Author's Notes - Introduction
Ah, nostalgia. So seductive. So dangerous. And so odd to be feeling it for some of my own work. Nightshade, now looking like the brittle-paged Tenth Planet I had as a kid, is fourteen years old! Like a child I never had. I remember it all so vividly. Seeing the Virgin writers' guidelines in DWB, writing my specimen chapters, coming home for Christmas 1991 to find the fantastically encouraging letter from Peter Darvill-Evans, the agonising wait to see whether the New Adventures would run beyond the initial four books...
The idea for what was originally called Nightfall came to me on a long coach journey from Leeds to - would you believe Cardiff? - a city that was then a long way off becoming the centre of the Doctor Who universe. I spotted a sci fi novel called Nightfall so the title instantly changed! The basic concept was this, wouldn't it be fun if an actor from an old TV sci-fi series started to see in real life the monsters he faced in the programme?
At that stage, before the New Adventures had been announced, I suppose I dimly thought of it as a kind of play idea. A Play for Today idea, really. Although such things were extinct by the early 90s. I hadn't long graduated from college and was living a precariously hand to mouth existence in a haunted house in Leeds (It really was! 97 Archery Rd. Go and have a look!).
I had yet to make any sort of mark in showbiz but, when I read about Virgin's plans to continue the recently defunct Doctor Who I felt in my bones: I CAN DO THIS. What appealed to me enormously, apart from the sheer thrill of being published, was to have a shot at writing Doctor Who (the real thing, of course, was now impossible. Ha!). Not only that, but to write Doctor Who as I thought it should be done, effectively redressing what I felt to have been wrong with the programme in its later years.
As a result, what surprises me now, re-reading the book after so many years is how SERIOUS it is. Grim, in fact. But you have to remember that I was reacting against the sort of garish Who of the late Eighties that I'd found an increasing turn-off. Things were undoubtedly getting better, just when the programme was cancelled, but there was still a sort of muddled quality, an almost perverse refusal to tell a straightforward story that I found very frustrating. So I wanted 'Nightshade' to be an ultra-grim and horrific adventure in the mould of favourites such as Genesis of the Daleks, The Caves of Androzani and Frontios.
I liked the irony also that it was a story about the dangers of nostalgia that was, in itself, nostalgic. But I'd better start at the beginning, I suppose...
Prologue
I knew from the beginning that I wanted a prologue set on Gallifrey with the first Doctor running away. Susan featured in the original draft, as I recall but I was asked to take her out so as to leave her origins more mysterious.
She could be waiting for the old man inside the un-disguised TARDIS or he could find her somewhere else later. I still think it's a rather nice prologue, though it's a bit purple and, as Joseph II might put it there are "too many notes".
The very last line where the Time Lord realises the TARDIS has been stolen and says 'Oh no, this really won't do at all' continues the long tradition of the Time Lords' 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 Space).
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 remember being very disappointed that this wasn't in the TV version!
Chapter One
The story's setting came from a desire to redress Doctor Who's South East bias. As a Northerner myself, I felt it was high time an adventure took place further up than Watford though it seems odd now that I chose Yorkshire rather than the North-East which is where I'm from. It was probably a combination of having recently been to college in Yorkshire, the moors (I once spent such a day in Ilkley with... well, that's another story) and, I suppose, not to want to look too obvious (ie Darlington writer sets story in Darlington) Either that or the fact that the fairly recent Mark of the Rani had been set in Geordie-land.
I think it began life with a present day setting but then Peter Darvill-Evans suggested some recent historical date and 1970 was briefly debated. I said I couldn't imagine setting anything in 1970! But then I remembered a story one of my teachers had told me. He'd been the only hippy in Jarrow and recalled waiting outside the Pictures in kaftan and Lennon specs with big, surly blokes on all sides waiting for any excuse to smash his head in. It takes guts to stand out from the crowd.
What began to interest me was the notion that the 60s obviously didn't swing everywhere. So how about the TARDIS pitching up in a tiny backwater during one of the most momentous years of the century? There'd be a sense that life was being lived elsewhere and a village full of people all yearning, in one way or another, for a vanished past. But then life - or death - would catch up with them...
