantic convoy than in the Pacific but there are no Daemons, the names were certainly unconsciously man-eating sharks in the Atlantic...

borrowed. At that time, I hadn't seen the story in years and named the Abbot after my friend's dad! I suppose 308 309.

Hawthorne was p.r.i.c.kly so that's why he ended up with that Nigel Kneale, of course, invented the concept but it never name, although Damaris Hayman may have been, as I say, loses its thrill or its spookiness. So here it is again, couched lurking at the back of my mind.

in my best cod-17th Century...

The Doctor's memory of falling off the radio telescope couldn't really be avoided. I mean, you would think about it, Chapter Four wouldn't you? I've always had a soft spot for Logopolis. So baffling but so strange. And with a funeral quality unlike Ah, the Civil War! So good, we actually had three of 'em.

any other story. In fact, a reference to it recurred in my new No mystery here. Always been faintly obsessed by this TV episode The Idiot's Lantern but it was cut at a late stage.

period and eventually got to do a full Troughton historical Shame!

on the subject. I decided to dramatise the incident in the A lot of my own Christmas memories are again rolled out manner of a flashback. It was a chance to write some here. I have such sharp recollections of those wonderful 'period' dialogue but also a little snapshot of summer times, the smells, the colours, the sheer excitement. The light amongst all the wintriness. It's quite a nice section, I think that snow gives off through curtains, the cold lino in the and the battle's well-drawn. Did I put Captain Jackson in kitchen, trying to resist the temptation to tear open all the The Roundheads? Can't remember. I should have done!

presents at once. My love affair with Christmas goes back Phillip Jackson's name leaps out at me because the actor forever. I was always a nostalgic child. My Mam used to say of that name is now a friend of mine. Also, Sir Brian de Fillis I had an old soul. I remember desperately wanting to leave is named after someone I knew in Leeds and lost touch with school so that we could have a reunion! It's a strange who's now written a script about f.a.n.n.y Cradock in which affliction and I had it bad. I always wanted to be older, more I'm about to play her husband. How strange. How nostalgic!

experienced. Now I am - oh to be nineteen again! Haha.

It's here that the horror starts to kick in too. More than The fate of Professor Quaterma.s.s's daughter and anything, I wanted Nightshade to be a horror story and granddaughter are given to Trevithick here as a nod. I poor Sir Harry being dissolved by the terrible things that supposed, naively, that only a few people would pick up on have taken on the shape of his dead children is as grim as these references but then I was young and little steeped in my Doctor Who gets.

the madness of fandom! In a similar way, the reference to the Doctor outside the Cyber tombs speaking to Victoria Chapter Five about his family was a nice little reference. Little did I know that the story would be found soon after so that the Dr Hawthorne's racism grew out of the setting, I think, in reference looked almost trendy.

that '68 was the year of Enoch Powell's infamous Rivers of Still on a Quaterma.s.s theme, I've always loved the notion Blood speech. I thought it would be interesting to have a of sinister happenings being discovered in ancient texts.

British Asian at the centre of the story and highlight both 310 311.

the naked nastiness of Hawthorne's generation alongside Chapter Six the casual racism of someone like Mrs Crithin who considers Vijay nice enough but still a 'darkie'. Overall, it Things are getting very bitty around here, it seems to me. I now all seems very right on and straining to be PC but, hey, suppose they're like cut away scenes which probably means this was the Nineties!

I was thinking more in terms of screenplay than book at this Hawthorne's fear of the Tar Baby seemed like a neat idea point! Very naughty.

and it's a fear I shared as a child, along with wolves, the Robin very selfishly deserts his stepmother as he thinks Child Catcher and the little Troll from Terror of the Autons.

he's on a promise with Ace. Although this looks terribly Little things, actually, have always given me the creeps.

heartless, I think we all are from time to time. And she is I remember doing a lot of reading in order to find the only his stepmother...

right star to explode. Bellatrix seemed the ideal candidate I'm not quite sure why the Sentience makes people rot but but I made it a double star so that I could blow up without it's good for description you have to admit. To this day, I wiping it out all together! No-one seems ever to have can rattle off horrific descriptions of putrefaction and noticed the extra one.

monstrousness without pausing for breath. It's the I cringe slightly at the Doctor ordering ginger beer from straighter stuff that takes time. I like 'a wide green stain like the pub. It seems a bit neutered now. Certainly, I think fruit mould'.

there's nothing wrong with the Doctor having a pint and, There's some more description of my old Christmases given the mood he's in, you'd forgive him if he got roundly here - particularly waiting at the top of the stairs for the bladdered.

parental say-so - this time given to the character of Medway.

A primary school teacher of mine had cut out "- agile I suppose I've always been nostalgic for a Christmas I never Wit" from a cardboard box, just as in the story, and pinned quite had and hate the idea of it becoming about "slippers it to his door. I suppose it's the sort of thing you do when and hankies" rather than magical things but that's inevitable.

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 pa.s.ses 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 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 t.i.tanic 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 Christ. In Sunday It's based on a real incident where a telegram was sent but School pictures he had these horrible, wet, brown eyes - like failed to arrive and the poor widow only realised her a King Charles spaniel - and it gave me the creeps.yearning for home and better times that lies at the heart of the Doctor's problem.

