Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Also in the Series
Title Page
The Changing Face of Doctor Who
1. The Dome of Death
2. The Vital Vote
3. Execution!
4. Escape into Danger
5. The Purple Zone
6. Capture!
7. Death in the Desert
8. Night and Silence
9. Interrogation
10. Quillam
11. Condemned
12. The Changelings
13. Realm of Chaos
14. The Final Vote
15. Into the End Zone
16. Goodbye to Varos
Copyright
David Whitaker
David Whitaker
Gerry Davis
Terrance Dicks
Terrance Dicks
Malcolm Hulke
Gerry Davis
Brian Hayles
Terrance Dicks
Ian Marter
Terrance Dicks
Bill Strutton
Terrance Dicks
Malcolm Hulke
Terrance Dicks
Eric Saward
Philip Martin
Marc Platt
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Epub ISBN: 9781473530362
Version 1.0
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
BBC Books, an imprint of Ebury Publishing,
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
London SW1V 2SA
BBC Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
Novelisation copyright © Philip Martin 1988
Original script © Philip Martin 1985
The Changing Face of Doctor Who and About the Author © Justin Richards 2015
Philip Martin has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
BBC, DOCTOR WHO and TARDIS (word marks, logos and devices) are trademarks of the British Broadcasting Corporation and are used under licence.
First published by BBC Books in 2016
First published in 1988 by Universal-Tandem Publishing Co. Ltd.
www.eburypublishing.co.uk
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9781785940408
Editorial Director: Albert DePetrillo
Editorial Manager: Grace Paul
Series Consultant: Justin Richards
Cover design: Lee Binding © Woodlands Books Ltd, 2016
Cover illustration: Chris Achilleos
Production: Alex Goddard
This Doctor Who novel features the sixth incarnation of the Doctor. In this incarnation the Doctor is at his most volatile. Never one to keep quiet about his talents, theories or opinions, he believes in himself utterly. It is, he maintains, always someone else’s fault when things go wrong, and his own genius that solves the problem.
But the bluster and volume – and the distinctive clothing – are, like the trappings of any incarnation of the Doctor’s, to some extent at least, part of an act. It is a veneer that masks a very real intelligence and deep concern. Outwardly, he may seem passionate about himself, ready to quote and quip his way through trouble. But it is in the rare quiet moments that we see that this is still the same brilliant, caring, intensely moral Doctor of his previous lives.
Perpugilliam Brown – Peri for short – is an American botany student holidaying in Lanzarote when she becomes involved in the Doctor’s adventures. Although she is comfortable with the Fifth Doctor, once he regenerates she takes some time to come to terms with his new persona.
Peri does come to appreciate the new Sixth Doctor, but her relationship with him is more abrasive. Peri is not someone who allows bad feeling to fester – she will always vocalise what’s bothering her. She complains that she would be happier if the Doctor arranged purposeful travel rather than just aimless wandering through time and space, and it’s possible that it is a desire to broaden her mind rather than personal fondness that is key to her continuing to accompany the Doctor.
The Random Laser Beam Emitter turned ominously on its axis, clicked, as if in irritation, then spat a searing beam of force at the lean young man chained to a wall in a corridor deep within the main Punishment Dome of the former prison planet of Varos.
Desperately twisting in the chains, Jondar succeeded in evading the laser beam; but the heat of its passing scalded skin stretched taut across his left side, causing a howl of anguish to be torn from lips parched by the tension of his long ordeal.
In the ceiling of the corridor a television camera monitored each movement of the terrified prisoner below, beaming every detail of his suffering into the home-cells of the viewers, for whom the ruling officer class of Varos termed this ‘entertainment’ and ‘instruction’.
In the communications section of the Media Dome a young technician, Bax, wearing the orange uniform of Comm Tech Division, concentrated on the bank of monitors before him. Many screens revealed the plight of other unfortunates in different sectors of the Punishment Dome. Bax, whose job it was to select the most dramatic pictures to broadcast to the viewers of Varos, had a hunch that Jondar’s luck at dodging the Random Laser Beams could not last much longer. Delicately he adjusted a focal control, bringing into close-up the rebel’s haggard face with its lines of tension and fear. Impassively, Bax watched Jondar trying to muster his resources to evade the next deadly beam that would soon radiate toward him.
The home-cell unit of Etta and her husband, Arak, was of the standard size for two Varosians without children. It comprised a bedroom just large enough to contain a two-tiered bunk and a living room with a plasti-table and two tubular metal chairs that faced a viewing screen which occupied the entire area of one wall.
