Nightshade (novel)

Written by Mark Gatiss, Nightshade is the eighth instalment in the series of Virgin Publishing's Doctor Who paperback novels. A New Adventure, it features the Seventh Doctor and Ace.

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Publisher's summary

I HAVE DONE ENOUGH! Ace has never known the Doctor so withdrawn and melancholic. He is avoiding her company, seeking solace in the forgotten rooms and labyrinthine passages of his ancient time machine. Perhaps he will find the peace he yearns for on his favourite planet, Earth, in the second half of the twentieth century - in the isolated village of Crook Marsham, to be precise, in 1968, the year of peace, love and understanding. But one by one the villagers are being killed. The Doctor has to act, but for once he seems helpless, indecisive, powerless. What are the signals from space that are bombarding the radio telescope on the moor? What is the significance of the local legends from the Civil War? And what is the aeons-old power that the Doctor is unable to resist

Plot

to be added

Characters

References

The Doctor

The Doctor thinks of Susan almost every day now.
The Doctor needs help on his missions and can't allow Ace to go.

Individuals

Ace's parents met on the dance floor of a sweaty nightclub.
Ace decides to leave the Doctor for Robin Yeadon. The Doctor deliberately lands on an alien planet, unable to let Ace go.
Robin Yeadon waits months for Ace to return.

Psychology

Ace kisses Robin Yeadon to calm his hysteria.

Species

The Sentience absorbs the energy from Ace's Nitro-9.

Science

References to space (or through the radio telescope): Andromeda, Bellatrix, black hole, supernova, galaxy.

Television series

The BBC produced Nightshade (Television series).
Edmund Trevithick starred in Nightshade from 1953 to 1958.

Notes

First Doctor Who novel for actor-writer Mark Gatiss, who would write and appear in several of the independent spin-off productions before finding fame in the TV series The League of Gentlemen. In the 2000s and 2010s, he would write episodes for the Doctor Who revival and play Richard Lazarus in The Lazarus Experiment.
Characters named Dr Shearsmith and Mr Pemberton are mentioned (but do not appear), a possible reference to Gatiss' fellow The League of Gentlemen co-creators and co-stars Reece Shearsmith and Victor Pemberton.
The character of Professor Nightshade was inspired by Bernard Quatermass.
A prelude to this novel was published in DWM 190.

Continuity

NA: Set Piece explains why the Doctor's shoulder area is such a tender place.
The Doctor and Ace's interaction in this novel explains some of the events in NA: Love and War.
NA: Happy Endings reveals that Robin Yeadon married Ace's mum.
This story suggests that Susan Foreman was not the Doctor’s biological granddaughter. It was later confirmed in the novel NA: Lungbarrow.
This story takes place contemporaneously with several sequences of NA: The Left-Handed Hummingbird in which the Doctor and Ace likewise visit England in December 1968.