The Pictures of Emptiness (novel)

The Pictures of Emptiness is the eighth book in The Darksmith Legacy series.

Publisher's summary
The Doctor finds himself on trial before the Shadow Proclamation where the Crystal is legally returned to Gisella. The Doctor is ready to continue his mission until Gisella betrays him, staying with the Darksmiths. But she accidentally reveals where the Darksmiths are meeting their client. The Doctor arrives on the chosen planet, and becomes involved in an adventure involving missing eyes and souls. Will the Doctor solve this mystery and stop the hand over of the Crystal?

Story Synopsis
Leaving Gisella in the TARDIS (along with the Eternity Crystal) the Doctor allows himself to be captured by the Dreadbringers. He counts on the fact that, with the Dreadbringers involved, so the Shadow Proclamation will also be involved to uphold the law. The Doctor is correct and put on trial by the Shadow Proclamation for the theft of the Eternity Crystal from the Darksmith Collective. The Doctor makes his defence (after a failed attempt to be tried by a jury of his peers), a defence that rests upon the legitimacy of Gisella to be recognised as the nearest living relative of the Eternity Crystals creator, the former Brother Varlos. Gisella and the TARDIS are brought forward and in order to satisfy the Shadow Proclamation, Gisella is taken away to be ‘examined’. The Shadow Proclamation concludes that Gisella is much more than an android and is a living being. The Doctor is then requested to hand over the crystal to Gisella, before the gathered witnesses. The Doctor does so but is horrified to learn that, while she was away, Gisella was ‘interferred’ with. She now accepts her heritage and believes her future to lie with the Darksmiths on Karagula. High Minister Drakon watches as the Doctor is powerless to stop Gisella handing over the Eternity Crystal to him ‘of her own free will’, but not before she reveals to the Doctor their plan to take the Crystal to a meeting with the commissioning clients at galactic reference 297/1974HG to complete the contract. Free to leave the Doctor hurries back to the TARDIS, and with the advantage of time travel plans to arrive at the handover meeting before the Darksmiths and their mysterious clients who he has now learnt begins with the letter ‘K’.

The Doctor finds himself in London, a day before the Darksmiths meeting with their clients. He sets his sonic screwdriver to detect the arrival of craft arriving in Earth’s atmosphere and decides to take in a concert by Jason Dungeon. But he finds himself a witness to a road accident where a girl is hit when she walks into traffic. As the Doctor offers his assistance he realises she has no eyes but a driving licence in her bag! The Doctor is pushed aside as the injured woman, Mae Harrison, is taken off to hospital but a nearby witness Bill B Brooks, asks for the Doctor’s help. Bill Brooks is Jason Dungeon’s agent and is disturbed by Jason’s recent behaviour, when the Doctor returns with him they find not the rock star with attitude, but a soulless and detached, almost vacant personality, flat and emotionless. The Doctor is convinced that this is no act on Jasons part and establishes that he was last normal up to an interview earlier that day.

The Doctor tracks down the writer Shelley Sayers at her office, nothing appeared as odd at the time, but from a proof copy the Doctor discovers a photographer was present, not the usual one Des Martin, but a blonde blue-eyed woman (who seemed a bit distant) who was covering his work for him while he was away. The Doctor heads over to Des’s studio to see what he can discover.

Beneath the studio in a basement flat he hears a woman crying. Investigating he finds a model named Natasha, Des’s girlfriend, a woman with no nose! She remembered answering the door the night before to a blond woman and waking up with no nose. The Doctor reassures her and uses his sonic screwdriver to have a nose around Des’ studio. Upstairs he finds Des, flat and emotionless, like Jason earlier. His only clue is a list of appointments on the desk which this mysterious woman seems to be keeping. The next one is Market Square, a filming location for a four-times a week television soap opera.

The Doctor’s psychic paper gives him access on set where, before he knows it, he is dressed by Megan from wardrobe (in jeans, a red T-shirt and a bomber jacket) and taken on as an extra to stand in for a number of the cast who seem suddenly unable to deliver their lines. The mysterious woman is on set photographing the stars and sees the Doctor.

In a face off, the woman makes a link between her camera and all the studio cameras. The Doctor shouts a warning to the cast and crew to look away but only Megan from wardrobe is unaffected as the Doctor plunges the studio into darkness. The Doctor (without his sonic screwdriver) asks Megan to fetch his own coat from wardrobe while he stalls for time by talking to the woman with a camera who calls herself Mitra Ashkanzai. The Doctor tells her she is a Vacant, like space cuckoos, they arrive as no more than blobs with an instinct to collect what they need from others – eyes, ears, nose, mouth etc. then they go on to fill their existence with a personality. Usually they just blend in but Mitra chanced across people with larger than life egos and ambition, a desire for more. Absorbtion came through eye to eye contact, Des’s camera gave her the opportunity to catch peoples gaze for sustained time and so was more effective.

Megan manages to hand the Doctor back his “small metal rod”, and in the blinding light the Doctor tricks the Vacant into absorbing a gap he creates in his own mind by using his multiple personalities. He snatches the camera which was on full power and turns it on Mitra. The Doctor reverses the polarity of the camera and it just sucked everything off of the vacant woman and traps it in the camera and all the stolen elements returned The Doctor notices the cameras model and make –The Ashkanazi MITRA. As everything is returned to normal the Doctor is alerted to the arrival of the Darksmiths. Megan helps him identify a nearby great empty space in the city, the old abandoned film studios. When he arrives, keeping to the shadows, he sees High Minister Drakon with Gisella greeting the new arrivals, the Eternity Crystals commissioning clients, the Krashoks…

Characters

 * The Doctor
 * Gisella
 * Shelley Sayers
 * Jason Dungeon
 * Bill B Brooks
 * Mae Harrison
 * Natasha
 * Mitra Ashkanzai

Continuity

 * The author states on the website that the Shadow Proclamation was deliberately written as simply a firm judge, having no real idea of what they would be shown as in (DW): The Stolen Earth.
 * The Doctor at the Shadow Proclamation hearing requests trial by a jury of peers. This is an impossible request with the Doctor being the last of the Time Lords.

The Books

 * The first set of galactic references for the Darksmith and their clients meet are written as “297-stoke-197AHG” (sic) but is corrected on the next page (297/197AHG.
 * Interspersed with the main fiction is;
 * TARDIS Data Bank (extra information includes Earth's atmosphere,photography and vacuum).
 * Activity pages x2 (The puzzle solutions give the reader the chance to think like the Doctor!)
 * The Story so far, next installment cover preview and opening preview.


 * The Darksmith Legacy's overall story was devised by Justin Richards who contributed four of the ten titles.
 * The Darksmith Legacy was certificated to 13, with under 13's needing parental approval.
 * This first book in the series was released along with the second before the remaining titles saw a monthly release throughout 2009.
 * Each book in the series was priced £4.99 (UK) and featured a foiled cover with illustration by Peter McKinstry.

Interactive Website Content
By visiting the website and participating in the Quest participants can unlock additional content like computer wallpapers to download. The Quest itself features; games - (like finding a specific target in an image, by using the sonic screwdriver as a detector, to hone in (to register 100 on the scale). Once located the 'Target' then provides additional information used in further puzzles involving both words and numbers.
 * An additional bonus download feature is available on completion of this eighth stage of The Quest - a pdf file offering alternative chapters and writers comments on each of the ten titles in the Darksmith Legacy series.

Timeline

 * This story takes place after TDL: The Planet of Oblivion
 * This story takes place before TDL: The Art of War