Before this screen sat Etta, closely observing the harrowing pictures transmitted from the interior of the Punishment Dome. Beside her, on a specially fitted wire arm rest installed courtesy of View Data Division, lay her meticulously compiled viewer’s report on which she noted down not only her own reactions to the television output but also the occasionally biting comments of her husband, Arak.
As the camera adjustment changed to a close-up of the sweating, begrimed features of Jondar, Etta dutifully noted the time and the altered angle, then glanced up as Arak entered, tired and exhausted from long hours spent working for his detachment of the Mining Corps. Wearily, Arak removed his protective helmet and surveyed the room until finally his red-rimmed eyes rested reluctantly on the image of Jondar that filled the screen and dominated the room.
‘Not him again!’
‘Yeh. He’s still on. Still alive – just.’ A movement on the screen brought Etta’s attention back to Jondar who appeared to be bracing himself to face another bolt of destruction.
Arak pursed his lips in a small grimace of scorn. ‘Comm Div must be runnin’ short of rebos to laserise; he was on before I went out to work this mornin’.’
Etta’s concentration was now back onto the wall screen. ‘He’s survived all day. Almost a record.’
‘Huh.’ Arak unzipped the jacket of his black overalls. ‘Probably all fake anyhow.’ Etta snorted in disagreement as he knew she would. Arak resented the seriousness with which his wife treated her viewer’s reports, although he accepted gratefully the extra credits that supplemented his meagre wages as a worker in the Zeiton Ore division of Mine Tech.
‘Anything to eat?’ he asked, wearily turning away from the seemingly all-pervasive image of Jondar’s fear radiating from the screen. Etta made no reply. ‘My ration, where is it?’
Etta, absorbed in the quick cutting of camera angles between the clicking Random Laser Beam Emitter and the growing consternation of Jondar, jabbed a finger in the general direction of their food locker.
Arak sighed, trying to remember a time when his wife would serve food to him. Before viewer’s reports, he decided, though not before compulsory television. Arak could not recall a time when the wall screen had not been a constant companion to his home life.
‘I’ll get it myself then.’ His voice with its hint of reproach goaded Etta instantly.
‘Do that and shut up while you’re about it!’
As Arak rummaged about in the almost empty food locker Etta leaned forward in her chair. Tensely she took up her view data pen and prepared to record every last detail of the rebel Jondar’s death.
The beam would strike where? Jondar desperately calculated the odds against a laser beam streaming towards his left-hand side for a third consecutive time. Almost too tired to decide anything on a logical basis any more, he fought back a desire to slump and surrender to a moment of searing pain followed by sweet oblivion. Resolutely he gazed into the revolving chamber of the Laser Beam Emitter that stood opposite him. The chamber slowed; the clicking of its random aim programme completed its cycle. Jondar gambled on another left-side beam and hurled himself to the right. The metal chains restrained him cruelly but the bolt of force bored into the pitted rock behind, hardly causing him anything more than a painful memory of previous more narrow escapes.
Sobbing with relief Jondar slumped down, head hanging, heart jumping with gratitude for being allowed to live for a few precious minutes more.
‘Those chains are too slack,’ a voice rasped behind Bax. Startled, the technician turned to see the battered features of the Chief Officer staring at Jondar on the main screen.
‘Yes, Chief, they must be.’
‘See they’re tightened. We mustn’t bore our audience. Survival has its interest only for a limited term of viewer attention. They must see the rebel obliterated soon. See to it.’
‘Yes, Chief.’ Bax saluted the all-powerful Chief Officer.
‘But adjust the chain off-camera. There’s notice of a vote-in later tonight, isn’t there?’
Bax checked his programme sheet.
‘Report of the negotiations between the Governor and the Galatron Mining Corporation?’
‘That’s it. Do it then so the viewers won’t know why Jondar’s luck has run out so abruptly.’
The Chief turned away, the screens’ blue light reflecting from the skin of his completely shaven skull. Bax watched him go. Although he believed Jondar deserving of death he disliked shortening the chains and the odds against the rebel’s life, but trained to obey, he reached for the microphone switch that would connect him to the guards’ HQ within the Punishment Dome.
‘Prisoner survived. Equals previous best time of escaping obliteration.’ Etta neatly completed the sentence as Arak angrily contemplated a small can without a label or anything else that might indicate what kind of food it contained.
‘Is this all there is?’ Arak tossed the can to Etta who caught it neatly.
‘Only workfeed I could get.’
Arak snorted in derision. ‘It wouldn’t fill a clinker mole’s belly let alone a working man’s.’
