#61
The Dying Days
By Lance Parkin
I’ve said a lot about Virgin losing the Doctor Who license but, forgive me, there’s a little more in the tank. They had achieved so much with it already. Done so much with the Seventh Doctor, with Ace and with new characters created right here on the page. Then they stuck the landing as if it was always meant to end here, leading gracefully towards the TV Movie and books written by somebody else – and not before giving a blockbusting Answer to the Doctor’s Question. All that, only to get as far as the doorway and turn, Columbo-like, to say “One more thing.” And then drop the first new Eighth Doctor novel, beating BBC Books by two months.
You absolute badasses.
It would be wrong to think of The Dying Days as merely an encore, although it certainly is one, affectionately tipping its hat to what had been created since the first (sometimes wobbly) steps of the Timewyrm saga. And it doesn’t stop at the book stuff. The Eighth Doctor makes it a fannish book by default, not to mention adding the fan-favourite Ice Warriors, the Brigadier and oh go on then, Bessie as well. There’s a host of references to old Who episodes, such as a plot that revolves around Martians and spaceflight (meaning we must first rule out The Ambassadors Of Death); the UK space centre as seen in The Android Invasion; Brigadier Bambera, armed with her catchphrase “Shame!” and her off-screen husband Ancelyn; Colonel Crichton, seen in The Five Doctors and Virgin’s Downtime; and assorted alien races mentioned by the Brigadier as having invaded while the Doctor was AWOL. The air of geekdom expands even further at points, with Bernard Quatermass showing up to argue with Patrick Moore, and numerous references to The X-Files (including a cameo from Gillian Anderson, as Bernice meets an amusingly 1997 roll-call of celebs that also includes Chris Evans, Princess Diana and Mystic Meg). The plot not-so-unconsciously recalls The War Of The Worlds, especially with an astronomer named Ogilvy around.
Inevitably – justifiably – there are nods to the New Adventures as well. Page 1 has the opening salvo “Kadiatu and aM!xitsa had dropped [Bernice] off at the Doctor’s house on Allen Road” (!), and much of the action occupies that mysterious New Adventures home base. Bernice is at one point mistaken for Emma Thompson – a visual reference for her character – and she picks up a pair of hoop earrings, just like old times. The Virgin book Who Killed Kennedy was already sort of in-universe canon, but that’s fully rubber stamped here as the head of MI5 laments that book’s incendiary revelations, name-checks both authors (including the real one) and orders the publishers to be raided and closed – providing, if you want, a canon explanation for why the range ended. Later, just showing off now, Bernice’s diary says “I’m copying the next bit from a history book, a fat blue paperback with a scary eye on the cover”. So A History Of The Universe by Lance Parkin, author of, let me see… The Dying Days. If it were any more self-aware you’d turn the page to find the Eye Of Sauron bellowing I SEE YOU.
If you can do this stuff well, then bon voyage. And The Dying Days does it very well, because all of that’s really secondary to a tightly plotted book with a lot to do. There’s a gentle opening where Bernice waits for the Doctor, who is typically late and turns up while she’s in the shower, because god damn it. After a pleasant bit of fangirling when Paul McGann turns up (on Page 8, athankyo), things get briskly on track with a helicopter crash and an escaped multiple murderer. We immediately spiral into a government conspiracy, an ill-fated mission to Mars, and drumroll… a Martian invasion. Those two words are perhaps the most straightforward B-movie plot you could dream of, but Parkin keeps it interesting by staggering the pace, having the Martians arrive about 48 hours sooner than anyone (including the Doctor) realises, and then not having an all-out attack until the last act.
The Martian ship just hangs there. The drama becomes more political with a British conspiracy to aid the Martians, a coup, a plan to betray the other side (naturally planned by both sides), and the sublime ridiculousness of Ice Warriors setting up shop in the Tower Of London – and a Martian being crowned King of England, with severely ill-fitting jewellery. There’s always a little voice in the back of your head while reading this, guiltily saying alien invaders action movie. It seems like a mark of confidence to do something so brazenly obvious with such pizzazz. It’s a shame no one’s ever adapted it to audio or television, because damn it, I need that Ice Warrior coronation scene.
