Festival of Death is a novel written by Jonathan Morris. Released in 2000, it is the thirty-fourth novel in BBC Books' Past Doctor Adventures series and tells of the Doctor saving a space station floating in hyperspace from the living dead.
Characters[]
- Fourth Doctor
- Romana II
- K9
- Dr. Koel Paddox - a necrologist who tries to use time travel to save his dead parents
- Repulsion - a malevolent entity that inhabits a "dimension between life and death"
- ERIC - the "Environmental Regulation and Information Computer" of the starship Cerberus who is guilted into suicidal depression by his captain
- Hoopy - a drug addict Gonzie who escapes being made into a zombie during the final trip of the Beautiful Death
- Metcalf - a corrupt and incompetent Executive
- Gallura - the last of the Arboretans
- Liesa - Paddox's assisstant
- Dunkal and Rige - two investigators
- Rochfort - the captain of the Cerberus
- Byson - a lieutenant serving under Captain Rochfort
- Tarie - a young girl on the Cerberus
- Jeremy - a holocameraman
- Evadne Baxter - a ticket seller on the G-Lock
- Nyanna - an Arboretan killed by Paddox
- Vinnie - Harken Batt's cameraman
- Xab - a Gonzie
Publisher's summary[]
The Beautiful Death. The ultimate theme-park ride. For twenty galactic credits, you can find out what it's like to be dead.
But something has gone wrong. Visitors expecting a sightseeing tour of the afterlife have been transformed into mindless zombies, set on a killing rampage.
The TARDIS arrives in the aftermath of the disaster and, to the Doctor's baffled delight, he is immediately congratulated for saving the population from certain and terrible destruction.
The only problem is, he hasn't actually done it yet.
Aided and abetted by a drug-addled hippie lizard, a hard-hitting investigative reporter and a suicidal ship's computer, the Doctor has no choice but to travel back in time and discover exactly how he became a hero.
And then he finds out. He did it by sacrificing his life.
Full summary[]
Prologue[]
As young Koel Paddox's parents board the Alpha Twelve intersystem shuttle to Third Birmingham, Koel feels that something is deeply wrong with the tube leading to the shuttle. As such, he refuses to get on and watches in horror as the tube catastrophically fails - killing his parents.
Chapter One[]
During late summer on the planet Arboreta, a young Arboretan named Nyanna visits an elder. Meanwhile, Romana tries to help the Doctor brush up on how to fly the TARDIS. While doing this, the TARDIS briefly stalls out before landing in an abandoned space ship known as the Montressor. While exploring the ship, the Doctor and Romana discover that the Montressor is part of a large space station floating in Hyperspace. While exploring its depths, the two Time Lords find a horde of corpses with a single human survivor in their midst. While speaking to the survivor, the Doctor and Romana learn that they were attacked by the "living dead" before the survivor is taken away by two medics.
Somewhere deeper in the G-Lock, an Executive named Metcalf is visited by two Investigators named Dunkal and Rige due to the sabotage of the Beautiful Death and the deaths of countless people. Metcalf claims that the event was sabotaged by a single person - whom he describes to the Investigators. Meanwhile, a journalist named Harken Batt is interrupted while recording a feature on the G-Lock disaster by the Doctor passing through. From Harken, the Doctor learns that he has already saved the lives of hundreds of people within the G-Lock but the Doctor has no memory of this. Meanwhile, Romana helps the survivor to a bed and briefly speaks with an anthropomorphic lizard sitting in one of the beds (learning about the same thing that the Doctor did) before leaving to get the lizard a cup of water. While doing this, Romana notices a pestilent old woman sitting in one of the beds who vanishes when she tries to get the nurses to notice her.
Chapter Two[]
Nyanna is brought to a chamber holding an eggsack, which the elders say holds an Arbortean named Gallura - the last of their race. While Romana and the Doctor discuss their predestined rescue of the G-Lock, K9 trundles in from the TARDIS and announces that the G-Lock is within an unstable hyperspace conduit and will collapse in on itself in a few hours. When the Doctor asks K9 how he got this information, K9 refuses to tell him. Despite this, the Doctor sets off with K9 to a corridor where K9 says that geostatic pressure has built up.
