Doctor Who_ The Dying Days Part 1

The Dying Days.

Written by Lance Parkin.

Introduction - Preface by Lance Parkin

Conservative choices.

Fans in high places.

I've heard the same story from three independent sources. That doesn't make it true, but it makes it true enough that a newspaper editor would be more than happy to run it.

On May 1st 1997, on the night of the General Election, Tim Collins, newly-elected Conservative MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale and Doctor Who fan (he'd had letters published in fanzine DWB) sat in his local town hall, oblivious to the activity around him, frantically reading The Dying Days, 'because he wanted to have read all the New Adventures under a Tory administration'.

Over the years I've talked to hundreds of people, nearly all of whom remember exactly where they were when they finished it, some of whom have admitted to bunking off school or work to do so. I think, though, that Tim Collins wins the prize for best Dying Days related anecdote. He is now the shadow cabinet office spokesman and vice-chairman of the Conservative party, and he's on Sky News as I type this, calling for Stephen Byers' resignation.

Licence revoked.

The end of the New Adventures.

So ... the basics. The Dying Days was the sixty-first and last New Adventure published by Virgin Publishing.

Virgin's licence to produce Doctor Who novels hadn't been extended because the year before the TV Movie starring Paul McGann had come out, and the BBC were keen to bring the books in-house.

At first, this was because there was a prospect of a TV series but even when that evaporated, the BBC recognised that Virgin had identified a niche in the market, and the books were nicely profitable (and just as important in an unpredictable market, had very steady sales).

The Dying Days was the first original novel to feature the eighth Doctor. It was original y published in April 1997.

Selling fast.

Out of stock before release.

Because it was both a 'last' and a 'first' book, it sold very quickly. The Dying Days was out of stock before the official release date. That's led to reports and persistent rumours that the book had a lower print run.

No, no, a thousand times no: the book completely sold out, so I know exactly what the print run was. The irony is that it's easily my biggest-selling Who novel it sold more than Just War, Cold Fusion, The Infinity Doctors and Father Time. And it's ironic, because for five years, now, second hand copies of The Dying Days have changed hands for a small fortune.

They've sold on eBay for over fifty times the cover price. There are plenty of copies out there, but the people that have copies cling on to them. So it's rare that one comes up for sale.

Something special.

Creating an 'event' book.

I didn't expect that when I got commissioned, but I knew it would be an 'event' book, and it had to be special. The editor of the range, Rebecca Levene (who for reasons best known to herself prefers to be called 'Bex'), and I thrashed out some of the details.

With almost every Who book, the editor will give the author a couple of things that 'have to happen' usually, these aren't major plot points, just things to bind the range together. When I wrote Just War, I had to put a couple of hints in foreshadowing the death of Roz, one of the Doctor's companions. With Father Time, there were elements of the 'Earth arc', like the physical state of the TARDIS.

3.The Dying Days was, essential y, a long list of 'requirements'. It had to both be a fitting end to a range and the pointer to a new future... futures, actually there was a new Doctor, but Virgin were continuing to publish books featuring Benny, and the book had to act as a showcase, maybe even an introduction, to her.

A view to a kill Would the Doctor survive?

At heart, the book was designed as an affirmation of what Doctor Who was in the mid-nineties. A hymn to the fact that the books had moved things on, that we'd left Doctor Who in a better state than we found it.

It was also a unique thing a 'last Doctor Who' story. A chance, like Dark Knight Returns or the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Al Good Things, to put a capstone on the legend. And I could kill him. This was one book where the Doctor might not make it.

Movie madness Shouting in a cupboard Bex and I were also reacting against the TV Movie. I love the McGann movie. Bex was far less impressed. Both of us agreed it was a pretty poor 'pilot', in the sense that it didn't real y get across the essence of Doctor Who. But I saw some great ideas in there and I loved the visuals, the sense of scale, Doctor Who in the style of Coppola's Dracula.

What it was missing could be summed up in one word: monsters. The threat was too abstract, the scale of the final confrontation two people shouting at each other in one of the bigger TARDIS cupboards was just not grand enough. This book was going to end in a pitched battle man versus an army of monsters. And the Doctor would get to demonstrate steel in the TV Movie, the Doctor's a pa.s.sive figure, someone who's tied up, follows Grace around. You see the velvet glove, and it's a lovely glove, but there's no steel inside it.