Still, an adaptation would lose much of the colour. It’s often very funny, particularly an observation that the Ice Warriors are helping to reduce VAT. More generally, one of the strengths of Parkin’s writing is his ability to patiently set a scene and make it relatable, which results in great tracts of memorable prose more often than zingy individual lines. There’s a brilliant bit about the sounds of London, and how they’re as ever-present and unnoticed as your heartbeat, which spirals off into the panic you suddenly feel on realising your body is mostly automatic and your ability to stop caring moments afterwards, which pulls back suddenly to the absence of sound in London.
The Martians themselves are rendered with colour and thoughtfulness, which is a godsend as their trajectory has been in a decline since The Curse Of Peladon suggested some of them might actually be nice – and no one has agreed since. It’s clear from The Dying Days that Mars is on the way out, and a coalition with Earth might be in their best interests. They have good reason to, for example, go to another planet and eye up their resources – whether or not that’s the right thing to do when there’s already an intelligent species using them. Although they are aggressors here, a fact further tangled by the British conspiracy to use them for their own ends, they never feel like stereotypical villains. (The morality gets further complicated – or possibly, less – when it turns out the warlord Xznaal has his own plans against Mars.) Bernice’s presence and expertise help this along greatly: her utter horror at having killed an Ice Warrior triggers immediate sobbing, and she’s able to speak to a Martian in his own language about a recent catastrophe on his own world, even after he has tied her up. Parkin also takes his time relating the different atmospheric conditions of Earth vs. Mars, and the physical toll it takes on the Martians in several scenes that sympathetically follow the enormous creatures as they exit their ship.
We often segue into treating all of this as historical fact, either directly via Bernice’s diary or just in the prose, which anchors the action nicely. There’s some lovely satire in the way the Martians are dealing directly only with the UK, a fact that at first causes great relief among the other world powers, then a twinge of jealousy that they weren’t the ones chosen to make first contact. (And then relief again when things go pear-shaped.) Life carries on in the UK, with postcards of the Martian ship appearing almost instantly in shops. The papers react in their typical way, particularly The Telegraph with “ET OUR FRIENDS, BUT THE EU ARE NOT.” (!) The sudden exodus of citizens to other nations, and the creeping suspicion that Britain is going to isolate itself from the world, feels prescient for a number of unfortunate reasons. But even getting your head out of the news, all of this is ripe for a disaster scenario; look at Day Of The Triffids, which is as full of wry observations as empty streets.
Where it really counts, The Dying Days is not an action movie or an encore. It’s a changing of the guard. This applies most obviously to the Doctor, who gets less than 300 pages under the Virgin banner – so it’s no good waiting around for Paul Cornell to define this guy. And we waste no time. The Doctor here is bright, direct and dismissive of his earlier self’s need to plan ahead, which as he notes, did not help in the end. (I think that’s a bit of a stretch, as it was the Seventh Doctor’s abandonment of planning – or checking the bloody scanner screen – that got him shot and hospitalised. But Eight is only making the same life-choice as Seven in that case, so it’s at least consistent.) We get to see his darker, angrier side which wasn’t possible in the TV Movie, as he dismisses killing the Martians, then subsequently warns one not to attack or it’ll die, kills it in self-defence, visibly regrets this and then just carries on. He gets a nicely dramatic “I AM TALKING!” moment when facing off against the Martian King at the end, and he generally displays all his important hallmarks, laced with an urgency and lack of duplicity that marks him out from his predecessor.
The whole sequence where the Martians use a targeted gas to kill him, which malfunctions and starts killing an entire village, is like the Doctor’s mission statement. He races towards it, fully intending to die so it’ll stop what it’s doing. Before he can do that he finds a cat in trouble, makes sure it’s safe, and then gladly offers death a jelly baby. It’s one of the book’s highlights. “Because when it comes down to it, doctors save lives and any life is worth saving.” See also, the gorgeous summary of the Doctor’s need for Bernice (and companions) in the first place: “He couldn’t travel the universe fighting monsters alone, he had told her; the magic dragon couldn’t be brave without the little boy.”