While exploring this corridor, the Doctor is arrested by Dunkal and Rige for sabotage. The Doctor is brought before Metcalf - who accusses the Doctor of destroying the G-Lock's computer and various other acts of sabotage. Though the Doctor claims that these allegations are baseless, he is thrown into a jailcell - which he quickly breaks out of. Meanwhile, Romana (who knows nothing of the Doctor's arrest) learns that all of the pain medication within the G-Lock has ran out. She also learns that the lizard patient is a drug-smuggler with a treasure trove of drugs within his ship. After collecting the drugs from the ship, Romana returns to the medbay - and finds it completely deserted, besides a mysterious little girl whom Romana chases through the corridors of the G-Lock until the two reach a mysterious pool of darkness and the little girl crumbles to dust in Romana's arms. Romana then wakes up some ways back in the G-Lock to find four skull-masked figures standing over her.
Chapter Three[]
Romana is brought in front of Metcalf and charged with drug smuggling alongside being the Doctor's accomplice. Almost immediately after escaping, the Doctor is recaptured by a guard and has his sonic screwdriver taken away. As such, he and Romana are stuck in a cell. This lasts for a brief moment before they are rescued by a young woman named Evadne Baxter sent by one of them from the past. Though Evadne is extremely frightened by K9, she easily helps them to escape. This escape is quickly noticed by Metcalf - who sends Dunkal and Rige (along with the G-Lock's skull-mask wearing guards) to take them in, dead or alive.
Though the Doctor and Romana tell Evadne not to tell them anything about their past, Evadne lets it slip that the Doctor possibly sacrificed himself. After escaping some guards, Evadne leads the Doctor and Romana to the Great Hall - where the Beautiful Death once took place. While examining the Great Hall, the Doctor explores the Beautiful Death's "necroport" and finds the dessicated body of Gallura - which awakens and tells the Doctor to avenge the Arboretans before dying. After leaving the Great Hall, the four fugitives visit the interface between real-space and hyperspace (and the source of the geostatic pressure). While examining it, K9 reveals that there are lifeforms within the real-space side that are moving towards the Doctor. Once these beings apparently arrive, the Doctor sees absolutely nothing emerging from the other side of the corridor.
Chapter Four[]
Shortly after this "nothing" surrounds the Doctor and then departs, K9 registers the lifesigns of Dunkal and Rige. The Doctor has his companions hide and allows himself to be captured by the two Investigators. Though Dunkal and Rige plan to summarily execute the Doctor, he is able to somewhat convince the two of them about the incoming destruction of the G-Lock.
As such, they bring him before Metcalf - who continues to insist that the Doctor is lying and continues to demand his execution. This execution is postponed by the G-Lock shaking due to its incoming destruction (which convinces Metcalf to begin an evacuation of the G-Lock) and Romana arriving in Metcalf's office with Harken Batt - who has footage of Metcalf demanding that the people of G-Lock be left to die. As such, Metcalf is arrested for negligence while the Doctor and Romana are cleared. With only minutes to spare before the G-Lock's destruction, everyone on the G-Lock is able to leave. This includes the Doctor and Romana, who travel to the previous day on the G-Lock.
Chapter Five[]
While drifting aimlessly through the galaxies, three junkie Gonzies find out about the Beautiful Death (an event within the "Festival of Death" which promises to provide its users with a temporary death) and decide to try it out. After the first "hit", they become absolutely hooked. A week later, the creator of the Beautiful Death (one Dr. Paddox) organizes a massive Beautiful Death. It is during this event that the Doctor's TARDIS and Harken Batt arrive (separately). Shortly after arriving on the G-Lock, the Doctor and K9 are separated from Romana and end up looking over the Beautiful Death as Metcalf unwittingly becomes part of a scathing interview with Harken. Once Metcalf stalks out in anger, the Doctor makes his way into the Beautiful Death chamber but is quickly arrested for being a saboteur.
