9781785949555 by Smakprov Media AB

DOCTOR WHO LUX

THE CHANGING FACE OF DOCTOR WHO

The cover illustration of this book portrays the Fifteenth doctor who when he was turned into a cartoon by a god.

LUX

Based on the BBC television adventure

by Russell T Davies

JAMES GOSS

BBC BOOKS

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First published by BBC Books in 2025

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Doctor Who is produced in Wales by Bad Wolf with BBC Studios Productions. Executive Producers: Jane Tranter, Julie Gardner, Joel Collins, Phil Collinson and Russell T Davies

Editorial Director: Albert DePetrillo

Project Editor: Steve Cole

Cover Design: Two Associates

Cover illustration: Dan Liles

Designed by Steve Cole. Thanks to Mab Benedetto and Tony Fleetwood. Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.

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To Steve Cole

All my apologies

Saturdays at Lizzie’s place were a ritual. She didn’t know why they’d picked her place to meet. The living room didn’t have much space, mainly due to all the books. Lizzie liked books, even though they took up a lot of space. She had a friend who claimed he only had space for seven books, and whenever he bought a new one, got rid of one. Lizzie didn’t like that idea. That you could have enough books. So there they were. Meeting at hers, somehow all squeezing into the living room. They weren’t a podcast, or a religion. No, this was important. They were almost like a secret society.

Mind you, Hassan’s brother had actually been in a secret society, which had sounded impressive and

slightly sinister, until his Auntie Thingy had caught him singing outside TJ Hughes. Turned out he was in a choir, and they were singing Christmas carols and he had the voice of a car alarm.

There were three of them in their little club. That’s what her mum called it. ‘How’s your little club?’ ‘When’s your little club getting together?’ I’m 29, Mum, Lizzie thought. Stop making it sound unreal. Like I’m having a tea party with my toys.

God knows how they’d found each other, it was hard to remember now. Sort of IRL, sort of the internet, but there they were, popped into existence as a group.

They all had lives outside of the ‘little club’, or loudly told each other that they did. Especially Robyn, she was always saying, ‘I’m too busy for this’ or ‘I don’t have the time.’ Usually in six-minute voice notes that sometimes made the group chat a bit heavy-weather. Anyway, they met on Saturdays.

Hassan had said that if you turned up late you wouldn’t be admitted. It was a rule. Hassan was always inventing rules as though trying to make sense of the world.

The No Latecomers Rule had petered out pretty quickly, though, because they always ended up waiting for Robyn. In theory there was a direct bus from hers to Lizzie’s, but in practice it always involved a change in the Ting-Ting Casino Carpark, where a

mother with a pram would stand shooting daggers at Robyn’s wheelchair, silently promising a fight over the single accessible space on the next bus. Normally the pram would get the space as the 72s rarely had the ramp. So, rules or no rules, they’d wait for Robyn, who’d sometimes be an hour late. Lizzie understood then why Robyn was always saying how she didn’t have the time.

Anyway, here they all were again, only a little bit late, the new episode all loaded up and ready to go. This was it, this was their ritual, their secret society.

She’d put out a few crisps.

One of Lizzie’s many-more-than-seven books was about children who spent their summers catching smugglers and then having scrummo midnight feasts. Lizzie had always thought that sounded nice so she’d tried laying on a midnight feast last year. Turned out no one really fancied scotch eggs and trifle at knocking on for 1am.

So just the crisps. Lizzie always bought the crisps, even if Robyn always chose the flavours. This wasn’t quite one of Hassan’s rules (he was 19, he’d eat anything), but Lizzie had learned not to put out anything that Robyn wouldn’t eat as the bowl would be pushed loudly about the coffee table for an hour like a planchette across a Ouija board summoning an undead god. The mountains of Sweet Chilli or Sour

Lemon remained uncrested as they scrabbled in the spartan foothills of Salt and Vinegar.

Robyn was later than usual, and it had been raining, so she arrived steaming like a microwaved Christmas pudding. Hassan had been there fidgeting on the sofa for an hour, telling Lizzie some of his new rules and his new theories. Hassan always had theories about what they were going to watch. Wild and extravagant, finespun as wedding cake decorations, and frequently based on nothing more than a deleted post or the corner of a jpeg. Normally Robyn would shoot him down in flames. Whatever internet Robyn had, it always turned out to be right.

No matter how early Hassan was, no matter how late Robyn was, he never ran out of theories. He had a lot for today’s episode. He’d heard from someone in confidence who’d heard from someone who didn’t actually work on the show but had seen something on the phone of someone who absolutely did and this meant that, if everything went according to plan, the club were all in for a surprise halfway through.

What was the surprise?

Hassan didn’t actually know, which meant it was a rubbish surprise. Hassan didn’t like surprises he didn’t know in advance, but he could make an educated guess. ‘It’ll be the Rani.’ It was always definitely going to be the Rani.

It never was.

Hassan was obsessed by the Rani. Which was odd, as Lizzie had once suggested they watch one of the stories with the Rani in it, and Hassan had pulled a face. The same face Robyn wore when Lizzie’d brought out Onion Rings.

Anyway, Hassan knew for an absolute top-secret fact that something was going to happen half, or at the most, three-quarters of the way through, something that’d break their world for ever.

