Falls the Shadow (novel)
Falls the Shadow was the thirty-second New Adventures novel featuring the Seventh Doctor, Ace and Bernice Summerfield. It was author Daniel O'Mahony's only contribution to the Virgin New Adventures range.
Publisher's summary
"We are deranged. We are psychopaths, sociopaths, up the garden path," said Tanith. "We are mad, and you are trapped with us."
The TARDIS is imprisoned in a house called Shadowfell, where a man is ready to commence the next phase of an experiment that will remake the world.
A stranger dressed in grey watches from a hillside, searching for the sinister powers growing within the house. A killer appears from the surrounding forest, determined to carry out her deadly instructions. In the cellar, something lingers, observing and influencing events, waiting to take on flesh and emerge. And trapped in alien darkness, the last survivor of a doomed race mourns for the lost planet Earth.
Plot
Prologue: Qxeleq awakes to find her world dead, the Hive empty and all six million people, including her mate and the embryos in her womb, gone. She is surrounded in darkness, unable to scream as she doesn't have a mouth. She wonders if she actually did survive the apocalypse.
A man in grey watches a house called the Shadowfell, encountering a girl named Rose, looking for her brother. He sneaks into the basement, tracking an anomaly, and finds her brother just before he dies, having been tortured by two balls of light. They attack and kill the Grey Man. A woman dreaming in darkness decides to call herself "Jane Page" this time.
The TARDIS travelers find the ship has been plunged into darkness, but things like life support still work, and the ship is still moving towards an unknown destination. A blinding light emerges from the time rotor and fills the console room. The TARDIS materializes in the basement of the house. The two lights know what it is and are excited.
- to be added
Characters
- Seventh Doctor
- Ace
- Bernice Summerfield
- Gabriel and Tanith
- Charles Moore Wedderburn
- Grey Man
- Harry Truman
- Jane Page
- Jeremy Winterdawn
- Justin Cranleigh
- Laura
- Sandra Winterdawn
- Qxeleq
References
Biology
- Bernice loses two pints of blood when she's attacked by vampire orchids.
- The metahedron caused several mutations of animals and plants in the jungles around it, including insects with(out) extra wings, legs, and heads, and the vampire blooms.
The Doctor
- Theta Sigma is not the Doctor's name, but identifies him uniquely amongst the Time Lords.
- The Doctor mentions the Eye of Harmony and the Daleks.
- Benny's death caused the Doctor to consider leaving Ace in 1994 and returning home to Gallifrey.
Individuals
- Ace was born in North London in the 1970s.
- The Doctor has met Harry Truman and Oscar Wilde.
- Qxeleq is the last survivor of the Mind.
Psychology
- Time Lords call true madness "the Dark Design".
Locations
- The TARDIS exists outside of the real universe and so Gabriel and Tanith cannot enter it.
- The first humanoids evolved on a world 30 billion light-years from Earth.
- Cathedral is a metacultural engine programmed to, essentially, introduce "greyness" into places where the duality of black and white persist. It is ruled by the Mandelbrot Set after being created by the Grey Man.
Concepts
- Winterdawn is experimenting with interstitial time based on notes by a Professor Carl Thascales, who died after driving his car into a wall, his body burned beyond all recognition.
- Gabriel and Tanith are the suffering of the universe, but are not (yet) responsible for all of its ills. They draw their power from the structure of reality.
- There is a Gallifreyan quote that "There is always still-time, and there is always flowing-time."
Notes
- A prelude to this novel was published in DWM 218.
- The title is a reference to "The Hollow Men", a poem by T.S. Eliot.
Continuity
- Interstitial time was experimented with by the Master. (TV: The Time Monster)
- The Doctor has met the Irish playwright and author Oscar Wilde. (AUDIO: Beautiful Things)
- The Doctor mentions the Eye of Harmony. (TV: The Deadly Assassin, TV: Doctor Who (1996))
- Gabriel and Tanith show Bernice her guilt for letting people die in the transit system. (PROSE: Transit)
- "Theta Sigma" is closely guarded secret of the Doctor's, yet he shared it with Trevor Sigma on Terra Alpha, although telling him may not have been significant, compared to someone like the Grey Man. (TV: The Happiness Patrol)
- Ace recalls her encounter with Melanie Bush. (TV: Dragonfire)
- Ace asks the Doctor in the end "We haven't done good, have we?", alluding to her question "We did good, didn't we?" after defeating the Daleks in 1963. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks)
- C. Moore Wedderburn is the author of The Trail of the Black Orchid: A botanical and zoological guide to the journeys of George Cranleigh. (TV: Black Orchid)
- Just as Fenric could pull Ingiger from an alternate Earth, Gabriel and Tanith pull Qxeleq and Jane Page from alternate Earths to Shadowfell. (TV: The Curse of Fenric)
External links
- Falls the Shadow at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
- The Discontinuity Guide to: Falls the Shadow at The Whoniverse
- Prelude to Falls the Shadow as published in DWM #218
