Read Doctor Who: Remembrance of the Daleks Online
Authors: Ben Aaronovitch,Nicholas Briggs,Terry Molloy
Doctor Who: Remembrance of the Daleks
Shoreditch, London, 1963. Two teachers follow an unnervingly knowledgeable schoolgirl to her home
– a blue police telephone box in the middle of a scrapyard. The old man whom the girl calls
‘grandfather’ is annoyed at the intrusion: there is something he has to do, and he has a premonition that he will be delayed for some time . . .
Six regenerations later the Doctor returns; and Ace, his travelling companion, sees London as it was before the Sixties started swinging – and long before she was born.
But a Grey Dalek is lurking in Foreman’s Yard; Imperial Daleks are appearing in the basement of Coal Hill School; and both factions want the Hand of Omega, the Remote Stellar Manipulator that the Doctor has left behind. Has the Doctor arrived in time to deprive the Daleks of the secret of time travel?
ISBN 0-426-20337-2
UK: £2.50 *AUSTRALIA: $5.95
CANADA: $6.25 NZ: $11.95
,-7IA4C6-caddhh-
*USA: $3.95
*RECOMMENDED PRICE
Science Fiction/TV Tie-in
DOCTOR WHO
REMEMBRANCE OF
THE
DALEKS
Based on the BBC television series by Ben Aaronovitch by arrangement with BBC Books, a division of BBC
Enterprises Ltd
Number 148 in the
Target Doctor Who Library
A TARGET BOOK
published by
The Paperback Division of
W. H. Allen & Co. PLC
A Target Book
Published in 1990
By the Paperback Division of
W.H. Allen & Co. Plc
Sekforde House, 175/9 St. John Street, London EC1V 4LL
Novelisation copyright © Ben Aaronovitch 1990
Original script copyright © Ben Aaronovitch 1989
‘Doctor Who’ series copyright © British Broadcasting Corporation 1989, 1990
The BBC producer of
Remembrance of the Daleks
was John Nathan-Turner
The director was Andrew Morgan
The role of the Doctor was played by Sylvester McCoy Typeset by Avocet Robinson, Buckingham Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading
ISBN 0 426 20337 2
A CIP catalogue record is available from the British Library
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed upon the subsequent purchaser.
To Andrew who opened the door,
and Anna who pushed me through it.
I, that am curtail’d of this fair proportion, Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, Deform’d, unfinish’d, sent before my time Into this breathing world, scarce half made up, And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me, as I halt by them; Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace, Have no delight to pass away the time.
Richard III, I, i
The old man had a shock of white hair pulled back from a broad forehead; startling eyes glittered in a severe high-cheekboned face. Although he was stooped when he walked, his slim body hinted at hidden strengths. Light from the streetlamps, blurred by the gathering mist, glinted in the facets of the blue gem set in the ring on his finger.
He paused for bearings by a pair of gates on which the words:
I M FOREMAN
Scrap Merchant
were barely visible in the night, before carefully picking his way through the junkyard towards the police box at its centre.
A common enough sight in the England of the early 1960s, the dark blue police box was strangely out of place in the junkyard, and even more oddly, this one was humming. The old man stopped by its doors and reached into a pocket for the key.
‘There you are, grandfather,’ said a girl’s voice from inside.
His sharp hearing picked up a woman’s whispered response from behind him. ‘It’s Susan,’ said the woman.
The old man’s face creased with irritation as he sensed that he was about to be delayed for a long time. But then time was relative, especially to someone such as himself.
Shoreditch, November 1963
Friday, 15:30
One, two, three, four,
Who’s that knocking at the door?
Five, six, seven, eight,
It’s the Doctor at the gate.
Children’s skipping chant
‘What’s she staring at?’ demanded Ace, balefully staring at one of the many girls that clustered around the entrance to Coal Hill School.
Your clothing is little anachronistic for this period,’ said the Doctor, and that doesn’t help.’
Ace defensively hefted the big black Ono-Sendai tape deck to a more nonchalant position on her shoulder and continued to stare at the girl. Nobody outstares me, she thought, especially some twelve-year-old sprat in school uniform. The girl turned away.
‘Hah,’ exclaimed Ace with satisfaction, and turned her attention to the Doctor. ‘Is it my fault that this decade’s got no street cred?’ Ace waited for a reaction from the Doctor, but she got nothing. He seemed to be gazing intently at a squat ugly van parked opposite the school.
‘Strange,’ murmured the Doctor.
‘Oi, Professor. Can we get something to eat now?’
The Doctor, however, was oblivious to Ace’s question.
‘Very odd.’
‘Professor?’
The Doctor finally shifted his attention to Ace. His eyes travelled suspiciously to her rucksack. ‘You haven’t got any explosives in there have you?’
‘No.’ Ace braced herself for the ‘gaze’. The Doctor’s strange intense eyes swept over her and then away. Ace slowly let out her breath – the ‘gaze’ had passed on.
‘What do you make of that van?’ Ace dutifully considered the van. It was a Bedford, painted black, with sliding doors and a complicated aerial sprouting from the roof.
‘Dunno,’ she shrugged, ‘TV detector van? Professor, I’m starving to death.’
The Doctor was unmoved by Ace’s plea for sustenance.
