Damaged Goods (novel)
Damaged Goods is the fifty-fifth Virgin New Adventures novel, published in 1996. It features the Seventh Doctor, Chris Cwej and Roz Forrester. The novel is notable in as that it was written by Russell T Davies, nearly a decade before he revived the Doctor Who television franchise as executive producer.
Publisher's summary
"Wherever this cocaine has travelled, it hasn't gone alone. Death has been its attendant. Death in a remarkably violent and inelegant form."
The Seventh Doctor, Chris and Roz, arrive at the Quadrant, a troubled council block in Thatcher's Britain. There's a new drug on the streets, a drug that's killing to a plan. Somehow, the very ordinary people of the Quadrant are involved. And so, amidst the growing chaos, a bizarre trio moves into number 43.
The year is 1987: a dead drug dealer has risen from the grave, and an ancient weapon is concealed beneath human tragedy. But the Doctor soon discovers that the things people do for their children can be every bit as deadly as any alien menace - as he uncovers the link between a special child, an obsessive woman, and a desperate bargain made one dark Christmas Eve.
Plot
something happens ?
Characters
- Seventh Doctor
- Roz Forrester
- Chris Cwej
- David Daniels
- Winnie Tyler
- Bev Tyler
- Gabriel Tyler
- Simon Jenkins
References
Culture
- Chris wears an earring in his right ear, unknowingly identifying with gay culture (1980s gay culture dictated that the right was the "gay" ear).
Diseases and illnesses
- Twenty years after meeting Chris, David contracts HIV1.
Gallifreyan technology
- N-Forms exist in a pocket dimension.
Individuals
- Chris has sex with David.
- Roz smokes cigarettes (as her 30th century metabolism will not allow the cigarette to cause any harm to her body).
- Harry Sullivan is still alive in 2015.
- A man in Edwardian clothing is featured at the end of the novel and is implied to be the Eighth Doctor.
Psychic powers
- Gabriel Tyler is a low-level psychic.
Species
- Haemovores went extinct as their evolution fed on itself.
Technology
- Tribophysics literally means the science of interacting surfaces in relative motion and dates back to the Time of Legend on Gallifrey.
Time Lords
- Patrexes are a Gallifreyan Chapter of artists, aesthetes and shallow Epicureans with pretentious minds. They think there's something beautiful about the death of suns.
Notes
- This novel written by new series creator Russell T Davies and features a council estate and a family named Tyler, a similarity to the Tyler family of the TV series. The surname Tyler is one used often by Davies in many of his works throughout his writing career.
Continuity
- Events of this story lead into PROSE: So Vile a Sin.
- The Doctor mentions an anti-Dalek weapon he built during the Shoreditch Incident. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks)
- Harry Sullivan is mentioned here, and described as being the "former head of MI5" in 2015.
External links
- Damaged Goods at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
- The Discontinuity Guide to: Damaged Goods at The Whoniverse
- The Cloister Library: Damaged Goods