Chapter Six[]
Instead of being brought to a jail cell, the Doctor is brought before Paddox and his assisstant Liesa - who have already encountered the Doctor. Though the Doctor tries to stop Paddox from activating the mass Beautiful Death, he is unable to stop the event from beginning. Once it begins, it starts various temporal ripples and causes the necroport to begin feeding power into the G-Lock at an alarming rate. Around the same time, a windstorm picks up in the G-Lock and tosses Harken Batt and his cameraman in with the corpses. Though the Doctor is able to escape from his handcuffs and knock Paddox unconscious using K9, he is unable to stop the necroport from causing the G-Lock's systems to overload and is also unable to stop Paddox from escaping. This is closely followed by the dead bodies of the various people who have taken part in the Beautiful Death seemingly awakening.
Chapter Seven[]
Once the corpses fully awaken, they begin causing mass chaos as they kill everything in their way. While observing them after the doors have been barricaded the Doctor realizes that they are being controlled by an outside force. The Doctor assumes that this force was accidentally brought forth by Paddox. Though his cameraman is killed by zombies, Harken Batt is able to escape from the clutches of the zombies and is rescued by the Doctor and Liesa. As the zombies are battering on the door, the Doctor sends K9 to find Paddox. While travelling to find Paddox, K9 is found by zombies and quickly overwhelmed.
While the zombies begin making their way through the G-Lock, Romana is found by Evadne Baxter (who has just left the Beautiful Death exhibit, having gone there on the Doctor's orders) and decides to visit Executive Metcalf at his office. While travelling to Metcalf's office, Romana is briefly caught in a time ripple and dragged into the past before returning to the present.
Chapter Eight[]
While the Doctor theorizes that a being from "beyond death" has taken control of the bodies, Romana and Evadne force Metcalf to send out a distress signal. Shortly after this, time splinters and two timezones (the current year of 3012 and the year 2815, when the various ships making up the G-Lock got trapped in the first place and everyone on board one ship known as the Cerberus vanished) fuse together. This causes the zombies to be replaced with the crewmembers of the Cerberus - who briefly show glee at escaping death before being taken over by the being from beyond death, who announces itself to be Repulsion. While this is going on, the Doctor notices that one of the subjects of the Beautiful Death was not zombified. As such, he rushes to revive this subject - who is revealed to be a Gonzie named Hoopy. While leaving the venue for the Beautiful Death with Hoopy, the Doctor talks with him and realizes that Repulsion is using the junction between real and hyperspace to enter into reality. While at this junction, the Doctor and Hoopy watch as the other two Gonzies throw K9 into the junction - seemingly destroying the robot.
Chapter Nine[]
While the Doctor mourns K9's possible death, Metcalf learns that the Doctor planned to destroy ERIC and labels him a saboteur before fleeing for the escape pods. Along with this, the two Gonzies shift into the captain of the Cerberus and a lieutenant on the ship before both succumb to the control of Repulsion. Realizing that he has left the control room unguarded, the Doctor returns and finds that the zombies have massacred every living thing in the room - besides Harken, who has already escaped. While examining the control room, the Doctor realizes that the necroport has been turned back on. Around this time, Romana and Evadne make their way to the necroport and find that Paddox has captured Harken and turned on the necroport. While gloating to Romana about his "scientific achievement", Paddox reveals three bodies lurking in the depths of the necroport. Two of these are Arboretans while the third is the body of the Doctor.
Chapter Ten[]
In 2815, the luxury liner Cerberus departs from the planet Teredekethon and enters into a hyperspace corridor. Though everything seems to be running smoothly, the ship's computer soon realizes that the hyperspace corridor's exit is shrinking. Though ERIC tries to warn the captain about this, the irritable captain refuses to listen and then gaslights ERIC into thinking everything is his fault when the ship crashes. Unbeknownst to the crew of the Cerberus, a ship carrying an extremely dangerous cargo of Arachnopods also crashed.
