Damaged Goods (novel)
- You may be looking for the audio adaptation.
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 was notably 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
The N-Form is an ancient Gallifreyan weapon, but this one is damaged. "There's a piece of N-form in every gramme of coke" The N-form has been reactivated for a future war. They were built for the war against the Great Vampires, so the damaged N-form has found a vampiric waveform, the boy Gabriel Tyler and his long lost twin brother that his mother gave away.
Mrs Jericho has adopted Gabriel's twin, Steven. Gabriel is draining life from Steven and creating the vampiric waveform as the boys have psi powers. Mrs Jericho believes it to be unfair that Steven is the dying brother and thinks saying that is dying and seeks out Gabriel. the N-form now running a mock taking what's left of the ex-drug dealer "the capper" and seek out Mrs Jericho and Gabriel.
Mrs Jericho has a Lithopedian: a "stone baby", a rare phenomenon which occurs most commonly when a foetus dies during an abdominal pregnancy, is too large to be reabsorbed by the body, and calcifies on the outside, shielding the mother's body from the dead tissue of the baby and preventing infection. This is Mrs Jericho's un-born child that she has always wanted and with the psi power of Steven has been giving this stone baby life driving Mrs Jericho insane. As she is the centre of the vampiric waveform, the N-form comes after her. She becomes part of the N-form and starts to destroy the Quadrant estate and activates the attack. Every one who has taken the cocaine has a engram on the brain which act as a "dimensional vent, through which the N-Form can the physical world, shoving itself into the brain and taking over. As a shaft of metal is working its way through the brains of the cocaine uses, the only why she can be stopped is by the Doctor activating the shutdown with the use of the Patrexian numbers.
But to get to the data core of the N-Form, the Doctor must take some cocaine so he has a engram to connect to the N-Form. Activating the shutdown, Mrs Jericho finally gives birth to her child. The N-form is shutdown but at a price. All but Gabriel Tyler are killed as well most of the people on the Quadrant estate and ever user of the cocaine. Doctor travels back to the Christmas Eve when Winnie gave away Steven, and to when Bev looked down at the Doctor when she was younger.
Characters
- Seventh Doctor
- Roz Forrester
- Chris Cwej
- David Daniels
- Winnie Tyler
- Bev Tyler
- Gabriel Tyler
- Steven Jericho
- Eva Jericho
- Simon Jenkins
- Jacob Tyler
- John Tyler
- Dr. James Greco
Worldbuilding
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.
Food and beverages
- The Doctor drinks water with a slice of lemon in 1980s New York whilst holidaying with his companions.
- The Doctor and his companions drink "nasty coffee" at the Angel Square Café in London.
- Chris gets drunk on melon wine in New York.
Notes
- This novel was written by Russell T Davies and features a council estate and a family named Tyler, which is similar to the Tyler family of the TV series. The surname Tyler is one used often by Davies throughout his writing career.
- In an interview on Novel Adventures Volume 2, Davies cites the musical Blood Brothers as an influence on the novel. The musical focuses on two brothers separated at birth, one who grew up in an urban background and the other who grew up to be well-off; this is similar to the relationship between Gabriel Tyler and Steven Jericho in the novel.
- While the fire in apartment 11 is being put out, the Doctor speaks with Mrs. Hearn. He tells her at one point "Somewhere in the universe, the tea’s getting cold,". This is also the penultimate line spoken during the run of the original series from 1963 to 1989 in the final serial TV: Survival.
- Gabriel likes the television program "Why Don't You..?". The full name of the program is "Why Don't You Just Switch Off Your Television Set and Go and Do Something Less Boring Instead?". Russel T Davies, the author of this novel and later producer of the revived series of Doctor Who from 2005 onward was the director and producer of this very same television program in the late 80s and early 90s.
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)
- The Doctor tells Mrs. Hearn during the apartment 11 fire "Somewhere in the universe, the tea’s getting cold," something he told Ace too. (TV: Survival)
- Harry Sullivan is mentioned here, and described as being the "former head of MI5" in 2015.
- Roz asks the Doctor to confirm whether he once lived on Earth himself for a time. The Doctor does confirm this, saying he was exiled here. The Second Doctor was forced to regenerate by the Time Lords into the Third Doctor and was forced to live in exile on Earth for many years in the 1970s, during which he worked for UNIT. (TV: The War Games, Spearhead from Space, et al.)
- The Osirans are mentioned as potential creators of the weapon inhabiting the Capper's corpse. (TV: Pyramids of Mars)
External links
- Damaged Goods at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
- The Discontinuity Guide to: Damaged Goods at The Whoniverse
- The Cloister Library: Damaged Goods