He shook his head. ‘Wrong type of aerial for that. No, for this time period that’s a very sophisticated piece of equipment.’
In this decade, thought Ace, a crystal set is a sophisticated piece of equipment. ‘What’s so sophisticated about that? I’ve seen CBs with better rigs. I’m hungry.’
‘You shouldn’t have disabled the food synthesizer then,’
retorted the Doctor.
‘I thought it was a microwave.’
‘Why would you put plutonium in a microwave?’
‘I didn’t know it was plutonium, you shouldn’t leave that stuff lying around.’
‘What did you think it was then?’
‘Soup.’
‘Soup?’
‘Soup. I’m still hungry – lack of food makes me hungry you know.’
‘Lack of food makes you obstreperous.’ The Doctor applied his much vaunted mind to the problem. ‘Why don’t you go and buy some consumables? There’s a cafe down there.’ He gestured down the alley where they had landed the TARDIS. ‘Meanwhile I will go and undertake a detailed and scientific examination of that van which has so singularly failed to grab your attention.’
‘Right,’ Ace turned and walked away, feeling the ‘gaze’, on her back. The Doctor called after her and she turned sharply.
‘What?’
‘Money,’ said the Doctor holding out a drawstring purse.
Just what did I think they were going to take, thought Ace as she took the purse, Iceworld saving coupons?
‘Thanks.’
The Doctor smiled.
From the gateway of the school the sandy haired girl that had earlier stared at Ace watched as she turned and walked away.
Ace followed the alley until it came out on to Shoreditch High Road. Across the road and facing her was the cafe. A sign above the window proclaimed it as Harry’s Cafe.
Food at last, thought Ace.
Sergeant Mike Smith pushed his plate to one side, leaned back in his chair and turned to the sports page of the Daily Mirror. The jukebox whirred a record into place, the tea urn steamed, and the music started.
Mike luxuriated in the cold weather, his memories of the wet, green heat of Malaya fading among the cracked lino and fried food smell of Harry’s Cafe. He was content to let them go, and allow the East End to bring him home from the heat and boredom of those eighteen months abroad.
The cafe door banged open and a girl walked in. Mike glanced up at a flash of black silk – the girl was wearing a black silk jacket with improbable badges pinned or stitched to the arms. She shrugged a rucksack off her shoulders revealing the word ‘Ace’ stitched into the hack.
Something that surely could not be a transistor radio was dumped casually on a nearby table.
The girl approached the counter.
Mike watched as she leaned over the counter and looked around. She didn’t move like any girl he knew, and certainly she didn’t dress like anybody he had ever seen.
She banged her knuckles on the worn Formica counter.
‘Hallo,’ she called. Her accent was pure London.
The Doctor frowned at the aerial. It represented an intrusion into his plans and the implications of that worried him. He noticed a ladder giving access to the roof of the van and within moments he stood there, balanced perfectly by the aerial. One part of his mind solved a series of equations dealing with angles, displacement, and the optimum wavelength, while another part of his mind began re-examining important aspects of the plan.
The first answer came swiftly; the second cried out for more data. The Doctor sighed: sometimes intuition, even his, had limitations. Quickly sighting down the length of the aerial, he looked up... to find himself staring at the menacing Victorian bulk of Coal Hill School.
Ace banged the counter again. ‘Hallo,’ she yelled, louder than intended. ‘Service? Anybody home?’ There was no response.
‘Not like that,’ said a man’s voice.
Ace twisted round sharply to find a young man standing close to her – far too close. Ace backed off a little, gaining some space. ‘Like what, then?’
The man grinned, showing good teeth. His eyes were blue and calculating. ‘Like this,’ he said and turning to look over the counter bellowed parade-ground style:
‘Harry, customer!’ He turned back to Ace who cautiously removed her hands from her ears. ‘Like that.’
A voice answered from the back of the cafe.
‘See,’ said the man, leaning in again, ‘easy when you know how.’
A short squat man with the face of a boxer emerged from the depths of the cafe. Presumably this was Harry.
‘Give it a rest, Mike,’ he said to the younger man, who laughed and went back to his table, ‘I had enough of that in the war.’
Harry turned to Ace. ‘Can I help you miss?’
Ace considered the state of her stomach. ‘Four bacon sandwiches and a cup of coffee, please.’
The Doctor stepped carefully through the gate, dodging children who were eager to be rid of their school. Drained of its inmates Coal Hill School loomed dour as a prison over the deserted playground.
Movement caught the Doctor’s eye. The girl who had been watching Ace was there, chanting as she skipped from one chalked box to another. Around her, black circles were etched into the concrete. The four of them were in a square pattern like the pips on a die. With a quick sideways lunge the Doctor stepped close to the marks and stooped, running a finger along one of them. The finger came up black, sooty with carbonized concrete.
He looked up at the girl and for a moment their eyes met; then she whirled and was gone.
Rachel was lost in the mechanics of detection. The interior of the van was cramped with equipment, casting bulky shadows in the glow from the cathode ray tube. For a second she lost the signal in the clutter caused by the surrounding buildings, but with deft movements she refocused. There, got it, she thought. Behind her the back doors opened and the van rocked as someone climbed in.