Damaged Goods
Encyclopedia
Damaged Goods is an original Doctor Who
novel, released by Virgin Publishing in their New Adventures
range of Doctor Who books in 1996. It is the second and to date last piece of full-length prose fiction to have been published by the television scriptwriter Russell T Davies, who later became the chief writer and executive producer of the Doctor Who television series when it was revived in 2005. Davies's first professionally published fiction, a novelisation
of his children's television serial Dark Season
, had been released by BBC Books
in 1991.
in 1987, and involves the Seventh Doctor
and his companions Chris Cwej
and Roz Forrester
living on a working-class council estate while attempting to track down an infinitely powerful Gallifrey
an weapon before it falls into the wrong hands. A young boy living on the estate, Gabriel Tyler, appears to be the focus of strange powers, and also for the attentions of Mrs Jericho, whose own grievously ill young son seems to be linked to Gabriel in some way, through a secret Gabriel's mother has long tried to hide.
(1993), and winning a BAFTA Children's Award for an episode of Children's Ward
, a series he both wrote for and produced from 1992 to 1995. A staff scriptwriter at Granada Television
, he was beginning to move into adult television, writing for soap opera
s such as Families
and Revelations, the latter of which he created.
Despite being a professional writer and long-time Doctor Who fan, Davies had no initial interest in writing for Virgin's Doctor Who novel series, concentrating instead on his television career. However, in 1995 he was interviewed about Dark Season and Century Falls by journalist David Richardson of TV Zone
magazine, who later wrote about their meeting. "When we first spoke back in 1995, Davies's interest in writing for the series was evident. With Doctor Who out of production, I suggested he'd be an ideal choice to write one of the novels, and gave him a contact at Virgin Publishing." However, Davies's friend and fellow writer Paul Cornell
, who had written several novels for the New Adventures range, later claimed to have been the one responsible for enabling Davies to contribute to the series. "At the time he'd only just started to do The Grand, and we were very much on the same level. We swapped favours — he got me onto Children's Ward, and I introduced him to [Virgin Books editor] Rebecca Levene so he could get to do Damaged Goods."
Davies himself gave his own account of the book's origins in Doctor Who Magazines 2002 history of the New Adventures range. "I first thought of writing a New Adventure when David Richardson interviewed me for TV Zone... I bashed out the first two chapters in my spare time. I sent in this dead lazy submission, which just said, 'I've got no idea what happens in the end, but trust me. I write'. The arrogance of youth!"
However, Davies found himself commissioned to write for the range by Levene, with his book forming part of the 'Psi-Powers' arc which was over-arching the storyline of the novels at the time, although Davies claimed: "I'm not sure I completely understood the Brotherhood arc to be honest! I just kept it vague and hoped someone else would make sense of it."
After having been commissioned to write the novel, Davies had originally planned to take three months off writing for television in order to complete it. He was then also commissioned to write for two major ITV
television series, leaving him very short of time in which to complete the book, eventually writing the manuscript in only five weeks. This sudden amount of work did, however, have the unexpected result of Granada Television purchasing the media rights for the novel on February 2, 1997, with a view to Davies possibly scripting a television adaptation for them.
"Granada lent me a researcher, Maria Grimley, to do all the leg-work on the novel, just so I could finish on time," Davies told Doctor Who Magazine. "This led to various Granada folk reading Damaged Goods and suggesting that the Mrs Jericho story would make a good thriller in its own right. It would have stripped out all the sci-fi stuff — including the Doctor, obviously! — and been cut back to just the story of the twins separated at birth... I think the treatment was called The Mother War. Nothing happened with that because I was just too busy on The Grand."
and the 2005 re-launch of Doctor Who itself.
The scene in which Mrs Jericho prepares a dinner laced with rat poison for her husband is replicated almost exactly in the concluding episode of Davies's 2003 religious telefantasy drama The Second Coming, where the leading character of Judith prepares a similarly poisoned meal for her lover Steve. There is an even more direct link to Dark Season, with the novel's epilogue featuring a mention of the main character, Marcie, from that serial.