Bex and I had a phone conversation where we agreed that the TV Movie should have been that typical Doctor Who plot: monsters invading contemporary London, using subtle ways at first, then an all out invasion. Then it struck me... in sixty previous New Adventures, that had never happened. Alien invasions, contemporary stories...

but never the two together.

Bex didn't believe it "No Future... that was set in the seventies", "Damaged Goods... no, wait, that was the eighties". We'd been banging on about how the TV Movie should have done something that the books had never done. And we agreed there and then that was going to be our story.

Origins Pertwee meets Tom Clancy By happy chance, I'd been toying with a Pertwee Missing Adventure proposal a couple of years before, while I'd been waiting to hear back about Just War. The basic concept Pertwee UNIT story as Tom Clancy technothriller was just so fundamentally wrong that I could never get the book to work, but I did have a usable plot.

The book was called Cold War, and featured the Ice Warriors. In one page synopsis form, it's almost exactly the same as The Dying Days, although it would have been a completely different book.

The Dying Days is also about the end of the New Adventures era, and the pa.s.sing on of the torch. In 1995, just after I'd been commissioned to write Just War, I joked that we were in 'the Rebecca Levene Golden Age of Doctor Who'.

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.

4.[image]

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 t.i.tles 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 t.i.tle took longer than the plot. All we could come up with were joke t.i.tles: 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 t.i.tle was, in the theme tune The Dying Days.

Bex and I had got a story and we had a t.i.tle. 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 THE DYING DAYS

Chapter 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 sending them something.

She only wrote eight hundred words, none of them particularly enthralling ones, but managed to avoid thinking about Jason all day. Mid-afternoon she did catch herself congratulating herself that she hadn't been thinking about him, but concluded after some soul-searching that that didn't count.

When the Doctor hadn't turned up as arranged the next morning, Benny decided to spend a couple of weeks here in Allen Road before trying to get a lift anywhere else. She had quickly settled into a routine. At half-seven she'd shuffle across to the other side of the double bed in the main guest bedroom, and then shake herself awake when she realised that her husband wasn't there. Every night for thirty-three years - with only about a dozen exceptions before she was married - she'd slept in a single bed, by herself, so why did she feel so lonely every morning now when she woke up and there was no-one lying alongside her? She toyed with the third finger of her left hand. For thirty-three years she'd not worn a ring on that or any other finger, why did she now miss the weight of one that she'd only worn for a few months? Musing on this kept her occupied for a couple of minutes, before she decided that angst wasn't her thing, and she really ought to get on with her life.

So, she'd get up, realise how chilly it was, pul her robe on and go down to the kitchen. The house was always a little too cold, regardless of the season of year or the time of day. So, when she'd prepared breakfast, she'd lay the pot and plates on the tray with The Haywain on it and take it outside into the sunshine. The next half-hour or so would be spent leisurely munching triangles of wholemeal toast and washing them down with the finest Sumatran coffee.

On the second day, she'd pul ed an old portable television from one of the guest bedrooms and set it down on the garden table. Locating an extension lead long enough to reach the socket in the kitchen had proved a little more tricky, but there had been one on a workbench in the garage. Most of the time she kept the sound down, content to glance across every so often at the flickering, two-dimensional, monochrome images of the world outside her walled garden. First thing in the morning, though, she'd twist the volume control up and listen to the headlines.

6.Today, an Irishman with a square head was sitting on a sofa with a grinning young woman. They were discussing the Prime Minister's visit to Washington, and there was much talk of 'forging links' and 'common ground'. Benny tried a little quiz on herself, but couldn't remember the name of either the Prime Minister or the President. Both countries had had an election in the last nine months, so it was tricky. It wasn't important.

She twisted the dial and managed to find another channel amidst the static.

' -fast News, coming live from the National s.p.a.ce Museum in London. I'm Justin Webb. Today, Tuesday May the Sixth, Britain returns to Mars. It is over twenty years since the first missions to the Red Planet. We'll be asking former Minister of Science Lord Greyhaven whether this is the beginning of a new life on the final frontier or just an expensive waste of money. But first, here's Juliet with the headlines.' The picture switched to another chirpy blonde. 'Good Morning. The headlines today: at a speech from the White House lawn, the Prime Minister has - '

Benny turned the television off. A little aurora danced on the screen for a couple of seconds as the tube cooled down. It was eight o'clock, time to check the post. She stood, and made her way down to the lawn. In her bare feet, walking down the gravel driveway was out of the question. Cutting across the garden was also a shorter route. She stepped across the lawn, the long gra.s.s stil wet with dew. She made her way past the fountain, a piece of Victoriana that, like the tall greenhouse at the side of the house, had fallen into disrepair at some point over the last century. Rainwater had collected, and yesterday she'd seen tadpoles swimming about in there. There was no sign of them today.