His wife shrugged. ‘It’s the shortages. Maybe the Governor will explain; there’s to be a punch-in vote tonight.’
For Arak this was the final irritation of the day. ‘Voting, voting. This Governor calls a punch-in vote every time he wants to change his trousers … gimme . .!’
Etta handed the can back to Arak without immediate comment but, being a supporter of the present Governor, she was unable to resist asking ‘What will the next Governor do better?’
Struggling to open the workfeed tin, Arak only muttered, ‘Everything … anything …’
The top of the can finally gave under pressure, peeling back to reveal a dark mass of protein, the origin of which was not easily identifiable.
‘Ugh! What is this supposed to be, Etta?’
‘Her at food-dole couldn’t say. Seems factory ran out of labels.’
Arak lifted the tin nearer to his nostrils.
‘Cor … I can’t eat this … it smells like the leavings of a sand slug.’
Etta stood up, her hand eagerly reaching out for the tin of food.
Arak, pleased that at last he could thwart his wife in some little thing, grinned back at her.
‘I’ll keep it to chuck at the screen when your beloved Governor comes on beggin’ my vote!’
Etta regarded her husband with an expression of prim reproof.
‘Attacking Comm Tech property can bring loss of viewing rights. Way you’re thinking, Arak, you’ll soon be in that one’s place …’ With a jerk of her head, Etta directed Arak’s attention towards Jondar who was still slumped with exhaustion in his chains. Seeing her husband’s tremor of fear Etta continued, ‘Like to see how long you’d last in the Dome; not even survive the first mind-distort test, you.’
‘Living with you, Etta, prepares me to put up with anything.’
Suddenly the wall screen became blank. Disconcerted, both of them waited for the familiar logo of Comm Tech to appear. When it did they both relaxed, feeling somehow that everything was all right in their world once again. From the wall speaker the gloomy national anthem of Varos began its slow military march. Arak knew what that meant: a broadcast by the Governor with a compulsory vote to follow.
Without quite understanding why, Arak began to rail at the wall screen with its huge stylised letter ‘V’ that dominated their cell-like room.
‘Why have they stopped sending pictures from the Dome? Pathetic; when did they last show something worth watching? When did we last see a decent execution!’
‘Last week,’ said Etta, evenly.
‘No.’
‘Yes,’ Etta insisted, ‘the blind man.’
‘That was a repeat.’
‘It wasn’t. You’re thinking of that infiltrator; and he wasn’t blind, not at the beginning …’
Arak yawned. ‘Yes, he was … anyway … I’m tired, think I’ll go to my bunk.’
‘You can’t do that,’ Etta said as she reached for a metal box placed beneath her chair and started to remove two voting transmitter units, one marked Yes and the other No. ‘You can’t go to sleep yet: we got to vote later.’
‘Do it for me,’ Arak yawned again. Horrified, Etta turned from the voting transmitters.
‘You want Pol Corps calling here? Do you, Arak?’
Amused by his wife’s obvious fear, Arak smiled easily. ‘How could they know it wasn’t me voting, eh?’
Etta’s reply slackened the grin on Arak’s mouth. ‘I’d tell them,’ she said with a determination that Arak found quite chilling.
The TARDIS, in a limbo of time and space, was without movement. Inside the console room the Doctor hunched down beside a roundel, his arm immersed in a serpent’s nest of multi-coloured wirings. With a sudden flourish he extricated his arm, slammed the roundel shut, stood up, and with a shout of triumph addressed the patiently waiting Peri.
‘That’s it!’
Unimpressed, Peri regarded the Doctor dourly.
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘How can you? I haven’t told you what it is I’ve done!’
Worriedly, Peri took a backward step.
‘You sound too confident. I really don’t think I want to know.’
‘What? Why?’ The Doctor blinked in bewilderment.
‘Every time you sound confident nowadays, Doctor, something awful seems to happen!’
Like what, the Doctor wondered, scratching his head. Then for some reason he shouted at the startled girl, ‘What exactly do you mean!’
Warily, Peri watched the Doctor. Since his recent regeneration the process of stabilisation of his personality seemed uneven, to say the least. With what she hoped sounded like sweet reason she recounted the incidents of their recent journey.
‘Since we left Telos you’ve caused three electrical fires, a total power failure and a near collision with a storm of asteroids.’
‘I’ve never said I was perfect,’ the Doctor muttered sullenly.
‘No,’ sighed Peri. ‘But before each and every accident you’ve said in a loud confident voice, “That’s it!” And to be honest, Doc, I’m thinking more and more about returning to America to complete my studies.’