It's fascinating now to read this. It's like a snapshot of my past, appropriately enough. So many of the character and place names are of people I knew then but not any more; Holland, Railton, Yeadon, Bayles and Vijay Degun! I used to work in a nursery and one of my charges was a wonderful kid of that name, one of the brightest, funniest children I've ever known. What became of him, I wonder? He'd be, God, twenty one now! (I've just Googled him. Looks like he does something in West Yorkshire Trading Standards!)
There's a lot of set up in this chapter but it's still pretty atmospheric. Lots of my own Christmas memories have been pressed into service here and the sequence where Jack Prudhoe chases his wife's phantom onto the moor still makes me tingle a bit.
Edmund Trevithick is a composite figure. He's a grumpy old actor (my favourite kind) who used to star in a TV series that isn't quite Quatermass and isn't quite Doctor Who.
I was utterly obsessed by Quatermass at that time (and making a short spoof with Reece and Steve, soon to be of The League of Gentlemen). I wanted some of Nigel Kneale's grittiness to rub off on this story and, as I've said, make it more like the Doctor Who I remembered and loved. A year or so later when I was making The Zero Imperative with Bill Baggs, Gary Gillett mocked up some videos that can just be made out on Jon Pertwee's shelves. They were Nightshade, Nightshade 2 and Nightshade and the Imps. I don't think anyone ever noticed!
The one bit I can't bear is the first paragraph of this chapter: "Perhaps the world was dreaming"... etc. I know I wanted some kind of "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" feel but it now looks so bolted on and just plain weird. Much better to just crack on with the story. Which is what I suggest we do now.
Chapter Two
Why has the Doctor decided to retire? I have no idea. I suppose, ideally, this story would've come after some momentous, life-changing experience but it doesn't. There's a gap there, should anyone want to pop a story in! Anyway, here's the Seventh Doctor and Ace as I felt I'd like to see them. The Doctor's savage response to being called Professor was simply a reflection of my own prejudice. I just hated that affectation. The Doctor himself is feeling nostalgic, tying in with the theme of the whole adventure, missing his home, or whatever home represents.
I created the Tertiary Console Room because I thought it'd be lovely to have one and I was very fan-boyish about the TARDIS in those days. Christopher H Bidmead had sort of created TARDIS lore overnight and the notion of an infinite ship slightly obsessed me. I remember loving the idea of a patch of open ground inside the TARDIS and I think there's a beach in another of my books. I wanted the third control 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 the New Adventures - which it wasn't! I have a feeling it might've turned up in one.
Betty Yeadon's brother being eaten by sharks is directly inspired by the famous Indianapolis speech in Jaws - a film I absolutely adore. I suppose Alf is more likely to have been on an Atlantic convoy than in the Pacific but there are no man-eating sharks in the Atlantic...
I was keen to get something like a real romance going in the story as I felt baffled and confused by the recent TV attempts at it, particularly the scene in Curse of Fenric between Ace and the soldier. I mean, what was that about? I don't know why Ace should fall for this particular bloke but Robin seems quite a decent sort and pretty dishy.
Another personal prejudice - this time given to Trevithick - is the preference for the wintry seasons. From the 'burnt turnip smells of Hallowe'en' (we call them turnips where I come from, although they're really swedes and we used to hollow them out and put candles in them. Pumpkins were only ever glimpsed in American films. Eeh, we were poor but we were 'appy) to Christmas. I couldn't bear the summer. Now I'm older, I love the summer and, though there's nothing quite like the smoky loveliness of October and the magic of Christmas, I find I absolutely dread the dark winter evenings. Maybe I'm afraid there's something out there...
I had a shot-silk blue dressing gown at the time, which is why the Doctor's wearing one and I notice how much Ace's 'tape-deck' now leaps out as a period touch! Tape-deck! Imagine!
Chapter Three
I remember reading in a review somewhere that the characters of Winstanley and Hawthorne were there as a tribute to The Daemons. This isn't quite true. Although the cut-off village is a Doctor Who staple and I adored The Daemons, the names were certainly unconsciously borrowed. At that time, I hadn't seen the story in years and named the Abbot after my friend's dad! I suppose Hawthorne was prickly so that's why he ended up with that name, although Damaris Hayman may have been, as I say, lurking at the back of my mind.
The Doctor's memory of falling off the radio telescope couldn't really be avoided. I mean, you would think about it, wouldn't you? I've always had a soft spot for Logopolis. So baffling but so strange. And with a funeral quality unlike any other story. In fact, a reference to it recurred in my new TV episode The Idiot's Lantern but it was cut at a late stage. Shame!
