Morris - Festival of Death

Contents

About the Book

The Beautiful Death is the ultimate theme-park ride: a sightseeing tour of the afterlife. But something has gone wrong, and when the Fourth Doctor arrives in the aftermath of the disaster, he is congratulated for saving the population from destruction something he hasnt actually done yet. He has no choice but to travel back in time and discover how he became a hero.

And then he finds out. He did it by sacrificing his life.

An adventure featuring the Fourth Doctor as played by Tom Baker and his companions Romana and K-9

About the Author

Jonathan Morris is the writer of the official Doctor Who Magazine comic strip, has written a number of Doctor Who novels for BBC Books, including Touched by an Angel, and numerous audio adventures for Big Finish Productions and BBC Radio 7. He has also written for the TV sketch shows Dead Ringers and Swinging.

The Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Collection

Ten Little Aliens

Stephen Cole

Dreams of Empire

Justin Richards

Last of the Gaderene

Mark Gatiss

Fear of the Dark

Trevor Baxendale

Players

Terrance Dicks

Remembrance of the Daleks

Ben Aaronovitch

EarthWorld

Jacqueline Rayner

Only Human

Gareth Roberts

Beautiful Chaos

Gary Russell

The Silent Stars Go By

Dan Abnett

To Doctor Who fans everywhere

I NTRODUCTION

It was one of those envelopes you dread to open. It had the BBC logo on the label and I knew that the letter inside would be a response to my first Doctor Who novel submission, The Beautiful Death. I opened the envelope to find a surprisingly long letter with the Doctor Who logo at the top, followed by three pages of detailed notes that ended with the commissioning editor, Justin Richards, explaining that the reason hed included so many detailed notes was because he wanted to commission the book.

The memory of that moment, and the jolt of joy, has never left me. I wanted to run around the room punching the air. I probably did. I would be writing a Doctor Who story! A professional, BBC-published Doctor Who story! It was almost too good to be true!

And then I had to actually write it, in the first four months of 2000. Boy, did I work! I mustve worked harder on this book than Ive done on anything since (any Doctor Who thing, at least) because I was terrified that this would be my one chance, my single shot at success.

Which is why I packed so much into the story. Enough ideas for at least two books, if not more, and a plot that was involved to the point of being over-complicated. Bear in mind that my original synopsis had been even more complex, with Vinnie being an android hired by ERIC to assassinate himself!

At the time I wrote it, I was working full-time for the pop group Erasure, running their Information Service (their fan club). Fortunately the band werent doing much at the time so I had plenty of spare time to dedicate to writing the novel. My main memory of writing it is walking home from Mute Records, my head spinning with all the time-travel-puzzles Id have to work out that evening.

Id been particularly ambitious with this book, you see. Nowadays its not unusual for a Doctor Who story to involve lots of timey-wimey elements, with the Doctor and his companions crossing their own time streams, meeting people in the wrong order, and even getting forewarnings of their own deaths. But at the time, back in 1999, these things hadnt really been done before. That was this novels unique selling point. So when reading it, please go on your own voyage of time travel and cast your mind back to the days before The Girl in the Fireplace, Blink, The Big Bang and A Christmas Carol. Because if you will forgive a little pride Festival of Death did it all first.

Well, almost. I was heavily indebted to a previously published Doctor Who novel called The Sands of Time which laid much of the groundwork, which was written, coincidentally enough, by Justin Richards. I remember he advised me to make a flowchart of all the time-travel business, and I did. I had to staple together half a dozen sheets of A4 and the final product looked like a map of the London Underground.

The hardest thing about writing it was that I was learning how to write a novel as I was going along. It turned out to be far more arduous than Id expected. I ended up rewriting the first four chapters over and over again, just to establish a style. Its only around Chapter Five that I developed sufficient confidence to relax and enjoy the process; thats when it properly begins to take flight.

Reading it now, over twelve years later, the main thing that strikes me is how awfully hard the author is working to endear himself to the reader. A little too hard, perhaps. The book is positively saturated with in-jokes, references and quotations, and full of little nods to things I liked at the time (Harken Batt being clearly inspired by Brass Eye, and the character of Executive Metcalf being inspired by David Bambers character in the widely lamented sitcom Chalk). It even explains why K-9s voice changes in the next TV story! It wears its influences like a badge of pride; its full of unintentional echoes of the Doctor Who novels of Gareth Roberts, as well as owing a clear and obvious debt to the works of Douglas Adams.

(The other thing I should mention, almost as a health warning, is that when you write your first book, practically everyone you know comes up to you and asks you to name a character after them. And so you do. Its not terribly professional and Im not terribly proud of it, but in my defence I would like to point out that every other Doctor Who writer did the same thing.)

As I read it, I find myself looking out through the eyes of my 27-year-old self. Im reminded how cripplingly insecure I was back then, how easily intimidated. I remember how, at the time, Doctor Who was a dead TV show, and Doctor Who fans were so thin on the ground they could only be found in the dark recesses of the internet and a squalid Fitzrovian pub. And I remember how, as a result of writing this novel, I gained some self-confidence and forged friendships with other fans, friendships that endure to this day.

The novel turned out to be something of a smash hit. It won that years Doctor Who Magazine poll, albeit by the narrowest of margins. The reason why it turned out so well was because I really put my heart and soul into it. The first draft was something like 30,000 words too long, which gave me the freedom to cut anything dodgy (along with most of the adverbs and anything pretentious). And it worked. Now Im surprised by how assured it is, and how good some of the jokes are. Im tempted to re-use them in my next book or audio but now that its been reprinted, I suspect some people might notice

Jonathan Morris

August 2012

P ROLOGUE

For the rest of his life he would remember it as the day he died.

Koels mum took a stern breath and tightened her grip on her sons wrist. Koel twisted against her, tugging at her arm, trying to pull her attention down to him.

The voice of the intercom soothed over the hubbub. It is my pleasure to inform you that the Alpha Twelve intersystem shuttle is now boarding. All passengers for Third Birmingham should make their way to embarkation lounge seven. Felicitations.