‘Right – that’s where you’ll go!’ The Doctor activated the TARDIS’s controls and adjusted the coordinates to the twentieth century on Earth. A low hum came from the TARDIS as the central rotor started to oscillate.
Peri frowned angrily; she hadn’t expected her threat to be translated into such instant action.
‘Oh, you’re the most inconsistent and intolerant man I’ve ever met.’
Intent on steering the TARDIS, the Doctor pondered the accusation before exploding with a squall of indignation: ‘Intolerant, me? Intolerant.’
Peri backed away. ‘Why are you shouting?’
‘Because …’ The Doctor paused, frowning at the rising column before him. ‘… because there’s something wrong.’
‘What?’
The Doctor cocked an ear first one way then the other.
‘You look like a hound dog listening for its master, Doctor. Why? What’s up?’
‘Sshh … there’s something amiss in the power units.’
‘Still, after all the work you’ve done?’
The Doctor nodded sadly. ‘It’s in the one area I didn’t check …’
‘Oh, great. But aren’t there emergency circuits or something?’
Preoccupied, the Doctor checked a dial worriedly. ‘Yes … but it seems as if that function is about to become defunct too …’
Peri refused to believe that the situation could be as serious as the Doctor’s anxious pose would indicate.
‘You can do something, Doc, I’m sure.’
The Doctor scanned the warning instruments that flashed and blinked before him. Finally he nodded sagely.
‘I know what this is, Peri.’
‘What?’
‘A conundrum wrapped in a dilemma.’
‘What does that mean?’ asked Peri in bewilderment.
‘Oh, just that we may well be marooned within this pocket of space.’
‘For how long?’ Peri said, expecting an hour at best, a day at worst. But the Doctor spread his hands in a hopeless resigned gesture and said with utter certainty:
‘Evermore.’
Alone in his office the Governor wondered how many more days he might survive as ruler of Varos, given that the rules of the constitution demanded that he die once his popularity with his television audience had faded.
The Governor’s head, with its mane of yellow hair, sagged against the back of his chair in an apathy of despair. Above him the screen of the Human Cell Disintegrator reflected dully the lights of the office. The Governor knew how quickly the HCD device could activate and pour down rays of pain and destruction if the people of Varos voted against him; alternatively, when they balloted in his favour warm golden rays cascaded down, bringing energy, optimism and new determination to govern wisely.
Now the Governor was exhausted after surviving a sequence of three losing vote-ins. He wondered how he could find the strength to carry on battling for a fair price on the sale of the mineral known as Zeiton-7.
Into his office, carried by two burly black-helmeted bodyguards, came the negotiator of Galatron Consolidated, the alien Sil from the planet Thoros-Beta, fresh from his mud bath and eager to resume discussion.
Wearily, the Governor hauled himself upright and bowed to his opponent who raised a claw in indifferent acknowledgement.
Leaf-green in colour and perched in his water tank, Sil was a member of a species of mutant amphibians whose cunning intelligence was hampered by an immobile body that required frequent watering in order to breathe. The features of Sil’s pug face were now clenched angrily, and the scaly crescent that ran from between his rheumy eyes to the back of his head bristled with impatience as he glared up at the Governor.
‘You a reasonable man are,’ the faulty translational voice box slung on his plated chest crackled out. ‘Lower the price of your Zeiton ore!’
‘My people deserve a fair rate for their labour,’ the Governor replied with icy politeness.
‘Who else will buy from you if my corporation withdraws its contract? You are not a rich planet; Zeiton is all you have to sell.’
It was the truth. There had been some success in exporting to other worlds video recordings of the grisly happenings within the Punishment Dome but not enough sales to replace the loss of such a vital market as that for Zeiton-7. Both negotiators looked impassively at each other. The Governor decided to bluff it out.
‘Then we will have to sell elsewhere.’
A cackle of laughter burst from Sil’s mouth. Its eerie sound brought in the Chief Officer from the adjoining communications centre.
‘You are agreed then,’ he started.
‘No!’ Sil’s laughter became an abrupt squeal of anger. ‘No, no … no! My patience exhausted is!’
The Chief addressed the Governor politely and firmly: ‘The people are anxious for a decision on the new price of our product, sir.’
Impatiently, the Governor took a step away. ‘Delay my broadcast.’
As custodian of the constitution of Varos the Chief Officer held a unique position. In some respects he had greater power than the Governor himself. Sensing this, Sil addressed the Chief in a voice of pained sincerity.
‘Already I have beyonded my authority to please this Governor.’