Benny carried on walking, past the tulips, through the shrubbery and towards the gate. Every so often she'd look back at the house, hoping to see the TARDIS arrive.

The statue of the girl was still by the gates, hidden among the leylandia. It was life-size and dull grey, the colour of concrete. The subject was fifteen, at most, with hair that fell down her back. She wore a miniskirt and cropped jacket, one of her high heels was missing. Her face was set forever in an expression of terror, her arms were held out in front of her as if she was trying to keep something away. Benny didn't know which thought was more disturbing: that the Doctor had chosen to put the figure in his garden for aesthetic reasons or that it hadn't always been a statue. She certainly had no intention of asking him about it.

Benny reached the iron gates and checked the postbox. The first thing she found was The Mirror, which she stil hadn't got around to cancelling. Eschewing both the state visit to Washington and the Mars landing, the front page had decided instead to reveal that a voluptuous young woman (pictured in a white basque and stockings) was having s.e.x with someone famous that Benny had never heard of. This, the headline declared, was a 'world exclusive'. A quick flick through the paper revealed that many other people were doing much the same. A couple of years ago, Benny would have tutted at the demeaning and trivial nature of the stories, now she just felt the faint ache of jealousy, the belief that all the young people were off somewhere else having more fun than her.

Behind the paper there was a single letter. Benny frowned when she saw it. The envelope was dul grey, it was the type used for official communications in her native twenty-sixth century. Before she picked it up, she checked around but there was no sign of who had delivered it. There wasn't a stamp, there wasn't a postmark, there wasn't a corporate or military logo. The only thing printed on it was her name: PROFESSOR BERNICE SURPRISE KANE-SUMMERFIELD. She looked at it for a moment. 39 characters, not including the hyphen. Opening the envelope and was rather shocked to find that it offered her the chair of archaeology at St Oscar's University on the planet Dellah. There was a reasonable wage, a rather generous research grant and free board and accommodation. The Vice-Chancellor looked forward to meeting someone of her repute. Benny read the letter again to make sure she wasn't missing some vital point, or perhaps the punchline. She had been given to understand that to get that sort of job, one had to apply for it. The date on the letter was March 2593 - almost a quarter of a century after her own time.

Somewhat preoccupied, she tucked the letter and the newspaper underneath her arm and set off. The journey back up to the house always seemed to take longer than the trip down. As it sat on the green gra.s.s below the clear blue sky, the house looked like a natural feature rather than anything man-made. Simultaneously it looked well-tended and half in ruin. It seemed quite small from the gates, but inside it was a labyrinth of empty bedrooms and dusty storerooms. She'd been dropping in for years, but Benny still couldn't think of the place as a home. The house had stood for centuries, but no-one had ever lived there for more than a couple of weeks at a time. It had compensated: filled its rooms and landings with the creak of floorboards and the rattling of pipes. Lying awake in the middle of the night, something she did every so often, Benny always got the impression that there were other people staying in the house. Not ghosts, or burglars: nice people.

By the time she returned to the house, Benny concluded that the Doctor wasn't turn up for at least another day, and had reconciled herself to another day of dozing in the sun. Perhaps later she'd try her hand at sketching: the orchard about a hundred yards to the west looked like a good prospect: recent storms had brought down a couple of the trees, and made the woodland look terribly dramatic. There was a tin of pencils and a drawing pad in the living room. It would give her some more time to think about the letter from Dellah.

7.When she stepped back onto the flagstones, Benny realised how dirty her feet had become. She put The Mirror down on the garden table, propping it underneath the breakfast tray to stop it blowing away. Then she stepped inside to take a quick shower. The house was vast, but there was only one bathroom, which had been the cause of friction between the Doctor's travelling companions on more than one occasion. She remembered the last time: Roz had stood at the bathroom door, demanding to know how Chris could possibly take an hour and a half in there every day. Benny and ... Jason had ... they had both been woken by the sound of raised voices. They lay curled around each other in the upstairs bedroom, able to listen only to Roz's side of the argument, trying to stop each other giggling, but both their bodies convulsed with laughter at every terse insult that drifted up the short flight of stairs. They'd been pressed so close together that in the end they hadn't been able to distinguish which of them was laughing at which remark. They'd had to part, exhausted, and for the rest of the day, every time they made eye contact they couldn't help sn.i.g.g.e.ring. Benny found herself smiling, even now, despite al that had happened since.