Around two hundred years later, Romana is able to escape from the clutches of Paddox and finds the still-very-alive Doctor with Hoopy. While speaking with the Doctor, Romana learns that K9 has been destroyed. The two are able to deduce that they have to go even further back into the past. Right before doing this, the necroport catastrophically explodes - burning Hoopy and seemingly killing Paddox and his hostages. After attending to Hoopy's wounds, the Doctor and Romana leave for the TARDIS. Meanwhile, while in an escape pod, Metcalf has a hissy fit and says to leave the tourists to their deaths. Unfortunately, this is filmed by the tourist that he is sharing the escape pod with.
Chapter Eleven[]
The Doctor and Romana travel back to around the same time that they previously arrived at, just at a different location. While Romana ingratiates herself with Evadne, the Doctor departs for Metcalf's office to introduce himself to ERIC. After getting both Paddox and Metcalf to leave by claiming to be neuroelectrician, the Doctor introduces himself to ERIC. To his surprise (and chagrin) he learns that ERIC already knows him. While trying to learn about this, the Doctor accidentally causes ERIC to go into a fit and only calms him down by promising to turn him off. Unfortunately, Metcalf arrives right at this moment and arrests the Doctor as a saboteur. Once in the cells, the Doctor very quickly escapes from his cell and steals the uniform of the guard. While leaving, the Doctor notices two Arboretans (Gallura and Nyanna) languishing in the cell. The two Arboretans start a conversation with the Doctor and reveal that Paddox's experiments have caused the genocide of their entire race. They also reveal that Paddox's experiments might have ulterior motives.
Chapter Twelve[]
With Evadne in tow, Romana makes her way to the necroport. While there, she examines Paddox's equipment and realizes that the necroport is actually channeling energy from the people it kills. Shortly after this, Paddox arrives with a peculiar skullguard and the Arboretans. Once Paddox has put the Arboretans in the necroport and left, this guard reveals himself to be the Doctor. Shortly after this reunion, the Doctor examines ERIC's control port (which sits next to the necroport). During this examination, Paddox activates the Beautiful Death - causing a massive ball of light to materialize in the necroport. Upon realizing this, the Doctor and Romana have Evadne flee the necroport. Unfortunately, Romana is caught in this ball and dragged through time. The Doctor sets off to the TARDIS to find Romana but is seemingly found by the skullguards while doing this.
Chapter Thirteen[]
Fortunately for the Doctor, the skullguards arrest his past self and he is able to escape to the TARDIS. As he is about to enter the TARDIS, the Doctor has a brief interaction with the past version of Romana (which he vaguely heard about from Romana).
Meanwhile, the "present" Romana is brought to the Cerberus several weeks after it has crashed and is nearly killed by an Arachnopod but is rescued by Captain Rochfort and his co-pilot Lieutenant Byson. Assuming that Romana is a stowaway who found a hidden cache of food, Rochfort threatens to shoot Romana if she does not reveal where this cache is. Byson is able to convince his captain not to shoot Romana and instead bring her to the bridge of the ship (where most of the passengers have hidden) while the two of them look for Romana's cache. Unbeknownst to both crewmen, Repulsion is lurking in the depths of the ship and makes contact with Captain Rochfort.
Chapter Fourteen[]
The Doctor is able to track Romana to the Cerberus but materializes several rooms away from her. While looking for Romana, the Doctor is nearly noticed by an Arachnopod before it stalks away down the corridor. With the Arachnopod gone, the Doctor is able to make contact with ERIC and learns that Romana is in the Great Hall of the ship. Meanwhile, Rochfort returns from his contact with Repulsion and (with Romana's unwitting help) convinces the passengers to join him and Byson as they travel to the future. He also leaves Romana behind (believing that she was sent to leave them to die due to Repulsion's lies) and ties her up as a feast for the Arachnopods while the passengers departs for the lower levels of the ship.
Chapter Fifteen[]
While Rochfort leads the passengers to Repulsion, the Doctor reaches the Great Hall and finds that Romana's bonds were cut by Byson while he left. While the Arachnopods feast on the corpses of the dead passengers, the Doctor and Romana escape from the Great Hall and find Rochfort sending the passengers through Repulsion's gateway. Once all of the passengers have went through, Rochfort asks that Repulsion show it. To the Doctor and Romana's great shock, K9 (under the control of Repulsion) trundles through. After this brief showcase, Rochfort walks through the gateway - which promptly closes, leaving the Doctor and Romana stranded while the Arachnopods approach them.