We’ll see about that, thought Lizzie, tipping more crisps into the bowl. Hassan couldn’t get enough crisps tonight. Maybe, just once, he could buy some. But he was 19 and he had no money, allegedly, even though he did have that new scarf he was taking selfies in.

Stifling a yawn, Lizzie fussed around the room, getting the lighting just so. Hassan asked to have the remote, checking for the third time that she’d absolutely turned motion smoothing off (this was, he still maintained, why they’d not ‘got’ Legend of the Sea Devils the first time). Robyn sat there, pushing the crisp bowl around in search of her dead gran. (Lizzie had bought a different brand as it was on special.)

Hassan finally ran out of theories. Robyn had a bit of New Information. She’d heard the episode was being novelised by the guy who’d done The Giggle, which had been all right, Robyn said, but a bit playing up for

company. Lizzie made a note of that. She wouldn’t find space for that one on the shelves.

There they all were. All ready to watch the next episode of their favourite TV show. The best show that had ever been made, even if they sometimes didn’t like it quite so much. Because the show was the thing that their entire lives revolved around.

As Robyn picked at a shard of crisp jabbing in her gum, Lizzie snuggled into her favourite cushion and Hassan wielded the remote.

Silence. There would be no talking for the next 44 minutes and 16 seconds. Maybe a groan, a laugh, or sometimes, at the borderline of permissibility, a ‘Noooooooooooo!’ But no talking. That would come after. Lots of it.

But for now, the highlight of their week. Sometimes you pour your soul into what you’re watching. And sometimes it pours its soul into you.

Hassan clicked a button, and brought the screen to life.

‘Let’s get it over with.’

Chapter 1

We’re all alone in the dark, thought Reginald Pye. No, that wasn’t quite right. For instance, those two teenagers in Row Q. They were definitely, enthusiastically, not alone. What was he trying to say?

He peered through the window of the projectionist’s booth out at the quiet auditorium. Not a big crowd for an early evening show. But then, it was a nice evening and the show had been playing for a few weeks. Most people were biding their time for the new Doris Day, and the Palazzo was having to compete with the television and the beach.

The beach was always going to be a problem in Miami.

You’ve got the most beautiful view in the world, why would you want to see anything else?

Luckily, people who lived here occasionally got tired of looking at the rolling surf and fancied an evening in the dark with handsome cowboys and beautiful heroines.

Even if they came here alone, they didn’t come here to be alone.

Reginald hadn’t been in a church since Helen’s funeral. He’d been in a chapel full of 47 people then, all wishing him well, but none able to reach him. He’d been alone in that crowded room. Everyone looking up at him, expecting him to somehow say the right thing on the saddest day of his life. And he hadn’t.

But the picture house was different. The silver screen always said the right thing. You looked up at it and it shone.

These days the Palazzo was Reginald’s church, and he was never alone.

From his churchgoing days he recognised the look of the woman firmly on her own (no lingering in Row Q for her). She’d come here for a bit of magic and reassurance. A little light in her little darkness.

So many of us have that little darkness, knocking around inside our rib cages. The sunniest day on the beach can never reach it and it grows a little more with each day.

In the old times you’d take it to church in the hope that it’d get to bask a little, but now more and more people brought it here, to see the cowboys and the princesses and the sheikhs and the buccaneers and, just for a few minutes, that little darkness would lighten just a little.

That’s what they all came for. A little glow of light. Apart from Row Q. They were making a glow of their own.

But what was the harm in that? They’d all come to see a little beauty, feel a little happiness, watch a little romance.

Why, even now, they were taking comfort from –Reginald glanced up at the screen – oh, the newsreel was showing footage of a nuclear explosion. There probably wasn’t that much romance in nuclear bombs. All that heat and light, doing nothing more than destroying everything until it got bored.

Reginald didn’t see the love in that. There’d been so much destruction in his lifetime, it felt like we didn’t need more.

When he walked to work (Reginald walked, he didn’t like cars any more), he came along the beach. Sometimes he slipped his shoes and socks off and he walked along the sand and he looked at the beach and the sea and he thought, Not only will the beach still be here after I’ve gone, it’ll be here after we’ve all gone.

A beautiful sight, designed seemingly only to bring joy to the people who watched it, and it’d be perfectly happy even if there were no one to see it.

Like a film playing for ever with no one to watch it. That was somehow sad, but somehow that was just a fact.

We’re all alone in the dark, even the films.

The atom bomb exploded in black and white. A giant monochrome mushroom cloud spreading out from the desert, tearing the air into smoke as it went. A force of pure light and devastation that ripped through the rules of the world.

It was a remarkable achievement.

Mankind had always built remarkable things, but it tended to go one of two ways. One caveman would pick up a rock and use it to draw marks on the wall, another would pick up the same rock and use it to beat in someone’s head.

In those hazy early millennia it was about even Stevens. Yes, it took a lot of effort to build a mud hut but it also took a reasonable shift to burn it down. There was even a period when creativity was ahead – great weapons of war were unleashed against the Egyptians but no one ever managed to burn down a pyramid (it was argued that the Pharaohs had a little help from the outside).