Nightshade (novel)

Nightshade
Doctor:	[[doctor::Seventh Doctor First Doctor (flashback)]]
Companion(s):	Ace
Main enemy:	The Sentience
Main setting:	Crook Marsham, England, UK, Earth, 23 to 25 December 1968 Crook Marsham, the Kingdom of England, Earth, 1644 Gallifrey, the Rassilon Era
Key crew
Publisher:	[[publisher::Virgin Publishing]]
Writer:	Mark Gatiss
Release details
Release number:	8
Release date:	August 1992
Format:	Paperback Book, 231 Pages
ISBN:	ISBN 0-426-20376-3
Virgin New Adventures
← Previous	Cat's Cradle: Witch Mark
Next →	Love and War

You may wish to consult Nightshade for other, similarly-named pages.

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.

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Ace has never known the Doctor so withdrawn and melancholic.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

• The Seventh Doctor
• Ace
• Edmund Trevithick
• Jack Prudhoe
• Lawrence Yeadon
• Robin Yeadon
• Vijay Degun
• Professor Thomas Edward Hawthorne
• Betty Yeadon
• Jill Mason
• Constable George Lowcock
• Abbot Mervyn Winstanley
• Holly Kidd
• Christine Cooper
• Tim Medway
• Billy Coote
• Win Prudhoe
• The Sentience
• Oliver Cromwell

References

The Doctor

• The Doctor thinks of Susan almost every day now.
• The Doctor needs help on his missions and cannot 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.

Locations

• Marsham Castle was built in 1156.

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 (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

• PROSE: 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 PROSE: Love and War.
• PROSE: Happy Endings reveals that Robin Yeadon married Ace's mother Audrey Dudman.
• This story suggests that Susan Foreman was not the Doctor’s biological granddaughter. It was later confirmed in the novel PROSE: Lungbarrow.
• This story takes place contemporaneously with several sequences of PROSE: The Left-Handed Hummingbird in which the Doctor and Ace likewise visit England in December 1968.

Associated Images

The e-book version published by the BBC on their website included several illustrations by Daryl Joyce. Titles of illustrations are as they were on BBC's site.

• 

  E-Book cover. In style with the Past Doctor Adventures.

• 

  Vijay investigates

• 

  Tertiary console room

• 

  Rising from the deep

• 

  Winstanley's study

• 

  Escape from danger

• 

  Medway in York

• 

  The tar baby

• 

  Attacked!

• 

  Billy

• 

  Beyond the grave

• 

  Susan

External links

• BBC Website Nightshade E-book and chapter notes
• Nightshade at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
• The Discontinuity Guide to: Nightshade at The Whoniverse
• Bewildering References Guide to Nightshade
• Prelude to Nightshade as published in DWM #190