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Introduction - Preface by Lance Parkin

Conservative choices
  Fans in high places

I\x92ve heard the same story from three independent sources. That doesn\x92t make it true, but it makes it true enough that a newspaper editor would be more than happy to run it.

On May 1st 1997, on the night of the General Election, Tim Collins, newly-elected Conservative MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale and Doctor Who fan (he\x92d had letters published in fanzine DWB) sat in his local town hall, oblivious to the activity around him, frantically reading The Dying Days, \x91because he wanted to have read all the New Adventures under a Tory administration\x92.

Over the years I\x92ve talked to hundreds of people, nearly all of whom remember exactly where they were when they finished it, some of whom have admitted to bunking off school or work to do so. I think, though, that Tim Collins wins the prize for best Dying Days related anecdote. He is now the shadow cabinet office spokesman and vice-chairman of the Conservative party, and he\x92s on Sky News as I type this, calling for Stephen Byers\x92 resignation.

Licence revoked
  The end of the New Adventures

So \x85 the basics. The Dying Days was the sixty-first and last New Adventure published by Virgin Publishing. Virgin\x92s licence to produce Doctor Who novels hadn\x92t been extended because the year before the TV Movie starring Paul McGann had come out, and the BBC were keen to bring the books in-house.

At first, this was because there was a prospect of a TV series \x96 but even when that evaporated, the BBC recognised that Virgin had identified a niche in the market, and the books were nicely profitable (and just as important in an unpredictable market, had very steady sales).

The Dying Days was the first original novel to feature the eighth Doctor. It was originally published in April 1997.

Selling fast
  Out of stock before release

Because it was both a \x91last\x92 and a \x91first\x92 book, it sold very quickly. The Dying Days was out of stock before the official release date. That\x92s led to reports and persistent rumours that the book had a lower print run.

No, no, a thousand times no: the book completely sold out, so I know exactly what the print run was. The irony is that it\x92s easily my biggest-selling Who novel \x96 it sold more than Just War, Cold Fusion, The Infinity Doctors and Father Time. And it\x92s ironic, because for five years, now, second hand copies of The Dying Days have changed hands for a small fortune.

They\x92ve sold on ebay for over fifty times the cover price. There are plenty of copies out there, but the people that have copies cling on to them. So it\x92s rare that one comes up for sale.

Something special
  Creating an 'event' book

I didn\x92t expect that when I got commissioned, but I knew it would be an \x91event\x92 book, and it had to be special. The editor of the range, Rebecca Levene (who for reasons best known to herself prefers to be called \x91Bex\x92), and I thrashed out some of the details.

With almost every Who book, the editor will give the author a couple of things that \x91have to happen\x92 \x96 usually, these aren\x92t major plot points, just things to bind the range together. When I wrote Just War, I had to put a couple of hints in foreshadowing the death of Roz, one of the Doctor\x92s companions. With Father Time, there were elements of the \x91Earth arc\x92, like the physical state of the TARDIS.

The Dying Days was, essentially, a long list of \x91requirements\x92. It had to both be a fitting end to a range and the pointer to a new future... futures, actually \x96 there was a new Doctor, but Virgin were continuing to publish books featuring Benny, and the book had to act as a showcase, maybe even an introduction, to her.

A view to a kill
  Would the Doctor survive?

At heart, the book was designed as an affirmation of what Doctor Who was in the mid-nineties. A hymn to the fact that the books had moved things on, that we\x92d left Doctor Who in a better state than we found it.

It was also a unique thing \x96 a \x91last Doctor Who\x92 story. A chance, like Dark Knight Returns or the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode All Good Things, to put a capstone on the legend. And I could kill him. This was one book where the Doctor might not make it.

Movie madness
  Shouting in a cupboard

Bex and I were also reacting against the TV Movie. I love the McGann movie. Bex was far less impressed. Both of us agreed it was a pretty poor \x91pilot\x92, in the sense that it didn\x92t really get across the essence of Doctor Who. But I saw some great ideas in there \x96 and I loved the visuals, the sense of scale, Doctor Who in the style of Coppola\x92s Dracula.

What it was missing could be summed up in one word: monsters. The threat was too abstract, the scale of the final confrontation \x96 two people shouting at each other in one of the bigger TARDIS cupboards \x96 was just not grand enough. This book was going to end in a pitched battle\x96 man versus an army of monsters. And the Doctor would get to demonstrate steel \x96 in the TV Movie, the Doctor\x92s a passive figure, someone who\x92s tied up, follows Grace around. You see the velvet glove, and it\x92s a lovely glove, but there\x92s no steel inside it.

Bex and I had a phone conversation where we agreed that the TV Movie should have been that typical Doctor Who plot: monsters invading contemporary London, using subtle ways at first, then an all out invasion. Then it struck me... in sixty previous New Adventures, that had never happened. Alien invasions, contemporary stories... but never the two together.

Bex didn\x92t believe it \x96 "No Future... that was set in the seventies", "Damaged Goods... no, wait, that was the eighties". We\x92d been banging on about how the TV Movie should have done something that the books had never done. And we agreed there and then that was going to be our story.

Origins
  Pertwee meets Tom Clancy

By happy chance, I\x92d been toying with a Pertwee Missing Adventure proposal a couple of years before, while I\x92d been waiting to hear back about Just War. The basic concept \x96 Pertwee UNIT story as Tom Clancy technothriller was just so fundamentally wrong that I could never get the book to work, but I did have a usable plot.

The book was called Cold War, and featured the Ice Warriors. In one page synopsis form, it\x92s almost exactly the same as The Dying Days, although it would have been a completely different book.

The Dying Days is also about the end of the New Adventures era, and the passing on of the torch. In 1995, just after I\x92d been commissioned to write Just War, I joked that we were in \x91the Rebecca Levene Golden Age of Doctor Who\x92.

No-one, least of all Bex, took the remark seriously. Five or six years on, the phrase pops up in internet discussion of the books completely unironically. There\x92s even a word for it: NAstalgia.

Other influences
  Links to War of the Worlds

The War of the Worlds was obviously a huge influence \x96 how could it fail to be, with Martians invading the Home Counties? Some of the chapter titles are the same, and almost all the original characters were named after places or people in Wells\x92 book. Both, for example, have an astronomer called Ogilvy.

Note that I do invert a few of the things from The War of the Worlds \x96 germs don\x92t kill the Martians in this, they\x92re working for them! I saw Independence Day when I was writing Chapter Seven. As you\x92ll see for yourselves.

The title took longer than the plot. All we could come up with were joke titles: Licence to Kill, Licence Revoked, The Morte D\x92Octor. We wanted something ominous, something that reflected the end of the New Adventures in fact as well as fiction. In the end, I decided to watch the Bond film Licence to Kill, partly out of sheer masochism, partly to pick up tips on how to kill a popular franchise. And there the title was, in the theme tune \x96 The Dying Days.

Bex and I had got a story and we had a title. Which was just as well, because the lead time for the book meant I only had five weeks to write it...