A lot of my own Christmas memories are again rolled out here. I have such sharp recollections of those wonderful times, the smells, the colours, the sheer excitement. The light that snow gives off through curtains, the cold lino in the kitchen, trying to resist the temptation to tear open all the presents at once. My love affair with Christmas goes back forever. I was always a nostalgic child. My Mam used to say I had an old soul. I remember desperately wanting to leave school so that we could have a reunion! It's a strange affliction and I had it bad. I always wanted to be older, more experienced. Now I am - oh to be nineteen again! Haha.
The fate of Professor Quatermass's daughter and granddaughter are given to Trevithick here as a nod. I supposed, naively, that only a few people would pick up on these references but then I was young and little steeped in the madness of fandom! In a similar way, the reference to the Doctor outside the Cyber tombs speaking to Victoria about his family was a nice little reference. Little did I know that the story would be found soon after so that the reference looked almost trendy.
Still on a Quatermass theme, I've always loved the notion of sinister happenings being discovered in ancient texts. Nigel Kneale, of course, invented the concept but it never loses its thrill or its spookiness. So here it is again, couched in my best cod-17th Century...
Chapter Four
Ah, the Civil War! So good, we actually had three of 'em. No mystery here. Always been faintly obsessed by this period and eventually got to do a full Troughton historical on the subject. I decided to dramatise the incident in the manner of a flashback. It was a chance to write some 'period' dialogue but also a little snapshot of summer amongst all the wintriness. It's quite a nice section, I think and the battle's well-drawn. Did I put Captain Jackson in The Roundheads? Can't remember. I should have done!
Phillip Jackson's name leaps out at me because the actor of that name is now a friend of mine. Also, Sir Brian de Fillis is named after someone I knew in Leeds and lost touch with who's now written a script about Fanny Cradock in which I'm about to play her husband. How strange. How nostalgic!
It's here that the horror starts to kick in too. More than anything, I wanted Nightshade to be a horror story and poor Sir Harry being dissolved by the terrible things that have taken on the shape of his dead children is as grim as my Doctor Who gets.
Chapter Five
Dr Hawthorne's racism grew out of the setting, I think, in that '68 was the year of Enoch Powell's infamous Rivers of Blood speech. I thought it would be interesting to have a British Asian at the centre of the story and highlight both the naked nastiness of Hawthorne's generation alongside the casual racism of someone like Mrs Crithin who considers Vijay nice enough but still a 'darkie'. Overall, it now all seems very right on and straining to be PC but, hey, this was the Nineties!
Hawthorne's fear of the Tar Baby seemed like a neat idea and it's a fear I shared as a child, along with wolves, the Child Catcher and the little Troll from Terror of the Autons. Little things, actually, have always given me the creeps.
I remember doing a lot of reading in order to find the right star to explode. Bellatrix seemed the ideal candidate but I made it a double star so that I could blow up without wiping it out all together! No-one seems ever to have noticed the extra one.
I cringe slightly at the Doctor ordering ginger beer from the pub. It seems a bit neutered now. Certainly, I think there's nothing wrong with the Doctor having a pint and, given the mood he's in, you'd forgive him if he got roundly bladdered.
A primary school teacher of mine had cut out "- agile Wit" from a cardboard box, just as in the story, and pinned it to his door. I suppose it's the sort of thing you do when you're at a loose end.
Back to scary things, I've always had a bit of a thing about waking up to find some sitting on the end of the bed. As a kid, the idea of it scared the life out of me and I can remember one night, after watching The Devil Rides Out, being absolutely certain that there was something there. I was utterly unable to turn on the light just in case the pressure I was sure I could feel turned out to be, well, probably something little...
Chapter Six
Things are getting very bitty around here, it seems to me. I suppose they're like cut away scenes which probably means I was thinking more in terms of screenplay than book at this point! Very naughty.
Robin very selfishly deserts his step-mother as he thinks he's on a promise with Ace. Although this looks terribly heartless, I think we all are from time to time. And she is only his step-mother... I'm not quite sure why the Sentience makes people rot but it's good for description you have to admit. To this day, I can rattle off horrific descriptions of putrefaction and monstrousness without pausing for breath. It's the straighter stuff that takes time. I like 'a wide green stain like fruit mould'.
