Doctor Who_ The Dying Days Part 37

Look again the Doctor says he's twelve hundred years old. This book clearly happens after the BBC Eighth Doctor books (and still, even after the Earth arc, in the future of the current EDAs although the Doctor remembers The Dying Days in The Scarlet Empress). You can have your EDAs, but it'll end like this.

I realised afterwards that this is exactly what happens in the last episode of Star Cops, where Nathan dies. The t.i.tle of that episode? Little Green Men there's this discovery on Mars, you see, and it's uncovered this conspiracy to keep the existence of Martians secret...

Chapter 12.The No Doctors Seven up ...and it was all a horrible dream, and the Doctor was alive after all. The seventh Doctor had dominated the New Adventures, and it would have been odd for him not to show up in the last book.

Dear diary The narrative switches so that Benny is the main character, and we switch to diary entries technically, extracts from her memoirs. We knew Benny was going to survive this book, because Virgin had announced she was spinning off. Her memoirs are, it seems, written when she's an old woman. Phyl ida Law, perhaps, instead of Emma Thompson.

Half-human s.h.i.+eld One theory I've always had, one you see in al my Who books, is that the Doctor emits a sort of s.h.i.+eld that protects his companions when he's around. Not a real s.h.i.+eld, but the narrative rules twist around him to his advantage. In Just War, for example, when a squad of n.a.z.is fire machine guns at him and Chris, they all miss.

But Benny, separated from the Doctor, is easily captured and tortured. The Doctor can just get away with things that ordinary people can't. But with the Doctor dead, we're back in the realm of ordinary things people have to eat and wash. They need to look out for themselves.

Staines Staines is a loyal servant of the crown, even if a Martian is wearing it.

Benny's lecture Bernice's lecture refers to what we know about the Martians from the books and TV episodes featuring the Ice Warriors. By the time of Transit, the human race is as technical y advanced as the Martians, and wins a ruthless, genocidal war against them on Mars.

In a change to our scheduled programme...

The BBC often cancel programmes that have a vague pa.s.sing resemblance to contemporary tragic news stories.

The Fugitive, for example, always gets postponed when there's a train crash, because there's a train crash in it.

So they've cancelled the X Files the week of the Martian invasion.

Lex Lex resurfaces after vanis.h.i.+ng from UNIT HQ shortly after the Martian invasion. See? I hadn't forgotten him.

Chapter 13.Earth Attacks!

Going for a Burton The chapter t.i.tle, obviously, is a reference to Mars Attacks!

Tape The fact the tape is NTSC is a clue to its origin.

Uruk 'From the streets of ancient Uruk to the common room of a twenty-sixth century university' is another meta reference the very first New Adventure, Timewyrm:Genesys was set in ancient Uruk, the last one ends... well, we're not there yet, so I'd better not say.

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A ripe old age The history book with the scary eye is, of course, A History of the Universe, another one of my books, which was written before The Dying Days, so doesn't refer to it. I seem to set the date of my death here but we don't know what year Benny is writing from. As the current Big Finish audios are set in 2601, and Benny's not written her memoirs yet, it looks like I'm going to make it to at least ninety-nine years old.

Secret silos I quite like the idea that the book starts with humans talking about terraforming Mars, and ends with the Martians attempting to Aresform (A NASA term referring to the G.o.d Ares) Earth. This section, in retrospect, draws from Quaterma.s.s II, with its secret silos full of alien nasty stuff.

Retroactive continuity The 'perhaps I'll just be retconned' line proved to be a firm favourite in internet discussion of the book. It's another meta reference 'retconning' is short for 'retroactive continuity', briefly 'going back and changing things so they all fit together better or make more sense'. It's a term originally used in comics fandom, and Doctor Who fans retcon, for example, how the Brigadier retires from UNIT in 1976 according to one story, but was only made head of UNIT 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 gla.s.s 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 mothers.h.i.+p 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 subst.i.tute'. 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 mothers.h.i.+p 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 of himself come from various books including, for the first time, the forthcoming BBC 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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.h.i.+p. 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 t.i.tle 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, I know, but I love this last chapter, I think absolutely every word falls in the right place and has exactly the right weight. I'm very self-critical there's one whole Who book of mine that I wouldn't have published, if I'd had the choice. But I think this chapter's the best thing I've ever written.

Pastiche The first section of the book is meant to be a pastiche of Paul Cornell's writing style, as a lead in to the next New Adventure, written by him, Oh No It Isn't. It's meant to quickly sketch in the set up of the Benny books for people, so, hopeful y, they'd buy next month's book, not just leave with the Doctor. In the end, though, if I could write like Paul Cornel , I'd write like Paul Cornell, and saying 'wonderful' a lot isn't the same thing.

Robarman I'd first used the 'robarman' joke in Cold Fusion.

Bicyles Benny's bicycle was, at one point, meant to be something she used in al her books possibly a nod to Emma Thompson's character in the Arnie film Junior, a professor who got around campus on a bike. In the event, I think it was only mentioned in Oh No It Isn't.

Swearing 'She used the F-word because she could'. The BBC wouldn't let the New Adventures use swear words, as there had been complaints after a few early books had done so (most memorably Iceberg, which began with the memorable phrase ' "F-you, mate! Just f-you you f-ing w-ker". There was no doubting the strength of feeling in the biker. He was angry.', the sheer gratuitous nature and psychological insight of which caused much merriment among the NA writers). I had, of course, wanted Benny to use the F-word, not merely al ude to it, but even three pages from the end, no swearing was allowed.

No hanky panky in the TARDIS In the TV Movie, the Doctor had kissed Grace, and some of the fanboys weren't happy about that at all. The Doctor doesn't kiss girls. Note that he doesn't in this scene, either. Exactly what Benny and the Doctor do or don't get up to must remain a mystery (and BBCi have decided against letting Allan Bednar draw a picture of it!).

Alternative endings There was original y a middle section to this chapter, that went through four versions, three of which are available elsewhere online, if you look hard enough, the fourth of which was so awful I deleted it, and I don't have a copy of.

The basic plot was 'the last Dalek story' a future Doctor giving a eulogy for the Daleks, who he'd just utterly defeated. The idea was to produce a real capstone for the Doctor Who legend once the Daleks were beaten, the Doctor announced his retirement.

Two versions had a Doctor played by Ian Richardson, a third had an ancient, wizened Paul McGann, the fourth had Chris Cwej doing the honours. Rebecca Levene didn't like any of the versions, and insisted the scene got cut, leading to the only real argument we ever had in the five books and two years on Emmerdale we've worked together. Five years on, the most annoying thing is admitting that Bex was right.

General comments And so it ends... ful y aware that people would be flicking to the end to see if the Doctor was alive, the last section is a memorial service in Westminster Abbey with no Doctor to be seen. Lethbridge-Stewart's musings on his career are the last meta reference of the book, representing the thoughts of the people at Virgin. The last line's nicely understated, I think you have to re-read it before you spot that a piece of the Doctor Who universe has changed.

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