Damaged Goods contains a gay character, David, and homosexuality is a recurring theme explored in much of Davies's writing, as he himself noted in an article for The Guardian
newspaper in 2003. "The first gay character I ever wrote was a Devil-worshipping Nazi lesbian in a Children's BBC thriller, Dark Season. She was too busy taking over the world to do anything particularly lesbian, though she did keep a Teutonic Valkyrie by her side at all times... Once I'd started, I never stopped... I even wrote a Doctor Who novel in which the six-foot blond, blue-eyed companion interrupts the hunt for an interdimensional Gallifreyan War Machine to get a blowjob in the back of a taxi. Like you do."
Davies's major breakthrough television series, Queer as Folk (1999), was centred around the lives of three gay men in Manchester
, one of whom, Vince Tyler, is portrayed as a fanatical Doctor Who fan. Although never clearly seen on screen, part of the set dressing for Vince's bedroom as seen in the first episode of the series was a copy of Damaged Goods, included as an in-joke by the set dressers. Damaged Goods itself contains a reference to Why Don't You?
, a BBC
children's television series on which Davies was working at the time the novel is set.
The Doctor Who Annual 2006, published by Panini
in August 2005, contained an article entitled Meet the Doctor by Davies, which referred to "N-Forms" being one of the weapons used in the Time War
referred to in the 2005 series of Doctor Who. "N-Forms" are the ancient Time Lord
weapons which are featured in the plot of Damaged Goods.
's modern horror novels than Irvine Welsh
's stylised fables... Purists might argue that a book full of sex, drugs and squalor can't really be Doctor Who, but they would be forgetting that the essence of the series and those like it is in portraying ordinary people's reactions to the unprecedented. It's done so brilliantly here that, much as I abhor scores, rankings and superlatives, I'll admit that Damaged Goods is currently my favourite New Adventure."
However, not all readers agreed with Owen's assessment that the setting and themes of Damaged Goods were one of its strengths. "Call me an escapist if you want," Matthew Mitchell wrote in a review for the Outpost Gallifrey
fan website, "but if I want a dose of the Problems of the World and Man's inhumanity to man
, I'll pick up the newspaper. I don't buy science fiction, especially not Doctor Who, for a lesson in modern sociology. I certainly would not have bought Damaged Goods had I known that is precisely what I would be getting."
Generally, however, reaction to the novel was extremely positive, with other online reviews around the time of the book's release praising Davies's work. "In Damaged Goods, Russell Davies has marked himself as the best newcomer to Doctor Who fiction since Lance Parkin
eight months earlier," wrote Shannon Patrick Sullivan on his own website. "Davies has crafted a taut, compelling novel which falls down only slightly at the end. Certainly, Damaged Goods is one of the best novels Virgin has released in 1996... Damaged Goods is a template for Doctor Who in the Nineties; I hope Davies has the opportunity at a follow-up under the aegis of the BBC."
Sullivan's website also includes a monthly updated list of the most popular Doctor Who novels, "The Doctor Who Novel Rankings", based on votes e-mailed in by readers and running since 1993. As of the January 4, 2006 edition of the novel rankings, Damaged Goods was placed eighth in the list of most popular New Adventures novels. In 1998, Doctor Who Magazine ran their own one-off readers' poll to find the most popular New Adventures as part of their celebrations of Doctor Whos 35th anniversary. Damaged Goods received votes from 780 readers, with an average score of 7.295 out of 10, placing it thirteenth out of the sixty-one novels in the series.
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
novel, released by Virgin Publishing in their New Adventures
Virgin New Adventures
The Virgin New Adventures were a series of novels from Virgin Publishing based on the British science-fiction television series Doctor Who...
range of Doctor Who books in 1996. It is the second and to date last piece of full-length prose fiction to have been published by the television scriptwriter Russell T Davies, who later became the chief writer and executive producer of the Doctor Who television series when it was revived in 2005. Davies's first professionally published fiction, a novelisation
Novelization
A novelization is a novel that is written based on some other media story form rather than as an original work.Novelizations of films usually add background material not found in the original work to flesh out the story, because novels are generally longer than screenplays...
of his children's television serial Dark Season
Dark Season
Dark Season is a British science-fiction television serial for adolescents, screened on BBC1 in late 1991. Comprising six twenty-five minute episodes, the two linked three-part stories tell the adventures of three teenagers and their battle to save their school and their classmates from the actions...
