The Dying Days

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages) This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "The Dying Days" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (August 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message) The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's notability guideline for books. Please help to demonstrate the notability of the topic by citing reliable secondary sources that are independent of the topic and provide significant coverage of it beyond a mere trivial mention. If notability cannot be shown, the article is likely to be merged, redirected, or deleted. Find sources: "The Dying Days" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (August 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The Dying Days is an original novel written by

The

In the year 1997, Bernice Summerfield is recovering from the breakdown of her marriage at the Doctor's house on the fictional Allen Road near Adisham in Kent. To her surprise, when the TARDIS arrives it is the Eighth Doctor that steps out. Before Benny can come to terms with the change, a helicopter crash lands nearby, carrying soil samples from Mars and a prisoner, astronaut Alex Christian, who has been incarcerated since he killed the crew of a British Mars mission. Or so everyone thought. In reality, his crew were killed by Ice Warriors and his imprisonment was part of a deal negotiated between the British government and the Martian authorities. Since then, there have been no further missions to Mars, but now Britain has sent a new mission back to the planet. British astronauts land on Mars where they intrude on the tomb of an Ice Lord. The Ice Warrior Xznaal arrives on Earth with the pretence of vengeance, but is secretly in league with the British Science Minister, Lord Greyhaven. When the Eighth Doctor interferes with their plans, Xznaal releases a deadly weapon known as the Red Death. This apparently kills the Doctor, leaving Bernice and the Brigadier to deal with the invading Ice Warriors…

• The ending of the book implies that Bernice has sex with the Eighth Doctor, marking the first time in licensed Doctor Who fiction that such relations occur between the Doctor and one of his companions. The scene also includes a statement by the Doctor that Bernice is his longest-serving companion.
• Chapter two features a cameo appearance from an elderly character introduced halfway through a sentence as "-ermass", and subsequently referred to as "Professor" and "Bernard" during his brief appearance.
  e-book release that this was a deliberate cameo from television science-fiction character Professor Bernard Quatermass, specifically the John Mills version from the 1979 serial Quatermass.^[2]