This chapter is mostly the monster chasing Trevithick and And now here comes The Sentience! So called, I suppose I wrote it straight through in one, excited burst and hardly because it felt a bit like the Intelligence and Doctor Who changed a word. I went home to write most of the book and creatures always need a name like that. It's the first of the I can vividly remember sitting in the spare room, bashing non-corporeal floaty aliens with which I seem to have an away on my Amstrad, the green screen flaring, the dot-obsession. I just can't seem to shake them though I promise matrix printer taking forever but just being so inspired and one day to do a 'once-proud' militaristic race based on, oh excited by this section. I went downstairs for my tea with let's say, hedgehogs. Billy Coote becomes a medium for the the sense of a good day's work done! There's more Jaws, of floaty alien just as Gwyneth does in The Unquiet Dead. As course, in the exploding fire-extinguisher.

Alan Bennett says, we've only got a few beans in our tin to I once read somewhere that Trevithick stops at Level 18 rattle!

(of a possible 27) in the lift because this story would have The sequence where Trevithick dreams of the monster been part of Season 27 and that I was well known for bursting through the window as he watches TV was written thinking that the programme went downhill after Season 18!

to make sense of the cover! It bothered me that there was no This isn't true, although I used to be very fond of Season 18 such scene in the book. I doubt I'd be so literal these days.

(not so much these days).

And Ace has Nitro-Nine A in her rucksack. Takes you back, doesn't it?

Of course, the Doctor seeing the ghostly Susan would've had more impact if it hadn't been for The Five Doctors, but I wanted to do something new with the Sentience so that you can't have everything! I've always been intrigued by it wasn't just another alien invader. I think Doctor Who Susan. I used to think, in a very fan-boyish way, that she could stand a few more Earth-based menaces but I hit upon just called the Doctor grandfather but it's clear that he's just the idea that the thing actually predated the Earth. That in that. So just who is Mrs Who?

some, thankfully unfathomable way, the Earth had formed I wanted to use the flavour of that first, heart-breaking around it and it was stuck, like a living fossil or, as goodbye in The Dalek Invasion of Earth to show that the Trevithick describes it, like the letters in Blackpool rock.

Doctor had never quite got over Susan and that all his I think I had the Doctor dislocate his shoulder because I subsequent companions have, in some way, been an attempt thought he needed roughing up a bit. He's suffering to get back to that first relationship. So Susan symbolises the throughout the story and it added to the grit to see him in real pain. Besides, this wasn't long after we'd seen James 316 317.

Bond bleed in the terrific and underrated Licence to Kill so I And now the church is overrun by gas-masked zombies, thought it high time the Doctor got a bit of a kicking.

one of which, when unmasked has a totally blank face!

Interesting that, down in the cave, there's a lull followed Could be on the telly now, eh?

by Trevithick saying "It's so cold," just as d.i.c.kens does in I find the amount of exposition here a bit troubling and The Unquiet Dead. This is a ghost story staple, I suppose pat. Everything is explained by the Sentience, even down to and just something I absorbed into my DNA years ago. All using Billy Coote as a medium and discovering through him my stories are ghost stories in a way.

the possibilities of the Earth. But the idea of sending it to In the original plan, it was Vijay who died, not Holly, but feed off the exploding star is very neat as is the very I remember becoming much fonder of his character as I Quaterma.s.s-esque idea of the Civil War explosion being scribbled away so it was poor Holly who got it in the neck. I caused by the Sentience going backwards in Time to when quite like the idea that some of the Sentience's victims the star first went nova. On reflection, it would've been almost welcomed it as a release from their grief.

much neater if it had been that star that had somehow Reading this again, I find Trevithick's last stand rather collapsed on itself and become a Black Hole rather than moving. The old man becoming the TV hero he always having the Sentience roam around a bit, snacking, before wanted to be. I find any goodbye unbearably sad. I saw in a getting snared!

doc.u.mentary the other day that Chaplin's brother used to The Stone Roses reference leaps out a bit, doesn't it? I cry at every sunset. I know that feeling. I cried when think it was my attempt at being hip and it's as Magpie ended. I cry when Blue Peter presenters leave, even uncomfortable to read as I felt doing it! Mind you, Ian if I've never seen them. On that subject, I remember tuning Brown was very s.e.xy in those days before he turned into an in a few years ago when, quite by chance they announced, emaciated ape.

"for older viewers", that Goldie had died. I fell to bits. And And now the ending. The Doctor tricks Ace and never don't get me started on The Green Death...returnsCrook Marsham.Undernormal "Why do people have to keep dying?" opines Vijay. Well, circ.u.mstances, it says here, he would have done but 'there it's grim up North.

was more at stake now'. What does that mean? I don't know!

I only know that I was told it would be wrapped up in the Chapter Eleven and Epilogue next book and I remember picking up Love and War only to find there was no reference to it whatsoever! No fault of In the church, Loc.o.c.k uses tattered military colours to Paul Cornell's, of course, but I was just baffled. How could spear the WWI ghost. This was directly inspired by the she forgive the Doctor so easily? Was it ever referred to Durham Light Infantry chapel in Durham Cathedral where again? Answers on a postcard please.

such colours hang, quietly mouldering, to this day. I've So that was my first Doctor Who book. I was thrilled at always found them sinister.

how it was received and then found myself unable to come 318 319.

up with another. Virgin turned down a curious s.p.a.ce opera called The Black Death and a ma.s.sively over-elaborate Jack the Ripper story called The Maniac's Tear before finally letting me have another shot with St Anthony's Fire - for which I have no fondness whatsoever. I remain deeply grateful to Peter Darvill-Evans for giving my first break and for being so encouraging. I still think it's the best original idea I've had.

It's been very nice to revisit Nightshade but nostalgia, as you should know by now, is dangerous. I promise not to think of it again until I'm in an old people's home. If you happen to be sitting next to me and I start banging on about the old days, just keep your eyes peeled. There might be something emerging from the shadows. Something huge...

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