Parkin leans into the light, fun side of McGann’s take on the character, including a few playful nods to the TV Movie such as “‘You’re an alien, are you?’ ‘Well, yes and no,’ he replied evasively.” He does odd little Doctory things, like remind us the way to the his hearts is through his pockets: “The Doctor was rummaging through his pockets and producing his usual assortment of junk: a cricket ball, an elephant feather, a bag of koala nuts, a big ball of string, a piece of the True Cross, even a dog whistle.” His rapport with Bernice is instantly different to what it was, starting with his appearance. “Doctor, your new body is very... well, I say “very” – that doesn’t mean that I personally think... I mean, compared to the way you used to look, of course, but not everything goes on looks. But when it comes to the initial, y’know...’ She blushed, realising she might be implicating herself here.” He’s “a little brother or first boyfriend, not a father,” evidenced by the hilariously blunt moment when they need to wheedle computer access from an uncooperative man running an Internet café, and the Doctor’s plan amounts to: “‘Well you’re not a little girl any more...’ ‘I beg your pardon?’” (This ends up being an agreement to watch sci-fi movies with the guy.) And there are some moments that go some way to defining him as his own Doctor, in particular his rejection of forward planning, and a dizzying sequence where he must survive a great fall by using whatever is to hand; the sudden dash through his memories, and then his pockets, is reminiscent of the Doctor’s mind palace in Heaven Sent, but it also feels craftily like an opposite approach to exhaustive planning. The Doctor that follows Sylvester McCoy could scarcely be defined any better.
For a noticeable stretch of The Dying Days it appears that the Doctor has died, and most of the action is given to Bernice. As we saw in Eternity Weeps, and just generally whenever she’s around, she can carry a book. Unfailingly witty but deep of feeling, she’s able to mask her terror with delightful dialogue: “‘Hello,’ she said weakly, holding up a lit match. ‘Beware the power of my mighty weapon. Sorry, it’s the best I can do.’” Her determination to reason with the Martians matches the Doctor’s, and she just has that indefinable quality that makes her one of the most interesting things in any room she’s in – which is bloody handy, as she’ll soon become the main character. (“To the adventures of Professor Bernice Summerfield,’ the Doctor declared.” Quite.) After finding a job offer as the chair of archaeology on the planet Dellah, she finally moves her stuff out of the TARDIS and sets up shop. The Doctor gives her his old umbrella; the dodgy novelty-equivalent-of-a-torch is passed, and the new era can begin. (And yes, she snogs him because she’d “never forgive herself otherwise”, and it’s hinted that they sleep together. It’s now or never, I guess, but then it’s open-ended enough to draw your own conclusions. My two cents, I don’t think either of them would have gone through with it.)
There have been many endings for the New Adventures. The characters finished their arcs in The Room With No Doors. The Doctor said goodbye to his past in Lungbarrow. The publishers said goodbye to the Doctor with So Vile A Sin. It’s all been said – especially and at length by me, soz – and The Dying Days doesn’t need to say it again directly, because as the afterword mentions, there are still going to be New Adventures of a different kind. But there is still time for an affectionate and subtle goodbye in the form of the Brigadier, who gets possibly his best role in the books to date.
He’s well characterised, sharing a lovely rapport with Doris, particularly when sheltering a famed mass murderer: “‘You trust him?’ ‘Yes’ ‘Then I trust him. I’m going to hide our axe, though.’” His attitude to the Doctor has never been clearer, particularly when waiting behind in Bessie during a heavy bombing, even though the rest of his forces have gone, because he knows they will need the Doctor to win. (“From that moment until his retirement, Lethbridge-Stewart knew only two things for certain: the world depended on him, and he could trust the Doctor.”) His sometimes simple bravery triggers a few eye-rolls from the rest of UNIT, and even he thinks of his and his colleagues’ glory days as being able to “solve the world's problems with a mug of cocoa each and a telephone between them”. The world has moved on, and this is undoubtedly a last hoorah – although Parkin makes it clear that the events of Happy Endings are still to come for him. And he’s okay with this part of his life coming to an end because, well:
“His successors were going to do sterling work, probably even better than his own. But he liked to think that he’d set a high standard for them. Hopefully, in years to come, people would say that he had lived up to his illustrious ancestry, and that by and large he’d done a good job. He knew that he’d had a good innings, and despite the old saying, he’d neither died nor faded away. Retirement wasn’t so bad, not on those terms.”
And there, typically, Lance Parkin says it best.
8/10
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