Nightshade (novel)

Nightshade

Key crew

Publisher:

Virgin Publishing

Writer:

Mark Gatiss

Release details

Release number:

8

Release date:

20 August 1992

Format:

Paperback Book; 13 Chapters, 231 Pages

ISBN:

ISBN 0-426-20376-3

Virgin New Adventures
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You may wish to consult Nightshade for other, similarly-named pages.

Written by Mark Gatiss, Nightshade is the eighth instalment in the series of Virgin Publishing's Doctor Who paperback novels. A New Adventure, it features the Seventh Doctor and Ace.

Publisher's summary

"I have done enough!"

Ace has never known the Doctor so withdrawn and melancholic. He is avoiding her company, seeking solace in the forgotten rooms and labyrinthine passages of his ancient time machine.

Perhaps he will find the peace he yearns for on his favourite planet, Earth, in the second half of the twentieth century — in the isolated village of Crook Marsham, to be precise, in 1968, the year of peace, love and understanding.

But one by one the villagers are being killed. The Doctor has to act, but for once he seems helpless, indecisive, powerless.

What are the signals from space that are bombarding the radio telescope on the moor? What is the significance of the local legends from the Civil War? And what is the aeons-old power that the Doctor is unable to resist

Chapter Titles

Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two

...

Chapter Eleven
Epilogue

Plot

Somewhere a group of men gather, and one slips away into a room with eight boxes. He uses a key to enter one and it fades away. Meanwhile, someone has seen him leave and disapproves.

to be added

Characters

References

The Doctor

The Doctor thinks of Susan almost every day now.
The Doctor's departure from Gallifrey was observed.

Individuals

Ace's parents met on the dance floor of a sweaty nightclub.
Ace decides to leave the Doctor for Robin Yeadon.
Jack remembers trips to Ilkley Moor with Win.

Locations

Marsham Castle was built in 1156.

Species

The Sentience absorbs the energy from Ace's Nitro-9.

Science

References to space (or through the radio telescope) include Andromeda, Bellatrix, black hole, supernova, galaxy.

Television series

The BBC produced Nightshade.
Edmund Trevithick starred in Nightshade from 1953 to 1958.

Notes

This is the first Doctor Who novel for actor-writer Mark Gatiss, who would write and appear in several of the independent spin-off productions before finding fame in the TV series The League of Gentlemen. In the 2000s and 2010s, he would write episodes for the Doctor Who revival and play Richard Lazarus in The Lazarus Experiment.
Characters named Dr Shearsmith and Mr Pemberton are mentioned (but do not appear), a possible reference to Gatiss' fellow The League of Gentlemen co-creators and co-stars Reece Shearsmith and Victor Pemberton.
The character of Professor Nightshade was inspired by Bernard Quatermass.
A prelude to this novel was published in DWM 190.

Continuity

PROSE: Set Piece explains why the Doctor's shoulder area is such a tender place.
The interaction between the Doctor and Ace in this novel explains some of the events in PROSE: Love and War.
PROSE: Happy Endings reveals that Robin Yeadon married Ace's mother, Audrey Dudman.
This story suggests that Susan Foreman was not the Doctor’s biological granddaughter. It was later confirmed in the novel PROSE: Lungbarrow.
This story takes place contemporaneously with several sequences of PROSE: The Left-Handed Hummingbird in which the Doctor and Ace likewise visit England in December 1968.
The prologue gives a different account of the Doctor's departure as compared to other sources. One distinction is that Susan does not leave with him. (TV: The Name of the Doctor)

Associated Images

The e-book version published by the BBC on their website included several illustrations by Daryl Joyce. Titles of illustrations are as they were on BBC's site.