Chapter Sixteen[]
To escape the Arachnopods, the Doctor has ERIC flip the Cerberus' artificial gravity and send the maniac arachnids falling into the hyperspace-real space interface. Thinking that he has done and met everything leading up to the defeat of Repulsion, the Doctor resigns himself to die in the Necroport. Shortly after materializing the TARDIS in 3012's Great Hall, the Doctor and Romana find Harken Batt on the run from the zombies and rescue him from their clutches. While examining the necroport, the Doctor realizes that Gallura is not within the device. He also realizes that Harken has fled from the necroport - presumably towards the control room for the Beautiful Death.
Chapter Seventeen[]
While going to collect Gallura from the cells, the Doctor and Romana speak with him to discover the secret of the Arboretans. They learn that the Arboretans return to the moment of their birth after their deaths and that they are able to change some parts of their past while doing this. The Doctor realizes that Paddox wants to change something about his own past but is unsure what this is. While in the necroport, the Doctor takes ERIC's brain centre. Shortly after this, the Doctor and Romana return to the control room so that the Doctor can hook up the brain centre and enter into the realm of the Repulsion. While in the control room, they are reunited with Harken and convince him to film the Doctor taking part in the Beautiful Death. This process is successful, with Harken recording the Doctor's "death" and being left to guard the necroport. This lets Paddox sneak up on Harken and take him captive.
Chapter Eighteen and Epilogue[]
Once in the Repulsion's realm, the Doctor is met by Gallura and, with his help, is able to release K9 back into reality. He then confronts the Repulsion - which takes over the Doctor's mind, intending on using his TARDIS to bring death to every corner of reality. While the Doctor is within Repulsion's realm, Romana and the recently-released K9 are able to sneak into the necroport, release Evadne and Harken, and (just at the right moment) swap out the Doctor for K9. As such, Repulsion transfers into K9 (and is able to stun Evadne while in K9's body) and is immediately transferred into ERIC. The Doctor then gives the gift of death to both ERIC and Repulsion. While the Doctor is doing this, Paddox is able to sneak into the necroport and uses it to die and send himself back into the past right before ERIC explodes. After tying together the loose ends (such as telling Evadne to rescue Romana and telling K9 about the geostatic stress), the Doctor and Romana depart the G-Lock. While leaving, Romana worries that Paddox could actually change the past but the Doctor reveals that, due to not existing outside of time like the Arboretans and the Time Lords, Paddox flat out cannot change his past. Paddox awakens in the body of his past self and realizes that he is a bodiless consciousness without any influence on his own body. He screams in agony as he realizes that he is now trapped in an endless cycle of bodiless death and rebirth.
In-universe continuity[]
- Romana mentions being stuck in a cellar in Paris if it weren't for the sonic screwdriver. This is presumably a reference to events from City of Death.
- The G-Lock sits within Hyperspace. The Doctor and Romana visited this space in The Stones of Death.
- Romana stops her heart for a brief moment and feigns death. She previously used this trick in Destiny of the Daleks.
- The TARDIS jumps a time track. It previously did this in The Space Museum.
- For the Doctor and Romana, this novel comes between Shada and The Leisure Hive.
- Teredekethon is mentioned in Morris' novel The Tomorrow Windows while Murgatroyd is mentioned in Joseph Lidster's audio play Terror Firma.
See also[]
| Title | Author | Release date | Significance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Touched by an Angel | Jonathan Morris | 2011 | A novel which also uses the theme of someone trying to change the past |
| The Romance of Crime | Gareth Roberts | 1995 | A novel that possibly influenced this novel |
| The Sands of Time | Justin Richards | 1996 | A novel with a similar non-linear plot |
| The Book of the Still | Paul Ebbs | 2002 | A novel with a similar comedic tone and a similar view of time travel |
Sources[]
- TARDIS Wiki
| The Past Doctor Adventures | ||
|
1997 | ||