There's some more description of my old Christmases here - particularly waiting at the top of the stairs for the parental say-so - this time given to the character of Medway. I suppose I've always been nostalgic for a Christmas I never quite had and hate the idea of it becoming about "slippers and hankies" rather than magical things but that's inevitable.
The road-side posts with hexagonal reflectors that Medway passes are in the North Yorks moors and they used to fascinate me as a kid. They're really tall so that can show up over the snowdrifts. Last Christmas I went with my Dad up to High Force, a fantastic waterfall in that region which I hadn't been to in years. We drove past those posts and my first thought was of Nightshade.
The Doctor is very cold towards Ace and her burgeoning 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 but then that was the ethic of the New Adventures. To be broader and deeper. To boldly go... sorry.
Chapter Seven
I laughed when I saw that the Doctor says Whatever! Of course, he'd know about early 21st Century slang, wouldn't he?
Mr Peel's comment "It's these blackie postmen", comes from the film Billy Liar and I put it in because it's always made me laugh. I love listening to old people and the magical, sometimes outrageous things they come out with. It's probably why there's a preponderance of elderly characters in my stuff (Trevithick, Whistler in Last of the Gaderene, Mrs Peace in The Unquiet Dead and the Grandma in The Idiot's Lantern).
When I was at college we were sent out to interview old people for a project. My student digs were next door to one, as it happened, so I popped over with a tape recorder and spent a lovely hour with an old dear who waxed nostalgic about all manner of things then suddenly broke down at the memory of her late husband. I've never forgotten it and how uncomfortable and intrusive I suddenly felt. Also, I once talked to an old man who remembered working in a field in Yorkshire when a young lad came running over to say the Titanic had gone down. Imagine that. Amazing.
This leads me into Mrs Holland's sad recollection of discovering her husband had been killed in the Great War. It's based on a real incident where a telegram was sent but failed to arrive and the poor widow only realised her beloved was dead when his property turned up, complete with bayoneted pocket-book, its pages stiff with blood.
I rather like the section where Ace muses on the 60s and the idea of the old stones of the monastery having witnessed countless generations musing over the same thoughts. I often get to thinking that way. These bricks will be here long after I've gone. But then, they'll never have lived!
It's worth saying here, of course, that P.J. Hammond's Sapphire and Steel was a huge influence on the book and there are lots of bits (opaque black eyes for one!) that reference it. The main one here is the singing of "Pack up your troubles" which features in Adventure Two (or The One in the Railway Station). It's worth pointing out, though, that like the Tomb of the Cybermen reference, this was done before S and S had been released on video and so was much more of a nostalgic nod than will appear today when everything is available and everyone knows everything! I still marvel at the atmosphere of that show. The man is a genius.
The child poisoned by berries was inspired by my Dad's brother who died in this way back in the Twenties. He was called Harry and, after his death, my grandparents had another child and called him Harry. Isn't that odd? You can't imagine a family doing that today.
The evil Jesus! That's quite brave. Probably wouldn't be allowed now. It's nasty. I'm sure it was inspired by a bit in The Martian Chronicles were a priest whose lost his faith accidentally forces an alien into appearing as he wants him to be. As a kid, though, I was scared of the Christ. In Sunday School pictures he had these horrible, wet, brown eyes - like a King Charles spaniel - and it gave me the creeps.
Chapter Eight
This chapter is mostly the monster chasing Trevithick and I wrote it straight through in one, excited burst and hardly changed a word. I went home to write most of the book and I can vividly remember sitting in the spare room, bashing away on my Amstrad, the green screen flaring, the dot-matrix printer taking forever but just being so inspired and excited by this section. I went downstairs for my tea with the sense of a good day's work done! There's more Jaws, of course, in the exploding fire-extinguisher.
I once read somewhere that Trevithick stops at Level 18 (of a possible 27) in the lift because this story would have been part of Season 27 and that I was well known for thinking that the programme went downhill after Season 18! This isn't true, although I used to be very fond of Season 18 (not so much these days).
Chapter Nine
Of course, the Doctor seeing the ghostly Susan would've had more impact if it hadn't been for 'The Five Doctors', but you can't have everything! I've always been intrigued by Susan. I used to think, in a very fan-boyish way, that she just called the Doctor grandfather but it's clear that he's just that. So just who is Mrs Who?