Another source of tension was the minuscule amount of hot water the house would allow every day. It was possible to get more, Benny had discovered, although you had to slap the bra.s.s tank that sat on the landing a couple of times to get it. When you heard the glup deep below in the bowels of the house, you'd know that you'd done it. It was the sort of valuable-trivial information that you kept from your housemates, and she'd not told anyone else about the trick. The bra.s.s piping, like the electrical wiring, was a little haphazard. Knowing the house's owner, Benny could well imagine how the plumbing had been installed a bit at a time over the centuries, on the basis of need, from junk the Doctor had found in the garage.

She reached the landing with the bathroom on it. A quick check of the tank revealed that it was just about full.

Benny stepped into the bathroom, leaving the door open, because she could. Experience had taught her to run the shower for a minute or so before stepping into it, so she stood on the cold black tiles waiting for the rattling pipes to catch up with her. Hot water soon began gushing out. She slipped out of her robe and into the shower stall. After getting used to the temperature, she leant against the tiled wall, trying to prop herself upright while she soaped her foot. By the time she had the other one clean, Benny had decided to wash her hair.

She stood for a moment, facing out onto the landing, letting the water splash across her shoulder blades and run down her back. Without needing to look, she bent down and reached back until her hand located the tiny phial of herbal shampoo slotted into the shower rack. Benny unscrewed the top and ma.s.saged it into her scalp, working it up into a lather. Foamy bubbles ran down her neck and splattered to the floor of the shower unit.

The peace of the morning outside was disturbed by an unearthly wheezing, groaning sound that drifted through the half-open bathroom window.

'Isn't it always the way?' Benny observed, ducking her head under the water to get the worst of the suds off. You couldn't even rely on the Doctor to be unreliable.

She twisted the shower off, and scooped up her robe from the bathroom floor, pulling it around herself as she bounded down the stairs. Through the kitchen window it was possible to glimpse a solid blue shape outside on the patio, right by the garden table. Benny hurried out through the kitchen door, leaving a trail of wet footprints.

The TARDIS stood there as if it had never gone away. The light on the top was stil flashing, and the grounds of the house were echoing with the sound of its arrival. Benny stood, looking up at it for a couple of seconds, soapy water dripping from her fringe.

The door opened.

'Sorry I'm late. You wouldn't believe the state of the traffic around the Horsehead Nebula.' The man who was framed in the doorway looked about her age, in his mid-thirties, perhaps a little bit older. He was about her height.

He wore a velvet frock coat that was probably a very dark green, but which might have been a plain-chocolate brown. Either way, it came down to his knees and underneath it was a wing col ar shirt, complete with grey cravat and a shiny patterned waistcoat. He was wearing baggy trousers, tan ones that had never even considered the idea of having a seam. His long face was angular, with a jutting chin and aristocratic nose, but it was softened by a ma.s.s of dark brown hair that swept back down all the way from his high forehead to his broad shoulders. He had a full mouth and sad blue eyes.

'Doctor?' she asked, unsure why.

'Bernice!' he jumped forward, a broad open-mouthed grin on his face, and tried to hug her.

Benny took a step back, almost tripping over one of the garden chairs. The stranger pulled himself back. 'What's the matter?' he asked. His voice had a hint of the Doctor's Celtic lilt, but only a trace.

'What do you mean "what's the matter"? What do you think?'

The man paused, stroking his top lip as he considered the question. 'I've changed my appearance since we last met,' he concluded, with a faraway look on his face.

'Wel spotted. You've also started to go in for hugging. You know I don't like that.'

8.He fixed her with those eyes of his. 'We were alone in your tent, on a planet cal ed Heaven. The Hoothi had been destroyed. You were packing, ready to leave. There was a j.a.panese fan in your hand. I asked if we could be friends and put my hand on your shoulder. You asked me not to touch you. You said that I was very tactile, but you weren't and that you'd prefer it if I didn't.'

The Doctor put a hand on Benny's shoulder.

'I am the Doctor, Bernice. Your friend.'

She hugged him.

'You're wet,' he whispered softly.

'I was in the shower. Where's Chris?'

'Gallifrey. He stayed behind, but he said he might pop around to see you. A lot has happened to me since then.'

Benny yawned. 'It's been pretty d.a.m.n action-packed here, too, I can tell you. I'll get dressed and tell you about it.'