‘Doctor Who: Damaged Goods’ – Russell T. Davies (Doctor Who Books)


This is going to be a short post as today has been rather horrible and I just want to get it out of the way, go to bed and pretend that it never happened. Because hiding from problems is always a good idea… 😉

There was a whole chunk of the nineties that was covered in Doctor Who books (‘The New Adventures’ mostly but some others from BBC books as well) and I completely missed out on all of them I think. At the time, I suspect that I thought that they would run along the same lines as the Target novelisations (albeit new stories, just very simply told though) and decided to give that a miss. Shows what I know but I’ll get to that in a bit.

Doctor Who fans being what they are, I never came across a ‘New Adventures’ title after that, until a few months ago when I saw ‘Damaged Goods’ in the British Heart Foundation shop. Of course I grabbed it but it wasn’t until just before Christmas that I finally got round to giving it a go. And I’m glad that I did…

The year is 1987 and there's a deadly new narcotic on the streets of London. As part of their investigations the Doctor and his companions Chris and Roz move into the Quadrant, a rundown housing estate. An ancient alien menace has been unleashed, a menace somehow linked to a local gang leader known as The Capper, a charmed young boy called Gabriel and his mother Winnie, the enigmatic Frei Foundation, and Eva Jericho, a woman driven to the brink of madness. As London descends into an apocalyptic nightmare, the doctor must uncover the truth about the residents of the Quadrant and a desperate bargain made one dark Christmas Eve...

You remember the other day when I was saying how the ‘Seventh Doctor’ stories, that I’ve seen, are very dark? Well, if ‘Damaged Goods’ was anything to go by, so are the New Adventures. We’re talking all sorts here and that’s before we get anywhere near the alien menace. ‘Damaged Goods’ is drugs, dark family secrets, being gay in the 1980s (bloody hell…) and just life on a grim council estate. This might be the bleakest Doctor Who story that you ever come across, it’s a real lesson about how sometimes, the ‘happy ending’ is that things didn’t end up even worse. Because in ‘Damaged Goods’, it really could have ended up a lot worse, especially with a threat from the Doctor’s own past lurking in one of the flats. It’s a book where you finish it and just want to cuddle a puppy or tell your kids that you love them.

And all through this, the Doctor lurks and broods, trying to work out what is happening before it’s too late. And he fails, to a degree, which makes for a change. It’s funny that for someone who isn’t human, we all like to see a more human side to the Doctor, in this case how he deals with failure. He deals with it, is the short answer, although you can’t help but think that it really gets to him, deep down. He’s holding back the darkness but he’s only one man and that’s why I love him in this book, it’s proper hero stuff.

Everyone here is ‘Damaged Goods’ and it’s the exploration of what you do, with what you have, that makes this book work so well. I’m glad I read it, now I just need to ring up my kids and tell them that I love them… 😉 

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