, had been released by BBC Books
BBC Books
BBC Books is an imprint majority owned and managed by Random House. The minority shareholder is BBC Worldwide, the commercial subsidiary of the British Broadcasting Corporation...
in 1991.
Plot
The novel is set in BritainUnited Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
in 1987, and involves the Seventh Doctor
Seventh Doctor
The Seventh Doctor is the seventh incarnation of the protagonist of the long-running BBC television science-fiction series Doctor Who. He was portrayed by the actor Sylvester McCoy....
and his companions Chris Cwej
Chris Cwej
Christopher Rodonanté Cwej, usually just known as Chris Cwej, is a fictional character from the Virgin New Adventures range of spin-offs based on the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who...
and Roz Forrester
Roz Forrester
Roslyn Sarah Inyathi Forrester, usually just known as Roz Forrester, is a fictional character from the Virgin New Adventures range of spin-offs based on the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who....
living on a working-class council estate while attempting to track down an infinitely powerful Gallifrey
Gallifrey
Gallifrey is a fictional planet in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who and is the homeworld of the Doctor and the Time Lords...
an weapon before it falls into the wrong hands. A young boy living on the estate, Gabriel Tyler, appears to be the focus of strange powers, and also for the attentions of Mrs Jericho, whose own grievously ill young son seems to be linked to Gabriel in some way, through a secret Gabriel's mother has long tried to hide.
Background
Davies had already established himself as a successful writer of children's television by 1996, having penned well-received serials such as Dark Season (1991) and Century FallsCentury Falls
Century Falls is a British cross-genre series broadcast in six twenty-five minute episodes on BBC One in early 1993. Written by Russell T Davies, it tells the story of teenager Tess Hunter and her mother, who move to the seemingly idyllic rural village of Century Falls, only to find that it hides...
(1993), and winning a BAFTA Children's Award for an episode of Children's Ward
Children's Ward
Children's Ward is a British children's television drama series produced by Granada Television and broadcast on the ITV network as part of its Children's ITV strand on weekday afternoons...
, a series he both wrote for and produced from 1992 to 1995. A staff scriptwriter at Granada Television
Granada Television
Granada Television is the ITV contractor for North West England. Based in Manchester since its inception, it is the only surviving original ITA franchisee from 1954 and is ITV's most successful....
, he was beginning to move into adult television, writing for soap opera
Soap opera
A soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...
s such as Families
Families (TV series)
Families was a daytime soap opera produced by Granada Television and created by Kay Mellor. It followed two families; the Thompsons, based in Cheshire, England , and the Stevens, living in Sydney, Australia....
and Revelations, the latter of which he created.
Despite being a professional writer and long-time Doctor Who fan, Davies had no initial interest in writing for Virgin's Doctor Who novel series, concentrating instead on his television career. However, in 1995 he was interviewed about Dark Season and Century Falls by journalist David Richardson of TV Zone
TV Zone
TV Zone was a British magazine published every four weeks by Visual Imagination that covered cult television. Initially, it mostly covered science fiction, but branched out to cover other drama and comedy series.-History:...
magazine, who later wrote about their meeting. "When we first spoke back in 1995, Davies's interest in writing for the series was evident. With Doctor Who out of production, I suggested he'd be an ideal choice to write one of the novels, and gave him a contact at Virgin Publishing." However, Davies's friend and fellow writer Paul Cornell
Paul Cornell
Paul Cornell is a British writer best known for his work in television drama as well as Doctor Who fiction, and as the creator of one of the Doctor's spin-off companions, Bernice Summerfield....
, who had written several novels for the New Adventures range, later claimed to have been the one responsible for enabling Davies to contribute to the series. "At the time he'd only just started to do The Grand, and we were very much on the same level. We swapped favours — he got me onto Children's Ward, and I introduced him to [Virgin Books editor] Rebecca Levene so he could get to do Damaged Goods."