I wanted to use the flavour of that first, heart-breaking goodbye in The Dalek Invasion of Earth to show that the Doctor had never quite got over Susan and that all his subsequent companions have, in some way, been an attempt to get back to that first relationship. So Susan symbolises the yearning for home and better times that lies at the heart of the Doctor's problem.
And now here comes The Sentience! So called, I suppose because it felt a bit like the Intelligence and Doctor Who creatures always need a name like that. It's the first of the non-corporeal floaty aliens with which I seem to have an obsession. I just can't seem to shake them though I promise one day to do a 'once-proud' militaristic race based on, oh let's say, hedgehogs. Billy Coote becomes a medium for the floaty alien just as Gwyneth does in 'The Unquiet Dead'. As Alan Bennett says, we've only got a few beans in our tin to rattle!
The sequence where Trevithick dreams of the monster bursting through the window as he watches TV was written to make sense of the cover! It bothered me that there was no such scene in the book. I doubt I'd be so literal these days.
And Ace has Nitro-Nine A in her rucksack. Takes you back, doesn't it?
Chapter Ten
I wanted to do something new with the Sentience so that it wasn't just another alien invader. I think Doctor Who could stand a few more Earth-based menaces but I hit upon the idea that the thing actually predated the Earth. That in some, thankfully unfathomable way, the Earth had formed around it and it was stuck, like a living fossil or, as Trevithick describes it, like the letters in Blackpool rock.
I think I had the Doctor dislocate his shoulder because I thought he needed roughing up a bit. He's suffering 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 Bond bleed in the terrific and underrated Licence to Kill so I thought it high time the Doctor got a bit of a kicking.
Interesting that, down in the cave, there's a lull followed by Trevithick saying "It's so cold," just as Dickens does in The Unquiet Dead. This is a ghost story staple, I suppose and just something I absorbed into my DNA years ago. All my stories are ghost stories in a way.
In the original plan, it was Vijay who died, not Holly, but I remember becoming much fonder of his character as I scribbled away so it was poor Holly who got it in the neck. I quite like the idea that some of the Sentience's victims almost welcomed it as a release from their grief.
Reading this again, I find Trevithick's last stand rather moving. The old man becoming the TV hero he always wanted to be. I find any goodbye unbearably sad. I saw in a documentary the other day that Chaplin's brother used to cry at every sunset. I know that feeling. I cried when Magpie ended. I cry when Blue Peter presenters leave, even if I've never seen them. On that subject, I remember tuning in a few years ago when, quite by chance they announced, "for older viewers", that Goldie had died. I fell to bits. And don't get me started on The Green Death...
"Why do people have to keep dying?" opines Vijay. Well, it's grim up North.
Chapter Eleven and Epilogue
In the church, Locock uses tattered military colours to spear the WWI ghost. This was directly inspired by the Durham Light Infantry chapel in Durham Cathedral where such colours hang, quietly mouldering, to this day. I've always found them sinister.
And now the church is overrun by gas-masked zombies, one of which, when unmasked has a totally blank face! Could be on the telly now, eh?
I find the amount of exposition here a bit troubling and pat. Everything is explained by the Sentience, even down to using Billy Coote as a medium and discovering through him the possibilities of the Earth. But the idea of sending it to feed off the exploding star is very neat as is the very Quatermass-esque idea of the Civil War explosion being caused by the Sentience going backwards in Time to when the star first went nova. On reflection, it would've been much neater if it had been that star that had somehow collapsed on itself and become a Black Hole rather than having the Sentience roam around a bit, snacking, before getting snared!
The Stone Roses reference leaps out a bit, doesn't it? I think it was my attempt at being hip and it's as uncomfortable to read as I felt doing it! Mind you, Ian Brown was very sexy in those days before he turned into an emaciated ape.
And now the ending. The Doctor tricks Ace and never returns her to Crook Marsham. Under normal circumstances, it says here, he would have done but 'there 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 next book and I remember picking up Love and War only to find there was no reference to it whatsoever! No fault of Paul Cornell's, of course, but I was just baffled. How could she forgive the Doctor so easily? Was it ever referred to again? Answers on a postcard please.
So that was my first Doctor Who book. I was thrilled at how it was received and then found myself unable to come up with another. Virgin turned down a curious space opera called The Black Death and a massively 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...
