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The Dying Days

MAY 1997

After bringing the seventh Doctor’s era to a resounding climax with the peerless “Lungbarrow” two months earlier, somewhat peculiarly Virgin took the decision to make

their final Doctor Who New Adventure an eighth Doctor story. Lance Parkin’s ensuing novel is… unique, and I use the word in the truest sense. There is no other Doctor Who book out there like it.

On the face of it, “The Dying Days” appears to be wholly traditional - excessively so, perhaps; a knee-jerk reaction to the heavily Americanised TV movie. Parkin’s plot is aberrantly straightforward – it is the year 1997. British astronauts accidentally desecrate the tomb of a Martian Ice Lord and so his clan, led by the wicked Ice Warrior Xznaal, launch an invasion of Great Britain aided and abetted by the power-hungry British Politician Lord Greyhaven. And only the Doctor and his friends can stop them…

However, whilst in principal “The Dying Days” is no more than another bog-standard Home Counties invasion, certain things do set it apart from your standard Doctor / UNIT stories. Most evidently, when all is said and done, this invasion cannot reallybe covered up with a D-Notice. A Martian spaceship hovered over London. An Ice Warrior was crowned as King of England. ‘First contact’, as they say, has been irreversibly made.

Furthermore, whilst the eighth Doctor is freed from the shackles of the TV movie and is placed in a more familiar setting surrounded by Bernice, Lethbridge-Stewart (pre-regeneration!), Bambera, and even his old roadster Bessie, “The Dying Days” is still very much a New Adventure in the mould of the sixty foregoing novels. I certainly cannot recall

any classic television serial that saw a naked woman watch from her lover’s window as a Martian spaceship descended, or where the Doctor shared a kiss (and quite possibly more…) with his companion.

The third and final noteworthy constituent is something that both benefits this novel and detracts from it at the same time. As was the case with “Eternity Weeps” – the first novel to abandon the Doctor Who logo and set up the New Adventures as a series in their own right – this is a story about Benny more than anything else. It is not really a Doctor Who novel –

it is a dry run for the Bernice Summerfield New Adventures which just happens to feature the Doctor.

Now on the positive side, this allows Parkin to treat us to several chapters comprised mainly of first-person narrative from Benny’s inimitably wry perspective. On the downside though, the eighth Doctor is written out about half way through and does not appear again until right

at the end. Now this is a real shame because not only is it refreshing to read about a new Doctor in print, but Parkin has captured Paul McGann’s portrayal so very well in his writing - this romantic, swaggering antihero is every bit the Doctor of the TV movie. Whilst Benny and the Lethbridge-Stewart can easily carry the story on their own – the ol’ Brig repelled invasions from both the Drahvins and the Bandrils without the Doctor’s help, y’know – and whilst both are an unqualified joy to read about, “The Dying Days” does suffer from a lack of the man whose visage takes up most of the front cover.

My only other gripe with “The Dying Days” is that the author has consciously limited his canvas; the whole book is written as if it were a television script, rather than a novel. Consequently the epic, Independence Day-style invasion is limited to just three Martians, one spaceship, and one nation! Hardly “too broad and too deep for the small screen”, but I suppose that at least it proved TV movie producer Philip Segal wrong. I think in a lot of ways this sums up “The Dying Days” – it may be a fun, roller coaster ride but it clearly has an agenda. Even the book’s title could be applied to the twentieth century, Mars, or indeed to Virgin’s Doctor Who license!

Finally, I think a bit too much has been made of the last scene – which sees Benny snog the Doctor and then throw him onto her bed – as it is hardly a certainty that they had sex. Parkin has left it clearly open so that you can think that if you want, but let's face it – it's nigh on inconceivable that they did. This is the Doctor we are talking about!

And so the Doctor took off in his TARDIS to wherever the BBC Books will take him and Bernice settled into Dellah University for what will undoubtedly prove some uproarious,

albeit Doctorless, New Adventures.

And just like that, the most distinctive era of Doctor Who comes to an end.

Unless otherwise stated, all reviews and articles are Copyright © E.G. Wolverson 2006

E.G. Wolverson has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

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