Davies himself gave his own account of the book's origins in Doctor Who Magazines 2002 history of the New Adventures range. "I first thought of writing a New Adventure when David Richardson interviewed me for TV Zone... I bashed out the first two chapters in my spare time. I sent in this dead lazy submission, which just said, 'I've got no idea what happens in the end, but trust me. I write'. The arrogance of youth!"
However, Davies found himself commissioned to write for the range by Levene, with his book forming part of the 'Psi-Powers' arc which was over-arching the storyline of the novels at the time, although Davies claimed: "I'm not sure I completely understood the Brotherhood arc to be honest! I just kept it vague and hoped someone else would make sense of it."
After having been commissioned to write the novel, Davies had originally planned to take three months off writing for television in order to complete it. He was then also commissioned to write for two major ITV
ITV
ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...
television series, leaving him very short of time in which to complete the book, eventually writing the manuscript in only five weeks. This sudden amount of work did, however, have the unexpected result of Granada Television purchasing the media rights for the novel on February 2, 1997, with a view to Davies possibly scripting a television adaptation for them.
"Granada lent me a researcher, Maria Grimley, to do all the leg-work on the novel, just so I could finish on time," Davies told Doctor Who Magazine. "This led to various Granada folk reading Damaged Goods and suggesting that the Mrs Jericho story would make a good thriller in its own right. It would have stripped out all the sci-fi stuff — including the Doctor, obviously! — and been cut back to just the story of the twins separated at birth... I think the treatment was called The Mother War. Nothing happened with that because I was just too busy on The Grand."
Themes
There are several aspects of Damaged Goods which contain elements present throughout much of Davies's other work. The inclusion of a family named Tyler, in particular, is a trademark of the writer — Tylers also appear in Revelations, Queer as Folk, The Second ComingThe Second Coming (TV serial)
The Second Coming is a two-part British television drama first screened on ITV in the UK in February 2003. It concerns the realisation of Steve Baxter that he is in fact the Son of God, and has just a few days to find the human race's Third Testament and thus avert the Apocalypse.It was written...
and the 2005 re-launch of Doctor Who itself.
The scene in which Mrs Jericho prepares a dinner laced with rat poison for her husband is replicated almost exactly in the concluding episode of Davies's 2003 religious telefantasy drama The Second Coming, where the leading character of Judith prepares a similarly poisoned meal for her lover Steve. There is an even more direct link to Dark Season, with the novel's epilogue featuring a mention of the main character, Marcie, from that serial.
Damaged Goods contains a gay character, David, and homosexuality is a recurring theme explored in much of Davies's writing, as he himself noted in an article for The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
newspaper in 2003. "The first gay character I ever wrote was a Devil-worshipping Nazi lesbian in a Children's BBC thriller, Dark Season. She was too busy taking over the world to do anything particularly lesbian, though she did keep a Teutonic Valkyrie by her side at all times... Once I'd started, I never stopped... I even wrote a Doctor Who novel in which the six-foot blond, blue-eyed companion interrupts the hunt for an interdimensional Gallifreyan War Machine to get a blowjob in the back of a taxi. Like you do."
Davies's major breakthrough television series, Queer as Folk (1999), was centred around the lives of three gay men in Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
, one of whom, Vince Tyler, is portrayed as a fanatical Doctor Who fan. Although never clearly seen on screen, part of the set dressing for Vince's bedroom as seen in the first episode of the series was a copy of Damaged Goods, included as an in-joke by the set dressers. Damaged Goods itself contains a reference to Why Don't You?
Why Don't You?
Why Don't You? or Why Don't You Just Switch Off Your Television Set and Go Out and Do Something Less Boring Instead? was a cult BBC children's television series broadcast in 42 series between 20 August 1973 and 21 April 1995. It went out on weekday mornings during the school holidays...
, a BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
children's television series on which Davies was working at the time the novel is set.
