The Nightmare of Black Island (novel)
Publisher's summary
On a lonely stretch of Welsh coastline a fisherman is killed by a hideous creature from beneath the waves. When the Doctor and Rose arrive, they discover a village where the children are plagued by nightmares, and the nights are ruled by monsters.
The villagers suspect that ancient industrialist Nathanial Morton is to blame, but the Doctor has suspicions of his own.
Who are the ancient figures that sleep in the old priory? What are the monsters that prowl the woods after sunset? What is the light that glows in the disused lighthouse on Black Island?
As the children's nightmares get worse, The Doctor and Rose discover an alien plot to resurrect an ancient evil...
Characters
Summary
Rose has a nightmare in the TARDIS about a fisherman being killed by a hideous monster. The Doctor traces the source of her nightmare to present-day, on a Welsh island called Ynys Du (literally 'Black Island'). There, they find a dead fisherman, the same one that died in Rose's nightmare.
The Ynys Du Village has been haunted by monsters each night, and all the children are plagued by nightmares. While the Doctor discovers a massive psychic transmitter in Black Island's lighthouse, Rose joins a gang of kids, who persuade her and a little girl, Ali, to do the ultimate dare - to venture down a dark tunnel. The tunnel opens up into a court yard to an old house. While exploring the cellar, Rose is dragged off by alien Cynrogs, leaving Ali hiding in the shadows.
Rose is strapped down to her back on a bed, and conected to machinery. The Cynrog send her to sleep and using her mind, collect information on what she knows. Some time lator, after the Cynrogs have left, Ali comes along and, waking Rose, frees her from the bed. The two girls escape.
The psychic transmitter is causing the children in the village to have nightmares, then it extracts the monsters from their nightmares and manifests them in physical form (which explains why the monsters only appear at night). However, the Cynrog are using the children's monsters to create a suitable body for their reincarnated war god, Balor.
Balor's spaceship crash-landed on the Ynys Du coastline in the 1930s, and Balor died in the explosion. However, eight children witnessed Balor's death, and a segment of Balor's mind each passed into their own. The Cynrog have been gathering the children (who are now old) to restore Balor's consciousness (one of them is Nathanial Morton, who owns the nearby rectory).
However, the Cynrog attempt to restore Balor using only seven of the eight fragments, and so Balor becomes wildly unstable and kills most of the Cynrog. However, it is revealled that Morton has turned into Balor, and now intends to rule the world. However, Rose reverses the psychic transmitter's polarity, so instead of using the children's nightmares, it locks on to the psychospore of the adults of the village, and since they don't dream about monsters (instead, things like interest rates, parking spaces, etc), Morton-Balor loses his physical form and dies.
References
- The Doctor quotes 'Jabberwocky' while walking through the woods for the first time.
- The Nestene Consciousness, a Raxacoricofallapatorian and a Dalek all make cameo appearances.
Notes
to be added
Continuity
to be added
Timeline
- This story occurs after DW: The Idiot's Lantern
- This story occurs before DWAM: The Germ War
Audiobook Release
- Read by Anthony Head
External links
- The Doctor Who Reference Guide detailed synopsis of The Nightmare of Black Island
- The Whoniverse Discontinuity Guide entry for The Nightmare of Black Island