The Doctor Who Annual 2006, published by Panini
Panini Comics
Panini Comics is an Italian comic book publisher. A division of Panini Group, best known for their collectible stickers, it is headquartered in Modena, Italy...
in August 2005, contained an article entitled Meet the Doctor by Davies, which referred to "N-Forms" being one of the weapons used in the Time War
Time War (Doctor Who)
The Time War, more specifically called The Last Great Time War, is a conflict within the fictional universe of the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who...
referred to in the 2005 series of Doctor Who. "N-Forms" are the ancient Time Lord
Time Lord
The Time Lords are an ancient extraterrestrial race and civilization of humanoids in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, of which the series' eponymous protagonist, the Doctor, is a member...
weapons which are featured in the plot of Damaged Goods.
Reviews
Reviewing the novel in his Shelf Life column in Doctor Who Magazine, the magazine's resident book critic Dave Owen was extremely positive about Damaged Goods. "Author Russell T Davies is a welcome new addition to Doctor Who fiction, bringing a lucid, matter-of-fact style of storytelling that has more in common with Stephen GallagherStephen Gallagher
Stephen Gallagher is an English writer.He has written several novels and television scripts, including for the BBC television series Doctor Who — for which he wrote two serials, Warriors' Gate and Terminus — as well as for the series Rosemary & Thyme and Bugs, for two seasons of...
's modern horror novels than Irvine Welsh
Irvine Welsh
Irvine Welsh is a contemporary Scottish novelist, best known for his novel Trainspotting. His work is characterised by raw Scottish dialect, and brutal depiction of the realities of Edinburgh life...
's stylised fables... Purists might argue that a book full of sex, drugs and squalor can't really be Doctor Who, but they would be forgetting that the essence of the series and those like it is in portraying ordinary people's reactions to the unprecedented. It's done so brilliantly here that, much as I abhor scores, rankings and superlatives, I'll admit that Damaged Goods is currently my favourite New Adventure."
However, not all readers agreed with Owen's assessment that the setting and themes of Damaged Goods were one of its strengths. "Call me an escapist if you want," Matthew Mitchell wrote in a review for the Outpost Gallifrey
Outpost Gallifrey
Outpost Gallifrey was a fan website for the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was active as a complete fan site from 1995 until 2007, then existing solely as a portal to the still-active parts of the site, including its news page and forums Outpost Gallifrey was a fan website...
fan website, "but if I want a dose of the Problems of the World and Man's inhumanity to man
Man's inhumanity to man
The phrase "Man's inhumanity to man" is first documented in my balls]] poem called Man was made to mourn: A Dirge in 1784. It is possible that Burns reworded a similar quote from Samuel von Pufendorf who in 1673 wrote, "More inhumanity has been done by man himself than any other of nature's...
, I'll pick up the newspaper. I don't buy science fiction, especially not Doctor Who, for a lesson in modern sociology. I certainly would not have bought Damaged Goods had I known that is precisely what I would be getting."
Generally, however, reaction to the novel was extremely positive, with other online reviews around the time of the book's release praising Davies's work. "In Damaged Goods, Russell Davies has marked himself as the best newcomer to Doctor Who fiction since Lance Parkin
Lance Parkin
Lance Parkin is a British author, best known for writing fiction and reference books for television series, in particular Doctor Who and Emmerdale...
eight months earlier," wrote Shannon Patrick Sullivan on his own website. "Davies has crafted a taut, compelling novel which falls down only slightly at the end. Certainly, Damaged Goods is one of the best novels Virgin has released in 1996... Damaged Goods is a template for Doctor Who in the Nineties; I hope Davies has the opportunity at a follow-up under the aegis of the BBC."
Sullivan's website also includes a monthly updated list of the most popular Doctor Who novels, "The Doctor Who Novel Rankings", based on votes e-mailed in by readers and running since 1993. As of the January 4, 2006 edition of the novel rankings, Damaged Goods was placed eighth in the list of most popular New Adventures novels. In 1998, Doctor Who Magazine ran their own one-off readers' poll to find the most popular New Adventures as part of their celebrations of Doctor Whos 35th anniversary. Damaged Goods received votes from 780 readers, with an average score of 7.295 out of 10, placing it thirteenth out of the sixty-one novels in the series.